Castaway on the Moon (2009, South Korea):
I haven't rented any DVDs since I got back from the U.S. in early May, so now there are a bunch of South Korean DVDs with English subtitles at Blockbusters that I want to check out. I rented this one because I had seen it on the shelves before, so it's an "older" one.
The English title isn't bad. It seems abstract, but there is a reason for it, kinda sorta. It tries to be more descriptive than "Kim's Island" which I gather is the translation of the Korean title. The Chinese title is alright, I guess, roughly translatable as "Desert Island Love" (荒島之愛).
The Chinese title gives away that at the heart of the film is a romance, but really it's more a quirky, "indie"-style film with funny elements about urban isolation. One character who chooses her isolation and one who finds himself stuck in his situation of isolation, but then gets used to it. Both of them in the middle of the capital city of Seoul.
He's a Robinson Crusoe type character who finds himself stranded, seemingly impossibly, on an island in the middle of the Han River, which runs through the heart of Seoul. His early attempts to get off the island all fail in perhaps a comedy of errors, some predictable and dragged on a bit too long, and as he resigns himself to being stuck there, he finds himself adapting and liking his situation. It's still better than his life he left behind as part of society.
She is a recluse living with her parents, locked inside her room. She has no direct contact with them or the outside world, and lives her life online and with a daily routine that she describes with labels which perhaps allow her to think she's living a "normal" life.
I quite liked the film. It's charming and cute and funny, but these people are in kinda dire situations in their own way. Outcasts, castaways, recluses in the heart of modern society. Needless to say I had no trouble identifying and empathizing with them, maybe a bit too much.
The landscapes of the two characters' worlds may be metaphors for what many people might feel about their own urban lives. His landscape being a junk-laden wilderness that he learns to live off, while hers is a junk-laden urban womb. Many of our landscapes include elements of both.
These two characters, separated by the space between an apartment building window and an island in the middle of the river, find a way to connect, and in connection they find hope and desire. Where do hope and desire lead? It can lead to despair or it can lead to pursuit, which in turn can lead to failure or fulfillment. These things are subtly probed in the film.
The film has problems, it's in no way perfect, probably not meant to be, and plenty of holes can be poked into it. But I found it enjoyable if not compelling, and I do think it's a commentary on modern life and the attractiveness of abandon due to becoming an anonymous smear in it. Fresh 7.5 out of 10 tomatoes.
Mind you, there's no real method in how I'm choosing these DVDs off Blockbusters shelves. I know nothing about them beforehand. I look at the cover, check for English subtitles, then try to gauge the genre, generally avoiding smarmy melodramas, goofy romantic comedies and horror – although Korean horror films have a reputation for not being stupid like Western horror films, so I'm open to giving them a chance.
That said, I don't know what genres I'm looking for, just what I'm avoiding. This film I pegged as likely a thriller. Thriller and action films are borderline. There is a risk of stupidity in them. I rent them assuming the risk.
We learn with the first bits of dialogue in the film that a "contestant" is involved, and she's flown in on a 747 and is being rushed in an ambulance, and that an Interpol investigation is going on. I was impressed at how that much intriguing information is given us in such a concise fashion.
We then learn through flashback that contestants were recruited to participate in a reality game show with a winning prize of one million US dollars. No other information about the game is given or how the contestants would be chosen.
The eight chosen contestants are flown to Perth, Australia, then driven by the calmly creepy director and his cameraman way, way out into the outback for the games to begin.
Each day, footage of the competition is shot and uploaded to the internet, which is ostensibly why Interpol was already investigating when the final contestant is flown back to South Korea after the week-long competition. If the footage was real, an international criminal investigation was warranted.
The competition turns into a matter of survival, but the director continues to pull strings to keep the competition aspect going.
I'm going to give this film a fresh 7 out of 10 tomato rating. It's a pretty good thriller and kept my interest though the entire movie, but it also has many logic faults and situations that stretch credibility that need to be taken with a grain of salt, which I guess might be said about any thriller or action film, so I'm not sure what my criteria are.
For example when they pass out due to dehydration in the desert, they all pass out in the same area, at the same time, even though there is a wide disparity in physical fitness between the contestants. They're not major "oh, come on" moments, but they're there. And they never have to eat.
The pressing question of why the director character does what he does and what is the connection between these people does get answered in the end as a nice twist, and from the viewers' point of view, perhaps there is a bit of satisfaction in finding out, although not justifying his actions. But from a plot point of view, within the story, it kinda sorta doesn't make sense.
Interestingly, the director in "A Million" describes the part of the Outback they're in as "a desert island on dry land", and all of the contestants are urbanites who become like castaways there. That may be the extent of the similarity between these two films, but it did make me wonder whether there may be themes in the Korean collective consciousness that the directors were channeling.
In "Castaway", the two main characters are both living what might be considered "failed" lives in modern society. Their practicality and usefulness to society have come to an end, and their absence from society is of little consequence.
In "A Million", one of the contestants might be similar to them, basically an anti-social shut-in whose internet service was even cut off months ago. The remainder are comfortably full members of modern society, but looking closely at the personality characteristics of the rest of the contestants, all except one have definable faults:
There's a hot-shot, young stock broker whose motivation is greed ("Who would say no to an extra million?"); an ex-navy hot head bad apple; a self-absorbed, emotionally absent videographer/internet reporter; there's an arrogant, overly-confident athlete; a vain and materialistic bar hostess; and a timid student struggling to pass her civil exams.
The only one I can't say anything bad about, not that I can say anything particularly good about her either, is the contestant who is flown back to Korea at the beginning of the film, a pizza delivery part-timer.
I know, I know, I'm probably looking WAAAAY too far into it and I'm exaggerating the bad qualities of the other contestants because they're not all that unlikable. It's probably just a coincidence. But I wonder how the screenwriters decided she would be the winner.
