<Mist (Angae)> (1967)

Director : Kim Su-Yong
Production Company : Tae Chang Enterprises Co., Ltd
Date of Rate : 1967-10-19
Running Time : 95 min.
Opening Theater : Academy Theater
Genre : Literary Art

Staff :
Screenplay(Adaptation) : Kim Seung-Ok
Producer : Kim Tae-Su
Executive Producer : Hwang Hye-Mi
Director of PhotoGraphy : Jang Seok-Jun
Gaffer : Sohn Young-Cheol
Music : Jeong Yun-Ju
Theme song : Jeong Hun-Hee(song)/Lee Bong-Jo(composition)
Art Director : Park Seok-In
Editor : Yoo Jae-Won

Cast(Actor/Actress) :
Shin Seong-Il, Yoon Jung-Hee, Lee Bin-Hwa, Lee Nak-Hun

Synopsis

Yun Gi-jun (Shin Seong-il) has become the executive director of a pharmaceutical company by marrying the widowed daughter of the company CEO. With the general shareholders' meeting coming up shortly, his wife suggests that he visit his hometown of Mujin and he takes her advice. In Mujin, Gi-jun, who is draft dodger and a one-time tuberculosis patient, meets a music teacher named Ha In-suk (Yoon Jung-hee). He falls in love with In-suk, who, just like he did as a young man, wants to leave Mujin and move to Seoul. However, he receives a telegram from his wife telling him to return to Seoul immediately as he has been promoted. Gi-jun sets off from Mujin without leaving one word of explanation to In-suk.

Notes

A representative film in Korean modernist cinema
Mist is widely regarded as landmark film in the history of Korean modernist cinema. It was so successful in adapting the lexicon of European modernist filmmaking to Korean sensibilities that it earned director Kim Soo-yong the nickname of "the Antonioni of Korea." Mist reflects the weariness and psychological division that the process of modernization has inflicted on male subjects. It is based on Kim Seung-ok's A Journey to Mujin, which was recognized as a "revolution in sensibility" in Korean literary history. The movie contrasts protagonist Gi-jun's "journey" by way of two antithetical settings: the opposition between Seoul and Mujin is mapped onto the binaries of city/country, development/underdevelopment, modern/premodern, and present/past. Further, this binaristic opposition is embodied by Gi-jun's wife, the daughter of a bourgeois who gave Gi-jun the opportunity for success, and the poor music teacher Ha In-suk, whom Gi-jun meets in Mujin. Gi-jun, who has achieved success in Seoul, gets a chance for self-reflection when he travels to his hometown of Mujin. There, he meets characters who can be seen as his alter-egos including In-suk, who longs to go to Seoul, and his friend Cho, who is consumed by an ambition for success and begins to look back on his life's trajectory. Thus, the film exposes the self-repression and psychological crisis that male subjects had to experience in order to incorporate themselves into the modern order. It aptly uses various techniques of modernist filmmaking to achieve this purpose: a narrative that departs from causal or linear progression, flashbacks that constantly invoke the past into the present, long shots that emphasize spaces rather than characters, and the clash between sounds and images, to name a few.

Director Bio: Kim Soo-yong (1929- )

He was born in Anseong, Gyeonggi-do, in 1929. He graduated from Seoul National University of Education and made his directorial debut with the black and white film, A Henpecked Husband (Gongcheoga) (1958). Kim Soo-yong is not a director that can be easily classified or categorized. During the 60s and 70s when he was most active, he experimented with formality and adopted novels and plays, receiving acclaim for these "Literature Films" which have since been recognized as some of the greatest films in Korean cinematic history. In The Seashore Village (Gaenma-eul) (1965) and Flame in the Valley(Sanbul) (1967), he explored themes of human ambition and society. And through Mist (Angae) (1967), Night Journey (Yahaeng) (1977), and A Splendid Outing (Hwalyeohan oechul) (1977), he showed his modernist side by breaking existing notions of genre and attempting formal experimentation. He retired as an act of protest when his film, Jung-kwang's Nonsense (Junggwang-ui heoteunsori) (1986), was censored in 10 different places. He made a comeback with The Apocalypse of Love (Sarang Ui Muksirok) (1995) and Scent of Love (Chimhyang) (1999), but hasn't directed any films since.