When Our Eyes Meet

 

Son Ye-Jin, ever and again the irrational ingénue, is a wound of ambiguity, her passion running over glazed eyes which unmask a downpour of reverberating feeling. With her softly raised glance, she becomes, in a revelatory flash, the modern-day avatar of the silent-era starlets, those voiceless bearers of a vague unworldliness who serve as the sole embers of a screen swathed in darkness. Her character, through a life-saving transplant, ends up with a heart that is not her own, thus, by pushing a crude metaphor to its limits, she is uncertain if the feelings she reveals are really hers; ambivalence is her calling card, and no one is ever sure on what she is saying on the other end of the receiver. A pensive, burning irresoluteness sparks her slightest gestures, from eyes gleaming in surprise to a timid smile shrouding an inner caginess, and spreads throughout every scene she is in, making the surrounding mediocrity of Summer Scent all the more unforgivable.

Stylistic sweep and flourish, the inventiveness of mise en scène, or the sudden revealment of an authorial signature, seems inoperative within the terrain of K-drama. The problematic production process of a K-drama, aggravated by restless competition between networks as well as a flotsam of other variables ― starting with viewership whose wavering feedback provides the basis for the storyline’s tweaks, unforeseen by the production crew rushing to finish filming and editing the episode for broadcast (it is not unusual that the screenwriting-filming-editing-broadcasting process all happens within a single day), a task made preposterous due to cutbacks in essential film equipment (lighting, audio recording, set design, dollies, tracks, etc.) ― conflicts with ambitions for craft and creativity, which ought to be found on the spot for the grind of production usually precludes pre-production planning. In this instituted morass of teleproduction, where the overhead cameo of the boom mic is convention, the laborious outcome may not meet our expectations, programmed as they are, on how a story moves, how a character develops, or how a scene is shot, but because of the give and take circumstances of a rushed production, the closure of creative choices but also the springboard for unforeseen affects, what we are searching for, a drama’s emotional punch, is perhaps in another place, through another device, under another name. Being “well-made”, in the usual sense, is not in the arsenal of the K-drama, but this does not mean it is missing form or texture, for every work is, consciously or unconsciously, formed, arranged, organized, even if it is shaped by the chaotic conditions of production rather than by a cognizant author; and in K-drama land we must give account of the unconscious qualities, the small flashes of brilliance, which form its arresting heartbeat as well as its evocative surface, pathways of brokenness, and strange and singular feel.

That most of the production budget, instead of being given out to film equipment, goes to the high performance fees of the lead actors, who the crew is obliged to feature in as many scenes as possible, other creative possibilities are shut down, but this ultimately steers the show into realizing one of the crucial and intriguing qualities of the K-drama: their unique style of close-ups. On one hand, the close-ups are unpolished, too protracted, and, with their sudden incremental zoom-ins and faces swollen from awkward framing, reveal the symptoms of a troubled production; on the other, the close-ups, in its cracks, are uniquely expressive, as broken as the characters, conveying a mugshot intimacy. From this ebb and flow between crudeness and through-the-cracks expressiveness ― working not only in the close-ups but on all levels (narrative and filmic) of the show ― the signature of Endless Love is formed.

The winning formula for the Endless Love series can be summed up as follows: take creepy premise and, through the lengthy development of the story, cleanse off its creepiness. Like body snatchers, zombies, or children slaughtering each other, the premises of the four Endless Love shows lend itself to various suggestions and associations, the main ones being the sinister threats of incest (Autumn in My Heart, Winter Sonata) and necrophilia (Winter, Summer Scent, Spring Waltz). The stop-go progression of the shows tries to neutralize these threats, whether successful (Autumn, Winter, Spring) or unsuccessful (Summer), by both plot revelations based on viewer feedback and the sometimes dreadful overuse of delaying tactics, until it reaches its satisfying or unsatisfying conclusion. But even at the times when these shows are at their most clumsy, protracted, and paralytic, there arise, against the formulaic grain of the shows, under-the-radar moments and movements littered throughout the Endless Love landscape that neither stick out as errors or pretence for they constitute, in the same way plot holes and whip zooms make up a Bollywood masala production, the singular surface of the series. Some instances:

1) Autumn in My Heart exemplifies most hauntingly one of the prominent trademarks of the Endless Love series: the repetition of places. In their wistful reappearances, both slightly redundant and emotionally reverberant, beach or abandoned warehouse become the trysts for an endless series of farewells, whether temporary or permanent.

