"Sopyonje," the First Korean Film Seen by a Million People

According to the notes for the Korean Film Festival in San Francisco, "Sopyonje," (also romanized as "Seopyeonje") a 1993 film directed by Im Kown-Taek (best known for "Chunhyang," his 97th film) was "the first Korean film to garner a million submission" and is one of the greatest Korean films ever made. It shows a Pansori (Korean opera) singer named Yubong who was his master's protege, but fooled with the master's wife and was expelled from the troupe in the capital. Wandering the countryside, he has charge of a orphaned boy and a girl, training the girl to be a Pansori singer and the boy to be her accompanist on the drum.

Yubong is a very hard task-master and periodically attempts to drown his frustrations in alcohol. The rag-tag family rarely has more than rice gruel to eat and the art that they work so obsessively to perfect (pounding bitterness on the forge of practice) has fewer and fewer aficionados.

The grownup boy (Kim Kyu-Chul) rebels at the poverty and abuse. His sister (Oh Jung-Hae) stops singing (or eating), and then things get really grim! I don't think art excuses everything and am appalled by how Yubong ensures that Songhwa will remain dependent upon him. There is a real tearjerker climax and the chilling Samuel Beckett finale (similar to those of "Life on a String," and "Painted Faces," "The King of Masks," also showing very harsh apprenticeships, waning general interest in the old performing art forms, though less melodramatic than the final performance of "Farewell, My Concubine"). It also features a long search reminscent of "Fleeing by Night."

The three leads all deliver intense performances, and the landscapes through which they travel are very striking. I can't say that the art form of Pansori appeals to me, but it is emblematic of folk art being eclipsed by recordings and music from elsewhere (Japan more than the US, despite the presence of US troops in Korea during the late-1950s, early 60s when the film seems to be set and now).

I saw a DVD version projected, but it does not seem to be for sale in the US.

"Sopyonje" is more scenic than the Chinese films I have mentioned. There is plenty of anguish and suffering (and frustration at the loss of audience to entertainments requiring less skill from their performers) in all of them. There is some leavening of humor in "Painted Faces," but it and "Sopyonje" (and the others) contain great sadness and stimulate tear production.

In the recent international discovery of Korean cinema, Im Kown-Taek has been the most recognized auteur. Few of his films are easily available in the US. He received the Akira Kurosaw Lifetime Achievment Award from the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1998, which gave San Francisco audiences a retrospective of some of his one hundred films, and Im won the best director award at Cannes in 2002 for "Chiwaeson." which I have not had an opportunity to see.