#drama #history #suicide #Lee Chang-dong #Seol Kyung-gu #Moon So-ri #Kim Yeo-jin #2000 #recorded in December, 2021

The film is a model of ‘national cinema,’ narrating the past 20 years of South Korean society through the saga of its main protagonist. Lee Chang-dong reminds his audience that the postwar history of military rule and repression cannot be so easily forgotten.

On the railroad, Young-ho screams, “I want to go back again!” His scream breaks through the deafening roar of an approaching train, and the film begins a journey from his suicide to the past.

This is Lee’s most formally innovative work. He based the film’s structure on Harold Pinter’s 1978 play Betrayal, which charts the dissolution of a marriage, beginning with the divorce. The scenes that follow, each going back in time, climax with some further indication of the already foretold disaster.