2) In the latter half of Winter Sonata, a succession of delaying tactics takes center stage. Dull but sometimes fascinating, these scenes show the indecisive lovers, in close-ups as time-consuming as an alarm clock on snooze, contemplating the impossibility of their togetherness, as their words issue out slowly like wet sludge.

3) The Endless Love mantra ― “I’m sorry, I can’t control my feelings” ― is given a necrophilic twist in Summer Scent. A forever sleeveless Song Seung-Heon falls instinctively for a demure Son Ye-Jin, whose heart, via transplant, is in fact his dead fiancée’s. Does he fall for her because she is really another woman (his dead fiancée)? Does she fall for him because she is really not herself? The ending never fully resolves this dilemma, making innumerable aporias stand out; yet what makes the show a frustrating experience also generates a strange, if perverted, allure.

4) Just when Spring Waltz gets going, near the end of episode one, the hero’s pianissimo rendition of “My Darling Clementine” falls on the ears of the heroine humming the same tune, triggering a cascade of memories as well as a forced digression into the past, moving the show from fairytale Vienna to the South Korean countryside, where the traumatic childhood lives of the two leads are recounted in episodes two, three, and the first quarter of four, until, at the quarter point of episode four, “My Darling Clementine” enters again and present-day Vienna returns. Something wondrous happens here, when two-and-a-half hours of TV time (episodes two, three, and a quarter of four) is inserted between five minutes of story time (“My Darling Clementine”) ― is the magic of Proust alive in television?

It is difficult to situate all these instances within the framework of one author, vision, one impression above others, one intention above the rest, without flattening our horizons on the multifarious effects ― intentional or unintentional ― of certain works. Too much time has been spent on intent rather than intents, or, more particularly, on intentions rather than traces. Auteurism appeals to viewers since it remains the most efficient way of organizing a work, streamlining, or deflating, the countless elements involved in production into a sole personal articulation of an author’s worldview, in short one voice articulated above but also through other voices, and the latter is something we must take into account. Bearing in mind these other voices, obviously it is not enough to describe them as mere ciphers of an author’s intentions, but that they too leave behind, deliberately or not, their personal fingerprints on the screen, sometimes even more memorable than an authorial theme or trademark, and these fingerprints, these traces, become the launch pad for all those unforeseen affects that enrich the cinema experience into something multifaceted and dazzling. How these intents and traces, along with their unforeseen affects, emerge within K-drama production, suppose the episode director of Summer Scent, speaking to Son Ye-Jin about the script he received just this morning, were to film the actress in close-up at night, it then becomes her personal intent, similar to but apart from the intents of the writer or director, that through her close-up, through subtle movements of eyes, cheeks, and mouth, a lasting impression that is fully hers will be left behind on the screen, which is thus achieved with her subtly raised glance; and because it is late in the night, with no lighting equipment available, a street lamp, with its cloudy fluorescent flow, is resourcefully utilized to illuminate the actress’ supple features. Son Ye-Jin’s glance is one intent out of many, the soft radiance of the street lamp one trace out of many, which taken all together add up to the Endless Love experience.

