<A Water Mill (Mullebanga)> (1966)

Director : Lee Man-Hee
Production Company : Se Ki Corporation
Date of Rate : 1966-11-10
Running Time : 92 min.
Opening Theater : Myeong Bo Theater
Genre : Literary Art

Staff :
Writer : Na Do-Hyang
Screenplay(Adaptation) : Baek Kyeol
Producer : Woo Ki-Dong
Executive Producer : Cho Kyu-Jin
Director of PhotoGraphy : Seo Jeong-Min
Gaffer : Kang Yong-Sin
Music : Jeon Jeong-Keun
Art Director : Jeong Wu-Taek
Editor : Kim Hee-Su

Cast(Actor/Actress) :
Shin Young-Kyun, Ko Eun-Ah, Heo Jang-Kang, Jeong Ae-Ran

Synopsis

Wandering traveler Bang-won (Shin Young-kyun) comes across a woman's sock at a village he happens to be passing through and meets Geum-bun (Ko Eun-ah), the beautiful woman to whom the sock belongs. Geum-bun, who married a sick man, has been nursing her ailing husband for three years. Smitten with Geum-bun, Bang-won decides to remain in the village, and goes to work as a servant for Kang (Heo Jang-kang). Soon thereafter, Geum-bun's husband succumbs to his illness, and Kang persuades the newly-widowed Geum-bun to join his household in exchange for the ten sackfuls of rice she owes him. Geum-bun and Bang-won fall in love, and when Bang-won finds out about his lover's unfortunate situation, he pledges himself as a lifelong servant to Shin (Choi Nam-hyeon), who lives in the neighboring village, in order to procure the ten sackfuls of rice. He pays back the rice to Kang and leaves the village with Geum-bun. They wed in a simple, private ceremony and Bang-won begins his life as a servant in Shin's household. But Shin, who lusts after the young Geum-bun, takes every opportunity to be alone with her, sending Bang-won off for days to work in the mountains. While Bang-won is away, Shin has his way with Geum-bun, and Bang-won begins to suspect their relationship. He goes to consult a shaman (Jeon Ok), who tells him that he can "hold on to Geum-bun's heart if he steals a woman's undergarments and floats them down the river. "While trying to steal the necessary undergarments, Bang-won is discovered by Shin. As punishment, he is beaten within an inch of his life and kicked out of Shin's household. That night, he goes to the water mill where he has hidden a pair of shoes he bought for Geum-bun, and finds his wife there with Shin. Bang-won kills Shin and implores Geum-bun to come away with him, but the terrified Geum-bun rejects his plea. Enraged, Bang-won strangles her to death and falls down beside her.

Notes

"The discovery of a pure cinematic moment that breaks through the limits of literary films" (Heo Moon-young)
The beautiful yet complex structure of A Water Mill has earned it the praise of being the most mysterious movie in Korean cinematic history from film critic Heo Moon-young. The long shot used in the scene that introduces the protagonist Bang-won had never been seen in existing period films. Indeed, heterogeneous angles and sustained shots, generally considered unfit for period pieces, appear frequently in A Water Mill. Such formal innovations allow this movie to move beyond the limitations of a period film based on literature.
Opening with a village festival, A Water Mill features masked dances, wrestling matches, and natural landscapes captured using specialized techniques like tracking shots and panning. It thus combines folk cultural images with Bang-won's subjective mental imagery. The subjectivity that manifests through the filming and editing of A Water Mill is in fact a consistent common element found in both its story and characterizations. That is, the movie ceaselessly intermixes fact and fiction, so that even the respective identities of Geum-bun and Bang-won fall into confusion. The fitting together of story, character, filming, and editing none of which guarantees an objective truth turns A Water Mill into a baffling yet beautiful puzzle.
Lee Man-hee's film is based on Na Do-hyang's short story of the same title, but it is distinctive in that it borrows virtually nothing from the original literary text. It is said that screenwriter Baek Gyeol received the director's go-ahead to freely compose his own screenplay using a minimum of motifs from the source text. A Water Mill was also considered problematic at the time of its release due to its unusually high level of eroticism.

Director Bio: Lee Man-hee (1931-1975)

Director Lee Man-hee was born in Hawangsimni-dong Seoul, in 1931, the youngest of 8 children. He participated in the Korean War deciphering enemy codes and duringthe years between 1956 and 1961, he worked as an assistant director under the directors Ahn Jong-hwa, Park Gu and Kim Myeong-je. He made his directorial debut in 1961 with Kaleidoscope (Jumadeung) with the support of Kim Seung-ho, one of the most famous actors of the era. Afterward, he proved that he could make movies that were commercially successful with Call 112(112reul Dollyeora) (1962). He opened a new age of Korean noir and horror with Black Hair (Geomeun Meori) (1964) and The Devil's Stairway (Mauigyedan) (1964). He also opened up new possibilities in Korean art films with Full Autumn (Manchu) (1966)and continued on this stylistic path with Homebound (Gwiro) (1967) and Holiday (Hyuil). With the decline of the Korean movie industry in the 1970s, he received fewer and fewer opportunities to make movies and this coincided with a deterioration of his health and financial situation. He died of liver cirrhosis as he was finishing his film, A Road to Sampo (Sampoganeun gil) (1975).