Peppermint Candy (1999)
 |
Review #1,401 |
THE SCOOP
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Cast: Sol Kyung-gu, Kim Yeo-jin, Suh Jung, Moon So-ri
Plot: Yong-ho is a crazy forty year-old man who shows up unexpectedly at the twentieth reunion of former classmates. The film goes on a time travel as six past episodes of his personal life reveal a link to twenty years of social and economic changes in Korea.
Genre: Drama
Awards: -
Runtime: 129min
Rating: M18 for some sexual content, coarse language and disturbing scenes.
Source: East Films
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: NO)
“Do you
think life's beautiful?”
It has been a long while since I've seen a
masterpiece from South Korean cinema. I
would have to go back to Park Chan-wook's Oldboy
(2003), one of the first few Korean pictures that I've seen, for that kind of
impact on my (then early) journey in film.
Peppermint
Candy,
released before the turn of the century, may be Lee Chang-dong's sophomore
feature, but I think it is by a mile the master's finest film to date, and
that’s saying something about his remarkable if brief body of work that
includes the likes of Oasis (2002), Secret Sunshine (2007) and Poetry (2010).
Opening with an intense prologue that sees our
lead character, Yong-ho (Sol Kyung-gu), deeply depressed and staring down an
oncoming train in a suicidal act, Peppermint
Candy would give us six more chapters
in reverse chronology (this was a year before Nolan’s Memento (2000) showed us a more complex engagement with such a
clever narrative structure) that tells us why this man has been driven to such an
irreversible state of despair.
The acting all-round is no doubt brilliant and
will grip you from the start, yet it is the film's malleability that would
astonish you, one that allows so much—thematically—to be explored without the didactic
or sentimental weight that normally would come with the historical and
psychological baggage of its subject matter.
Lee's approach, economical yet lyrical, brings
us through the stages of one man’s decline and situates it in the context of
trauma—the collective historical trauma of the 1980 Gwangju uprising, the
infliction of personal trauma through torture, the psychological trauma from professional
and romantic setbacks etc. that mirror the country’s economic uncertainty, and
general distrust and unease leading up to the new millennium.
As we go deeper back in time for the most part
of twenty years, Peppermint Candy adds
new layers to the narrative—this is one of those rare films in which the back stories
of the characters come out more strongly than the intricacy of its plotting. One could easily say that that’s inherent in
its structure, but Lee’s intertwining of the personal and the collective, the
Korean man and his nation, elevates the film into an affecting work of profound
emotional and psychological clarity.
Before his imminent demise at the start,
Yong-ho’s final words are: “I want to go back!” Don’t you sometimes wish you had the power
do that—maybe to right a wrong, be who you once were, or to love a person again?
Peppermint
Candy comes
closest to fulfilling that fantasy, yet also soberingly, mirroring the tragedy
that is life’s unstoppable plummet towards impermanence, in somewhat a bleak
interpretation of the famous saying, “time waits for no man”. I find the passing away of that which is
liable to pass—of people, of things, of memories, of time—extremely
distressing. Which is why I’m so deeply
in love with Peppermint Candy.
Verdict: Still Lee Chang-dong’s finest film to
date—this is a masterpiece that deals with a myriad of themes affecting the
personal and the collective, and does it with such profound emotional and
psychological clarity.
GRADE: A+
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