The voluminous mass of traces and intents confounds our narrative expectations (set up by the shows) as well as our aesthetic standards (programmed by our personal behavior along with what we have seen, heard, read in the past) by letting loose a through-the-cracks expressiveness that breaks these twin programs ― narrative expectations and aesthetic standards ― wide open. Sometimes resistance occurs between our aesthetic standards and the through-the-cracks expressiveness of the work, and because of this friction the situation becomes a give and take one, always subject to change, on what traces and intents will leave us cold or throw us off the ledge. When we harp on traces and intents, when we are moved by these little details, such as Son Ye-Jin’s upward glance, the protocols of narrative expectations or aesthetic standards or authorial vision are put aside, for by highlighting or disregarding certain traces and intents we are so to speak creating our own space within the terrain of the work, usurping our role as creative viewers. In this day and age, the passive viewer, so critical in ‘70s film theory, has perhaps been swept away by the new viewing conditions promoting unorthodox manners of spectatorship and new types of cinema experience; on one’s laptop, one can take screenshots, frame enlargements, extract video clips and sound bites, telescoping in on details in ways that could not be achieved before, thus finding new ways of articulation, of giving a work meaning. Finding the littlest gesture, or discovering an undetected dramatic movement, and being personally touched by it and giving them your own meaning, can never be the work of a passive viewer, but a creative one always at the risk of falling off into a delirium of interpretation.

None of this matters though if what moves us emotionally in these works is kept bottled up inside us; for a creative viewer there is a timid hope that these small revelations also resonated within the hearts of others, not with the intention of self-justification but for an odd chance at sharing with someone, a stranger half-way round the world or just the girl next door, the immortal moment when Son Ye-Jin’s eyes suddenly met ours.

Ew, Hollywood

There is a cinephilia whose combative character stems from a fierce anti-Hollywood (and, to some extent, anti-Western) attitude. For some, this expresses hostility towards the endless spatter of American films currently smothering the country’s cinemas; for others, this becomes a supreme criterion used to judge whatever cultural expression. I sympathize with the polemics of the former, but, even though I shared this sensibility back in the day, the latter position seems to be precarious, not to mention deeply constricting.

Supposedly, when the anti-Hollywood attitude becomes a criterion, then any expression must effect autonomy from Hollywood, its films and forms, stars and spectators, in order to be deemed as worthy. If not, then the expression is already “tainted” by Hollywood. But being based on a negation (“Not Hollywood”), the critical regimen for such a criterion ultimately requires, so to speak, a process of purging.

Consequently, any formal entity thought to be “Hollywood-esque” (for instance, three-act storylines, shot/reverse shot, frenetic cutting, etc) is surmised as consorting to Hollywood standards. However, “Hollywood-esque” formal entities change over time, thus the classical decoupage cutting of 30’s Hollywood will not likely find a place in the chaos cinema of ‘00s Hollywood. And we must remember that Hollywood can easily appropriate avant-garde, anti-Hollywood forms into its system, so one can catch snatches of underground filmmaking in music videos and discover that Terrence Malick’s films are, in fact, Hollywood products. More importantly, when any film employs Hollywood forms, we should never rush our judgment by assuming that the film is now “tainted”, as if these forms were inherently imperialistic (this is the obstacle that the fascinating and explosive, if problematic, films of Mani Ratnam come across). We have to give account of how these forms are used, how they are incorporated into the context of a particular film.

If the anti-Hollywood attitude means purging Hollywood aesthetics from cinema, then it is only logical why it would find a home in the atrophy of the slow cinema movement. It seems that the long takes, long shots, and static framing of slow cinema would be impossible for Hollywood to incorporate into its system, but who knows what’s going to happen in the distant future? This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy slow cinema films; on the contrary, I love the stuff of James Benning and Apichatpong Weerasethakul but for reasons different from the values upheld by the slow cinema movement. But if the process of purging results in filmmaking and film discussion centered solely on a negation or a marked separation from Hollywood or Western norms, then it is less about creating new forms than putting ourselves in a corner (since, as said before, Hollywood can incorporate almost any form into its system, leaving few “un-Hollywood” forms left). Besides, how are we going to touch on those instances when slow cinema films use Hollywood devices, such as the musical montage?

It won’t help to situate any cultural expression in a place similar to that of the virgin princess in the tower. From there, one can only isolate that cultural expression from the rest of the world. But to get from there to the rest of the world, we need to realize that purging Hollywood or Western aesthetic devices from cinema is fatally reductionist, because no aesthetic device is inherently Hollywood or Western. Aesthetic forms, once discovered or created, can be appropriated to whatever purpose, whether for Hollywood or Third-world ideology (but the former uses more forms, which doesn’t mean that they are inherently Hollywood). Rather than enrich the cinema experience, the anti-Hollywood attitude, centered on its crucial negation, closes it down and it ironically brings Hollywood back into the conversation when it didn’t need to be there in the first place. It would be better if we did not focus so much on a work’s difference from Hollywood, but on the sublime ways in which a work creates its own singular space and vision, for the reason that focusing discussion solely on a work’s “un-Hollywood-ness” is not discussing the work at all.

