Daphne Pan Reaction Paper 2

Daphne Pan
Professor Jeong
Intro to Korean Film
20 November 2014
Reaction Paper #2: Topic #2 The flashback film, Peppermint Candy, directed by Chang Dong Lee in 2000, was about a protagonist named Yong-ho who had struggled in the past twenty years of his life that led him to commit a suicide. Specifically, relationships and accidents were involved in his past. The episodes of Yong-ho’s life that were shown in the film represented as the significant events of Korean history. For instance, the early 1980’s, which was the Gwangju Massacre, was when Yong-ho who was in the military became traumatized in the shooting incident. Another one is that in the late 1990s, when Asia, especially South Korea, had faced a financial crisis, Yong-ho lost his job as a businessman. The purpose of including Korean history in the film Peppermint Candy, given that it only deal with personal events, thoughts, and flow of time was to have the audience to think and remember what the society had gone through in the past as well as in the present, such as the Korean War, and the Great Depression. Director Chang Dong Lee had Peppermint Candy to take place at the time that some of the major Korean historical events had occurred so that viewers could understand what problems that the community had been facing in real life. The problems that people in the society commonly encounter in their lives are marriage, poverty, violence, and traumatic events. Those problems were the ones that Yong-ho had encountered in the film and that made him end up killing himself by getting hit by a train because there was nothing he could do about it. Lee was trying to address to the viewers that there are several people in the world like Yong-ho who cannot overcome their conflicts by themselves, so in the end they commit a suicide. Everybody wants to get over his or her suffering, but some impossibly can depending on the decisions he or she makes in life. Not many people end up living in a better life that they desire because they do not know how to cope their problems on their own. So, they struggle to escape from their situations and lose everything that they have, such as their goals, career, and family and friends. Lee used reverse chronology in the film to show the audience not only what the main character was like in the past that negatively impacted his life but also the major historical events. The historical events that were shown in the film led the audience to remember how important they were even though the film was more psychoanalytic. Another thing that the audience noticed that Lee used reverse chronology in the film was that at end of every flashbacks there was a scene of train that was going to run over Yong-ho in the very beginning going backwards. The train going backwards was the representation of looking back to Yong-ho’s sad past along with the historical happenings. In addition, it highlighted a sense that an audience saw must lead to an unpleasant ending. Chang Dong Lee’s film, Peppermint Candy, had the audience to identify what Yong-ho as well as other people was like as he suffered during the historical times in Korea, such as the Gwangju Massacre and the Asian Financial crisis. The concept of the film led the viewers to realize there many people who suffer just like Yong-ho.