An excellent introduction to the world of 1960s Korean cinema…
It’s a strange thing how trends change; at the present moment we are experiencing a huge influx of Korean films, music, and television. Regardless of quality, a piece of media is more likely to garner attention by dint of being Korean. Of course, this isn’t unique to Korea, with Japan reaping the benefits of this for a good bit of the late 20th Century. Still, it’s interesting to compare Korea’s cinematic reputation before the Hallyu Wave and realise what we may have been missing. In Kim Soo-yong’s 1967 film Mist we get a glimpse of a fascinating voice in East Asian cinema at a time when Korean cinema quite simply was not getting exported to Europe.
It’s another clear change in trend to see differing attitudes surrounding Korea’s more rural areas, which is a central theme of Mist, in which the executive director of a pharmaceuticals company, Gi-jun. returns to his hometown for a few days to escape the fallout of unspecified issues at his company.
While films of today will linger on mountains, forests, and beaches to accentuate the beauty of Korea’s more remote areas, the town of Mujin is made out to be so boring it may as well be cursed, with every character Gi-jun interacts with congratulating him on marrying a rich widow and escaping the humdrum life that he surely would have had had he never left Mujin. Gi-jung seems to feel guilt about leaving people behind, while fundamentally understanding that it was the only option he ever had if he wished to escape.
More than this though, the title mist covers everything, so the camera couldn’t linger even if it wanted to. Early on in the film Gi-jun says that Mujin doesn’t have any food or handicrafts that it is particularly known for; the only thing it produces is a thick fog that depresses everyone who lives there.
There’s a staggeringly good scene around the halfway mark in which Gi-jun is on the beach, speaking to a police officer about a dead body found there. The officer says matter-of-factly that she’s one of the local sex workers who likely took her own life as it was the only feasible way out of Mujin. It’s a heartbreaking scene, beautifully performed and shot, that truly starts to make the setting feel like the enemy.
And yet, nestled within this fear and dread, with the backdrop of war as Gi-jun is known to be a draft dodger, there is more of a traditional melodramatic romance. At a gathering he meets local music teacher In-suk, played with usual aplomb by frequent Kim Soo-yong collaborator Yoon Jeong-hee (Poetry), who Gi-jun surmises to be a marriage target for multiple men in the village.
The romance is a whirlwind, but far from ineffective; rather than feeling austere and clipped there is a genuine sensuousness to it. In their scenes together you get the greatest sense of what a complex and weasel-y figure Gi-jun is: he has feelings for In-suk, but is also happy to say what she wants to hear in order to get one over on the inhabitants of Mujin, to confirm to himself that he is indeed better than them. Shin Seong-il revels in this role without taking it to the point of caricature. The plot is melodrama, but it’s tempered by the myriad contextual elements that inform the setting, grounding it while never allowing the emotions present to be any less real.
And make no mistake, this is a film about Gi-jun, with other characters being bit players. This may frustrate some viewers, but it allows the complexity of Gi-jun’s own emotions to breathe without muddying the world of the film. Kim’s narrative is crystal clear, and while the story told may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it ultimately succeeds in what it sets out to do, it would be hard to deny.
Mist is proof positive that Korean cinema of the 1960s is as worth exploring as its Japanese counterpart; packing layers upon layers of postwar anger, resentment of the rural-urban divide, and good old-fashioned lust borne from boredom. Allow it to be an introduction, and never look back.