Community

Workers, Peasants --- Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, 2001 

Payback

“You even know what reimburse means?” Di Caprio’s Calvin Candie replies to a runaway slave, not smart enough to know economic jargon, before he is torn limb from limb by Candie’s pack of sadistic bloodhounds.

Inglourious Basterds’ barfly banter is substituted for underhanded business negotiations and transactions, mostly centering on the commerce of human flesh, either dead (bounty-hunting) or not-so-dead (slavery). The ensuing carnage of Django Unchained is thus the paroxysmal riposte to the injustices of the master-slave economic system, just as the atrocities of WWII provide the stimulus for the revenge fantasy of Basterds. QT’s latest is certainly audacious, and you can’t say that about 90% of today’s movies. Yet when QT “rewrites” the past, as he has done in his past two films, in order to “get even” with the crimes of history and the inadequacies of cinema to confront these crimes, the rambunctious manchild cannot help but consolidate even further the brutal motor of the history he is rewriting, in all its obscenities, viciousness, and barbarism.

It’s a matter of reparation versus reimbursement. Both acts necessitate the righting of wrongs, but only the former implies renewal, while the latter only presupposes payback. In Django, Sam Jackson’s Stephen (his best performance since I was still in preschool) is obviously a damning doppelganger for actor Stepin Fetchit, and by blowing off his kneecaps in the film’s end Django reimburses the negative African-American stereotypes exemplified by the roles of Fetchit in the ‘30s. Whether it’s riddling bullets to the mangled body of the Führer or blowing up plantation houses, both reimbursing the resistance that was supposedly lacking those dark days (respectively, the French Resistance and innumerable slave uprisings prove otherwise), QT’s “history” films provide no “restoring” alternative other than this vicious system of exchange.

Hence, Django is less about slavery, or the collective emancipation from it, than vengeful individualism, which is easily subsumable to the same evils of history that one is against. Besides his wife, Django rarely helps out any of his fellow slaves. In fact, one scene shows him giving a black barman the stink eye, and, during the long ride to Candieland, Django, on horseback, goes so far as to treat the marching slaves alongside him as inferiors. Why the hell should he help them, when he is the indomitable baadasssss! Turning the tables on the white man, Django whips the white captor’s ass; now he is the one who inflicts pain, making the white man his “bitch”. In a way, in his quest for vengeance, Django just takes over the role of his brutal white masters, and, conversely, the white men replace the roles of the black men as helpless victims. Similarly, the Jewish Americans of Basterds carry out mass slaughter against those genocide-loving Nazis, who’re blown to pieces. No matter how loony QT’s rewritten histories become, the same roles of master-slave, perpetrator-victim, are still maintained, and any alternative from this diabolical dualism has no place here. The roles will frequently change, but it won’t be destroyed. Django frees his wife, but, from Schultz’s cold corpse, keeps the bill of sale.

Novice Impressions (K-pop)

Eroticizing goofiness, the unique gift of such goddesses as Marilyn Monroe, Anna Faris, HyunA....

“Resistance for freedom of expression through music via sixth sense…. Their title track is an expression of the limitations of experiencing music with only five senses, and it asks people to feel it instead with their sixth sense.” --- promotional for Brown Eyed Girls’ Sixth Sense album.

K-pop fans seem to thoroughly embody the figure of the medieval exegete, combing through songs, albums, music videos, concerts, interviews, romanized lyrics, choreography tutorials, TV appearances, etc., within an endlessly expanding Borgesian media library. And the relationship between K-pop fans and their sacrosanct pop idols is the material obverse of the spiritual bond between devoted followers and their unseen God.

