Rainy Days (Jangma) (1979)
 Director : Yoo Hyeon-Mok
Production Company : Nam A Pictures Co., Ltd
Date of Rate : 1979-08-29
Running Time : 114 min.
Genre : Anti-communism
Staff :
Writer : Yoon Hung-Kil
Screenplay(Adaptation) : Yoon Sam-Yuk
Producer : Seo Jong-Ho
Director of PhotoGraphy : Yoo Young-Kil
Gaffer : Kim Tae-Seon
Music : Han Sang-Ki
Art Director : Cho Kyeong-Hwan
Editor : Lee Kyeong-Ja
Cast(Actor/Actress) :
Lee Dae-Keun, Hwang Jeong-Sun, Kim Seok-Hun, Kim Sin-Jae
Synopsis
Rainy Days is set in the early 1950s, during the Korean War. Living together at Dong-man's house with Dong-man and his father's family is his mother's family, who fled from their hometown to escape the war. One night, as the monsoon rain pours down, Dong-man's maternal grandmother (Hwang Jung-seun) sits immersed in thoughts of her son, who died fighting North Korean guerilla soldiers. She yells to the thunder and lightning to wipe out the Communists. Her querulous cries get on the nerves of Dong-man's paternal grandmother (Kim Sin-jae), whose younger son Dong-man's uncle (Lee Dae-keun)is a Communist guerilla fighter. This incident instigates a cold war between the two grandmothers. Then one day, Dong-man blurts out to a stranger that his uncle has been to his house, which causes his father to be taken in for questioning by a detective. Around this time, a group of guerillas attack the town. When all the guerillas end up getting killed, Dong-man's father concludes that his brother must also be dead. But his mother refuses to believe it and goes to consult a fortuneteller, who not only tells her that her younger son is still alive but also predicts when he will return. On the day forecasted by the fortuneteller, Dong-man's paternal grandmother prepares food and waits for her son, but a large snake crawls into the house instead. She assumes that the snake is her son's spirit, and appeases it. The snake circles the inside of the house then disappears through the front gate. After this incident, Dong-man's two grandmothers reconcile with each other.
Notes
 "A film that is a projection of Koreans' unique pathos and historical sorrow, Rainy Days recounts how the conflicts the opposing ideologies of North and South generate within a single family are resolved through folk shamanism." (Shin Kang-ho)
Rainy Days is one of Yoo Hyeon-mok's later masterpieces. It appeals to Koreans' distinctive national sentiment by suggesting that the conflict and division caused by ideological opposition may be reconciled through folk shamanism. In the course of adapting Yoon Heung-gil's novel of the same title for the big screen, Yoo Hyeon-mok placed the shamanistic world and the theme of personal reconciliation through shamanism, neither of which figure importantly in the literary original, squarely in the foreground. In Rainy Days, ideological conflict takes place within the pales of a single family. From young Dong-man's point of view, the fact that his two uncles are pitted against each other as South Korean soldier and North Korean guerilla seems strange indeed, as is the resulting antagonism between his maternal and paternal grandmothers. With blood kin on both sides of the ideological divide, Dong-man is unable to root for either party. No matter which side wins the war, Dong-man will be at once the nephew of the victor and of the defeated. By unfolding the narrative through Dong-man's childlike gaze, Rainy Days poses the cynical question, "Who is ideology for?" Further, as suggested by the resolution of the conflict between the two grandmothers, the movie argues that ideologically-driven national division and strife can be resolved only through mutual reconciliation, not through the victory of one side over another, and points to uniquely Korean shamanistic beliefs as the means of this reconciliation. At a time when movies explicitly advocating the eradication of Communism were pouring out, Yoo Hyeon-mok's film raised the possibility of national reconciliation through the shared ethos of the Korean people. In this respect, Rainy Days can be regarded as a historically progressive movie.
Director Bio: Yoo Hyeon-mok (1925- )
He is the most prominent figure in Korean realist cinema and is considered the heir to director Lee Gyu-hwan's realistic nationalism. He realistically portrayed Korean society with Aimless Bullet (Obaltan) (1961), which is considered one of the greatest works in Korean cinema. His works include works which show a critical attitude toward society such as The Extra Mortals (Ing-yeo Ingan) (1964) and The Seizure of Life (Insaengcha-ab) (1958), and works which explore themes of God and salvation such as The Martyrs (Sungyoja) (1965) and Son of a Man (Salam-ui adeul) (1980). Aside from those works, he directed works in many genres including comedies, horror films, period films, melodramas, and anticommunist films. His other important works include Kim's Daughters (Gimyakguk-ui Ttaldeul) (1963), Descendants of Cain (Cain-ui Huye) (1968), Flame (Bulkkoch) (1975) and Rainy Days (Jangma) (1979).
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