Homebound (Gwiro) (1967)
 Director : Lee Man-Hee
Production Company : Se Ki Corporation
Date of Rate : 1967-07-27
Running Time : 90 min.
Opening Theater : Myeong Bo Theater
Genre : Melodrama
Staff :
Screenplay(Adaptation) : Baek Kyeol
Producer : WooKi-Dong
Executive Producer : Cho Kyu-Jin
Director of PhotoGraphy : Lee Seok-Ki
Gaffer : Yoon Chang-Hwa
Music : Jeon Jeong-Keun
Art Director : Kim Yu-Jun
Editor : Kim Hee-Su
Cast(Actor/Actress) :
Kim Jin-Kyu, Mun Jeong-Suk, Jeon Kye-Hyeon
Synopsis
She (Moon Jeong-suk) has been taking devoted care of her husband (Kim Jin-kyu), who is a disabled veteran of the Korean War and a writer with a serial novel in a daily newspaper. Unable to shake his harrowing memories from the war, her husband spends his days in plunged in depression and gloom. She, living with him in an isolated mansion in Incheon, is also oppressed by the weight of his pain. One day, she travels by train to Seoul in order to deliver the latest installment of her husband's novel to the newspaper and meets a reporter named Kang (Kim Jeong-chul). She is seduced by him, and her husband, who discovers this fact, pretends not to know about her unfaithfulness. Kang entreats her to go far away with him. Tired of her suffocating life with her husband, she begins to heed his urgings.
Notes
"Korean cinema reaches a higher level of artistry" (Lee Young-il)
Homebound is the first female melodrama tackled by director Lee Man-hee. But through his exceptional directorial skill, he raised it above the level of a simple melodrama by depicting the characters' inner desires and landscapes using distinctive spatial compositions and mis-en-scenes. The female protagonist has faithfully cared for her sexually impotent husband for more than a decade, but she is nearing her limit. Just at this point, she meets an attractive young man who shows a romantic interest in her. After having physical relations with him, she punishes herself by ingesting a lethal poison. A character placed in extreme circumstances, his or her choice in surmounting those circumstances, and the self-made decision to take responsibility for that choice this pattern of self-fulfilling morality is commonly found in all of Lee Man-hee's films, whether they are war movies, crime capers, or melodramas, and whether the character is male or female. And the internal landscape of the typical Lee Man-hee-esque heroine in Homebound is superbly externalized by the contrast between the stifling, bourgeois, two-story house in Incheon and the wide-open urban spaces of Seoul. Homebound is a representative example of Lee Man-hee's unique brand of modernism: he allots more time and attention to the depiction of psychologies and spaces than to the mere progression of plot. The movie also showcases the various sights of Seoul, especially around Seoul Station. Since Full Autumn(Manchu) remains lost to posterity, Homebound is the film that most poignantly demonstrates the true value of Lee Man-hee's modern melodramas.
Afterword:
- There is some controversy over whether or not Moon Jeong-suk's character actually commits suicide at the film's end. According to cinematographer Lee Suck-ki, the final scene does in fact refer to her death. Magazine ads at the time also used her death in the promotional copy.
- Homebound was the inaugural film of Lee Man-hee Production, whose founding members were Lee Man-hee, Moon Jeong-suk, and Baek Kyeol.
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).
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