T-Ara appeals to me personally, since they sustain, for this day and age, what I love most about the girl group movement back in the sixties: the cherub-faced rebel girl melodramas of The Shangri-Las and the freewheeling and reckless bliss of The Tammy’s “Egyptian Shumba”.

“What I have in mind is the capacity of entertainment to present either complex or unpleasant feelings (e.g. involvement in personal or political events; jealousy, loss of love, defeat) in a way that makes them seem uncomplicated, direct and vivid, not ‘qualified’ or ‘ambiguous’ as day-to-day life makes them, and without intimations of self-deception and pretence.” (Richard Dyer, “Entertainment as Utopia”) “… [Walter] Benjamin was not much interested in theories or “ideas” which did not immediately assume the most precise outward shape possible.” (Hannah Arendt, “Introduction” to Illuminations)  In its brevity and immediacy, pop song lyrics, instead of plumbing for “deep” meanings, seem to crystallize those “complex or unpleasant feelings” in “the most precise outward shape possible”, giving this popular form its special vicariousness. The best songs of T-Ara seem silly at first due to their repeated lyrics and linguistic nonsense, but these whirls of onomatopoeia vividly communicate something more dramatic and emotional. In “Bo Peep Bo Peep”, right before the girls are able to express their deep remorse and love to the man who’s sick of them, who’s leaving them, somehow God goes Tower-of-Babel on the world for a second time, and, instead of reciting the words which will make their man return, the girls go “Bo peep, bo peep, bo peep, oh”. The seeming meaninglessness of the lyrics reveals poetry (and T-Ara can do “serious” poetry too: “I hope my lips that recite this sad poem will be remembered in your black eyes” in “Day by Day”), but more importantly the constant repetition of the lyrics makes the song effortlessly danceable. Thus, pop song lyrics present the flashpoint of the poetic and kinesthetic.

T-Ara’s “Day by Day” would work perfectly with Philippe Garrel’s The Inner Scar. 

The Tracks of My Tears

Some points of departure that may potentially constitute an evaluation or a defense of Autumn in My Heart.

--- For all its over-the-top outbursts and tears, the show boasts a definite “rigor”, not to be mistaken for stylishness or old-school classicism, in its melodramatic construction. There are no unnecessary elements here, only elements (flashbacks, plot revelations, close-ups…) that will underscore as intensely as possible the heavy emotions within the story. So, for instance, it hardly matters that the production team gave very little thought to set design, since the show derives its emotional power not from the splendor of its sets but from Song Hye-Kyo’s tear-streaked face. The show’s vital force, its unique heartbeat, is formed from this obsessive concentration on only the certain elements it deems as essential in accumulating the feelings of the drama. Throughout the sixteen episodes, these concentrated feelings gather up like a storm, mapping out lines of force that collide, intersect, and repeat. Thus the show is structured around a series of dramatic encounters and confrontations, missed chances and unspoken desires, along with multiple repetitions of lines of dialogue, settings, gestures, and music cues. All these lines of force also possess an unchanging trajectory, which goes all the way to a devastating finality. No wonder in shows like these things only get worse. Calling this stuff heavy-handed is just too insubstantial!

--- Each of the main characters cannot love if not in a deranged state. This is in line with the show’s full-blown melodramatic trajectory, which requires the creation of characters that are willing, without hesitation, to go to the utmost extremes and plunge into the torments of romance. Subtlety and nuance in characterization have no home here, since these qualities are unable to jive with the drama’s emotional bounce and overriding purpose, specifically the relentless accumulation of feelings. Whether it’s Tae-seok’s unrequited, almost masochistic, love for Eun-suh, transforming him from bad boy to faithful mensch, or Yumi proclaiming to her fiancé Joon-suh that she’ll die without him, in the hopes of suborning him into a marriage he doesn’t want, the characters’ arrant amour fou arrives at a mad morality. The hysterical spirit of the romance overthrows the conventional and powerless principles of love that the older characters term as wisdom. None more so than in the romance between Joon-suh and Eun-suh is this expressed. The familial bond between the ex-siblings blooms into romance, much to the outrage of the other characters, but nevertheless their fragile love only flourishes more so once it is rendered as taboo. As Eun-suh quavers to Joon-suh, “Let’s just look at each other as if it’s a dream”, there is a moving realization that their love achieves in reality the affections of dreams. In that instant, love is reinvented.

