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Stout
Joined: 28 May 2011
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 Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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| eamo wrote: |
| shostahoosier wrote: |
I keep seeing the previews for "My Way" and I cant get over how gratuitous and over the top the violence is.
Yes I know war is really ugly, but do we really need to witness an airplane crashing into a guy standing on a hill? Some of the stuff is just over the top and really unnerving.
I can also say the same for a lot of action movies. Some of the violence is cringe inducing. Is that a Korean film device? |
Koreans don't do subtle...........they're a people into their extremes. One of their favorite extremes is extreme tragedy. |
Speaks volumes for the national psyche and general sense of well-being.
Last edited by Stout on Fri Jan 20, 2012 10:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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alongway
Joined: 02 Jan 2012
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| Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2012 10:18 pm Post subject: |
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| shostahoosier wrote: |
I keep seeing the previews for "My Way" and I cant get over how gratuitous and over the top the violence is.
Yes I know war is really ugly, but do we really need to witness an airplane crashing into a guy standing on a hill? Some of the stuff is just over the top and really unnerving.
I can also say the same for a lot of action movies. Some of the violence is cringe inducing. Is that a Korean film device? |
The movie is less gratuitous than "Frontline" which was out last year. |
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Who's Your Daddy?
Joined: 30 May 2010
Location: Victoria, Canada.
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| Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:39 am Post subject: |
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| northway wrote: |
| transmogrifier wrote: |
| No comment on the taste of the general population, but Korea has some genuinely talented film directors making awesome films (Park Chan-Wook, Lee Chang-Dong, Bong Jun-Ho for example) and even the generic genre pieces they make usually have weird subplots and tonal shifts that you never see in Hollywood filmmaking (not that it'll necessarily make the film good in the end). It's fascinating. |
You have to mention Kim Ki-duk as well. |
I think foreigners appreciate these directors more than Koreans do. |
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northway
Joined: 05 Jul 2010
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| Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 12:51 am Post subject: |
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| Who's Your Daddy? wrote: |
| northway wrote: |
| You have to mention Kim Ki-duk as well. |
I think foreigners appreciate these directors more than Koreans do. |
That's true about Kim Ki-duk for sure, but Park Chan-wook is extremely popular (JSA was the highest grossing film in the country's history at the time of its release). |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 1:28 am Post subject: |
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| Stout wrote: |
| eamo wrote: |
| shostahoosier wrote: |
I keep seeing the previews for "My Way" and I cant get over how gratuitous and over the top the violence is.
Yes I know war is really ugly, but do we really need to witness an airplane crashing into a guy standing on a hill? Some of the stuff is just over the top and really unnerving.
I can also say the same for a lot of action movies. Some of the violence is cringe inducing. Is that a Korean film device? |
Koreans don't do subtle...........they're a people into their extremes. One of their favorite extremes is extreme tragedy. |
Speaks volumes for the national psyche and general sense of well-being. |
You mean, regarding war as some sort of extreme tragedy is a sign of mental illness?
I think regarding war as either A) Some sort of "Let's Rock & Roll!!!!!" thrill ride where you gun down a bunch of others and get a rush out of massive explosions and mayhem or B) As some sort of galloping fun rush where a bunch of bad guys shoot and can't hit you or any of your collection of misfits is a sign of troubled national psyche and sense of well-being.
What else should war be regarded as other than an extreme tragedy? |
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Stout
Joined: 28 May 2011
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| Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 2:02 am Post subject: |
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| Steelrails wrote: |
| Stout wrote: |
| eamo wrote: |
| shostahoosier wrote: |
I keep seeing the previews for "My Way" and I cant get over how gratuitous and over the top the violence is.
Yes I know war is really ugly, but do we really need to witness an airplane crashing into a guy standing on a hill? Some of the stuff is just over the top and really unnerving.
I can also say the same for a lot of action movies. Some of the violence is cringe inducing. Is that a Korean film device? |
Koreans don't do subtle...........they're a people into their extremes. One of their favorite extremes is extreme tragedy. |
Speaks volumes for the national psyche and general sense of well-being. |
You mean, regarding war as some sort of extreme tragedy is a sign of mental illness?
I think regarding war as either A) Some sort of "Let's Rock & Roll!!!!!" thrill ride where you gun down a bunch of others and get a rush out of massive explosions and mayhem or B) As some sort of galloping fun rush where a bunch of bad guys shoot and can't hit you or any of your collection of misfits is a sign of troubled national psyche and sense of well-being.
What else should war be regarded as other than an extreme tragedy? |
Nah, not mental illness, I mean the preponderance of extreme tragedy n' tears on the screen and tube reflects a general disatisfaction with life in general here, despite (partly on account of?) all the gadgets and admiration for specs.
I think a general sense of alienation and the relentless competition has something to do with a fair number of people choosing to opt out altogether-
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2012/01/113_103300.html
I've visited a lot of places that are less successful materially but possess a far richer community/social life. Facebook "friend" glibly tacked onto your smartphone, or real friend you actually have to meet in-person to keep in touch with in lieu of the former? Obviously there are a lot of exceptions and grey areas, but in general "friend" appears to have become a bit more disposable and 'convenient' these days.
Assuming the absence of, I feel like if that mother had a strong contingent of friends (or even one) who were commited to help her through thick and thin, perhaps she wouldn't have opted out. |
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12ax7
Joined: 07 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:12 am Post subject: |
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Well, returning to the original question...
The cynicism is not totally unjustified.