--- Autumn in My Heart, through its love story, revitalizes the passé concept of innocence. Joon-suh and Eun-suh’s romantic relationship, throughout the entire show, never loses the brother-sister tenderness of their adolescence, given that these two lovers, to begin with, have yet to mature into adulthood. Whenever they encounter each other, the lovers “catch” their childhood once more, regaining their youthful liveliness. Indeed, the scenes with the couple candidly manifest the pep of puppy love: puerile, annoyingly sexless, yet wholly genuine. But this childlike innocence is too vulnerable to face the (melo)drama and too impulsive to avoid it. No matter the hostility and hardships, Joon-suh and Eun-suh, with tears streaming down their faces, defend their pure love, because this is the only portal to their lost childhood. In Jean Renoir’s The River, one of the characters says, “And the world is for children, the real world. They climb trees and roll in the grass. They’re close to the ants and as free as the birds. They’re like animals. They’re not ashamed. They know what is important.” Somewhat similarly, the romantic scenes between the two leads usually take place outdoors. However, these moments of innocence, when teenage hopes and dreams are recovered and which the adult world smashes into oblivion, comprise the instant when true love takes central importance and runs unashamed and free. Innocence is no longer the safety net for censorious puritans, but a force of love that can potentially turn the world upside down.

--- That ending, with the sudden refrain of an important line of dialogue, is possibly the most moving I’ve ever seen.

Working Girls

It starts off like a Hiroshi Shimizu title: Korean Girls at the Harbor. Five best friends, at the peak of their high school years and without a care in the world, prance merrily ‘round the waterfront, sing and dance to some silly song, take pictures for mementos, scream and giggle uncontrollably, without a care in the world. It’s the epitome of friendship, an intimate togetherness between the five girls that the rest of the film will endeavor to replicate but never truly fulfill.

This brief flashback that opens Take Care of My Cat washes out into the mundane present day. As if to jolt us into these contemporary times, the first thing we suddenly see is someone shattering an apartment window, whilst down below one of the girls, now out of high school, goes off on her morning commute to faraway Seoul. In this film, none of the main characters own a car, so going from one place to another, whether for work or leisure, means bus rides, trains, and long walks, together with the exhaustion that is attendant with everyday commuting (how refreshing it is to see a film that acknowledges the fact that private transportation remains a luxury for a minority while the rest of society queues for the next ride back home). More importantly, the manner in which these characters are classified and restricted to particular social options, as well as their relations and interactions with one another, is mainly predicated on their work. Ji-young (Ok Ji-young), living with her grandparents in the slums near the harbor, boasts the unique talent for creating textiles, a skill set that sadly has no place in the money economy as evinced by her unemployment. The two twins Bir-yu (Lee Eung-sil) and Ohn-jo (Lee Eung-ju), as their chief source of income, sell trinkets on the streets. Upwardly mobile Hae-joo (Lee Yo-won), working at a brokerage firm in Seoul, uses her charm and charisma to climb up the corporate ladder in a job she’s terribly underqualified for. Meanwhile, Tae-hee (Bae Doona, the greatest actress of our times) helps run her family’s spa, even though she’s not earning anything from it. The ever-growing working hours, the encroachment of labor time into leisure, the constant fear of being without a job in tandem with the precarity of work itself --- no matter how many times these girls reunite, it is tragically inevitable that work, the means to simply survive, will ultimately tear this group apart.

What moved me in this film is its encapsulation of a moment in young adulthood when all that matters, hopefully for the time being, is to make ends meet, even if we unavoidably risk losing what is most important: our hopes, our dreams, our friends. There is a restlessness that is felt here, a quiet desperation at the way this present world is being run, something it shares with Yasujiro Ozu’s salaryman films. It’s this desperation, call it anger if you want, that is more precious than gold, because cinema, in the words of Pedro Costa, is supposed to “make us feel that something isn’t right”.