It was not too uncommon for South Korean officers to give the orders to fire upon their own men when panic struck within the ranks and soldiers started fleeing (some of the officers were recent graduates of the military academy, young men with no experience whatsoever who suddenly found themselves colonels and generals when the war broke out).
I know two veterans who mention such an incident, one which they both witnessed, in books they've written about the Korean War (they fought in the same regiment). |
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Stout
Joined: 28 May 2011
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| Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 4:49 am Post subject: |
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| 12ax7 wrote: |
Well, returning to the original question...
The cynicism is not totally unjustified.
It was not too uncommon for South Korean officers to give the orders to fire upon their own men when panic struck within the ranks and soldiers started fleeing (some of the officers were recent graduates of the military academy, young men with no experience whatsoever who suddenly found themselves colonels and generals when the war broke out).
I know two veterans who mention such an incident, one which they both witnessed, in books they've written about the Korean War (they fought in the same regiment). |
That's interesting that you know people who have first-hand experience of the madness.
I know people who witnessed their fellow villagers being executed without trial by the South Korean army. They warned that anyone who didn't fall in line would suffer the same fate. This helps account for the herd mentality and horror of deviating from the norm widely witnessed in Korean society; doing so results in being socially executed these days (alleviating the need to a large extent to actually have to hunt down and jail dissenters; simply set up the specs via mass media-disseminated images/programs and let social systems take care of the rest), a possible factor in the high rate of suicide.
The cynicism in Korean war films also stems from the fact that they couldn't jail/exterminate/socially cow everyone who knew how bogus the war was. When the censorship of such topics was finally lifted more than 40 years after the conflict, it's only natural that film makers wanted to address the repression and misinformation-
As North and South Korea circled the issue of reunification over the last 30 years, South Korean movies were already preparing for it, questioning the myth of the evil North and the virtuous South. Movies like Double Agent (2002) and Peppermint Candy (1999) exposed the torture and persecution of suspected communists by South Korea�s intelligence agencies. The President�s Last Bang (2005), a black comedy, depicted the 1979 assassination of President Park by the director of the Korean CIA. The popcorn-muncher Silmido (2003) ripped the lid off a secret government program that trained a commando squad of convicted criminals to assassinate North Korea�s Kim Jong-il in 1968. After three years, the program was scuttled, and the commandos were slated for indefinite detention (or extermination), at which point they escaped from their island training facility, hijacked a bus, and died in a massive firefight with police in downtown Seoul. The entire incident had been hushed up until the film dramatized it.
A Little Pond (2009) saw an all-star cast re-enact the covered-up 1950 massacre of Korean refugees by the American army. May 18 (2007) was a big-budget depiction of the Gwanju Massacre of 1980, in which the military put down a student protest, murdering 200 civilians in the process. The Road Taken (2003) portrayed the plight of Kim Sun-Myung, the world�s longest-serving political prisoner, who spent 43 years in a South Korean prison for being a communist sympathizer. Big-budget star vehicles don�t hold a monopoly on the field, however. Even a low-budget documentary like Grandmother�s Flower (2007), the director�s loving tribute to his grandmother, becomes a searing indictment of the conflict between left-wing and right-wing members of a village that culminated in torture, murder, and anti-communist purges. |
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12ax7
Joined: 07 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 5:20 am Post subject: |
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| Stout wrote: |
That's interesting that you know people who have first-hand experrience of the madness.
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Yes, and I correspond with them quite frequently.
The way one describes it, it was complete bedlam during that incident.
They saw a wave of South Korean fleeing away from the Chinese. First a trickle, then thousands of soldiers. It was quite intimidating because there was only 700 of them defending a mountain. They wondered how many Chinese might have been on their way to cause such panic amongst the South Korean ranks....Then the South Korean officer ordered his MPs and then his machine guns to fire upon his men. |
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Stout
Joined: 28 May 2011
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| Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2012 7:11 am Post subject: |
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| 12ax7 wrote: |
| Stout wrote: |
That's interesting that you know people who have first-hand experrience of the madness.
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Yes, and I correspond with them quite frequently.
The way one describes it, it was complete bedlam during that incident.
They saw a wave of South Korean fleeing away from the Chinese. First a trickle, then thousands of soldiers. It was quite intimidating because there was only 700 of them defending a mountain. They wondered how many Chinese might have been on their way to cause such panic amongst the South Korean ranks....Then the South Korean officer ordered his MPs and then his machine guns to fire upon his men. |
What a pathetic way to die.
So your buds were just lucky to avoid the machine gun fire, I guess? I'm assuming perrhaps they turned around to fight, in which case it's amazing they survived the Chinese onslaught. |
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12ax7
Joined: 07 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 7:20 am Post subject: |
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| Stout wrote: |
| 12ax7 wrote: |
| Stout wrote: |
That's interesting that you know people who have first-hand experrience of the madness.
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Yes, and I correspond with them quite frequently.
The way one describes it, it was complete bedlam during that incident.
They saw a wave of South Korean fleeing away from the Chinese. First a trickle, then thousands of soldiers. It was quite intimidating because there was only 700 of them defending a mountain. They wondered how many Chinese might have been on their way to cause such panic amongst the South Korean ranks....Then the South Korean officer ordered his MPs and then his machine guns to fire upon his men. |
What a pathetic way to die.
So your buds were just lucky to avoid the machine gun fire, I guess? I'm assuming perrhaps they turned around to fight, in which case it's amazing they survived the Chinese onslaught. |
They were members of the Commonwealth forces. They witnessed the insanity from their foxholes higher up in the hills... Then the Chinese came. |
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