The OSIAN Film Festival - Movie in Review (TIME)

Of all the recent weekends, this was one where i managed to drag myself outside my house, got my lazy bum into the car and drove off to Siri Fort, where the Osian Film Festival for Asian and Arab movies was on. Today was the penultimate day and one of my old college pals suggested we get together. It had been long since we last met, so I acquiesced to his wishes.

After a couple of wrong detours on my way to the auditorium, i finally managed to reach the place well on time, located the ticket booking counter, and got the 3 tickets i needed from an over-the-counter-side-line rather than the main queue. The movie we had decided on watching was "Time" - a Korean movie directed by Kim Ki Duk.

While i waited my for equally slow-bro pal and his friend to join me, i contemplated my decision on not wearing the traditional kurta-jeans combo to the film festival. I kind of felt the odd one out in my T-s. But i thought my common sense had prevailed. It was too hot and sultry to wear a kurta, whatever be the occasion. It was also too hot to be sporting a Rastafarian hairdo but none-the-less, there were guys with just that. Looked like a typical DU atmosphere - kurtas, jeans, jholas, wraparounds, junk jewelery and beads. Add to that a few foreigners and the kolhapuri chappals - and the deal was complete.

Well, about "time" i got to the movie in review here !!

Love Against the Passage of Time is the movie's theme.

/* Spoiler Starts */

Time is the story of 2 people - See-hee and Ji-woo. After two years of romantic relationship, our male protagonist Ji-Woo realizes that his love for See-hee is not the same as before. See-hee feels that Ji-Woo cannot bear to look at her face day in and day out. Over a tumultuous day, See-hee just disappears, and breaks all contact with Ji-woo. He is left to brood the loss and misses See-hee every day. He still loves her even after what she did to him.

As time passes, it is now 6 months since that fateful day when See-hee had disappeared. Ji-woo, on a visit to the sculpture island, the place he frequented with his ex-girlfriend, meets a girl named Seh-hee, and is struck by the uncanny similarity of the name. She is a waitress at the coffee house he regularly visits. They strike up a relationship, only for Ji-Woo to be thoroughly confused when Seh-hee asks him the question - "What would you do if See-hee returns back?". Ji-woo replies he doesn't know.

As the two fall in a comforting happiness, Ji-woo gets a letter from See-hee wanting to come back. Ji-woo is torn by the love he could not forget and leaves Seh-hee for his old flame, after a huge argument. Ji-woo decides to meet See-hee, who comes wearing a mask on her face. The mask itself is a picture of her. Ji-woo is confused and asks for an explanation. He realizes that See-hee and Seh-hee are one and the same. Since See-hee found his love to be waning and he wanting to look at other girls, she underwent a plastic surgery on her good looking face, and got a totally different look.

Ji-woo is stunned hearing this and is aghast at what See-hee had done. He tells her that love was what he has inside him, not her exterior looks. He walks of from her and himself disappears. He goes to the same plastic surgeon and gets himself a makeover as well. He asks See-hee to wait for him for 6 months the way he did and then come back to find him at the place where he used to pursue his hobby of shooting pics.

As more time passes by (in the movie as well as in the hall), See-hee starts approaching every man she sees in hope of finding Ji-woo. She gets mislead every time, and starts losing her mental stability. One day she thinks she sees the man who could be Ji-Woo and follows him. The faceless guy starts running from her, and in the process ends up under a car. See-hee goes insane thinking she ended up killing Ji-Woo. She enters the plastic surgeons office and asks one final time to be grafted. The movie ends with a shot of countless unknown people walking in the street, with See-hee dissolved somewhere in this obscurity, her new identity hidden and unknown to us. The landmark in the Sculpture Park, where Ji-Woo and See-hee used to spend time, is now under the ocean that surrounds it.

/* Spoiler Ends */

Time could not win over love ...

Since i found my above narration to be pretty lame and direct, i'd rather quote something here from the movie's director, and the amazing sculpture shown in the movie

DIRECTOR'S COMMENT

"It is an instinctive desire to seek for novelties.
It is human to endure the passage of time.
It is love to find novelties among repeating routines.
It is life to realize that nothing lasts forever in the passage of time.

Here are lovers crazy about each other.
But after their long relationship, it isn't love that has decayed, it is their throbbing hearts, their chemistry, their passion and their yearning.
I am posing a question to them. An absurd one."

Overall, the movie could be labeled as "interesting". Not a great class apart thing, but it highlights the concept that obsession (in this case with plastic surgery and the look good factor, as is so common in Korea these days) can lead to disastrous outcomes, and that relationships are not as fragile as some might make them out to be, and vice versa. Looks like a leaf or two out of the Eternal Sunshine types, but no where close to the masterpiece.

My first movie at a film festival, i'd probably rate it at 6.5 on a scale of 10, for some humor in the early stages, a 'different' concept and and even different portrayal of that concept. I could probably notch it up to 7 actually. The movie was dark, in terms of the story and the ending, and that is something i personally like. So looking forward to seeing more obscurities in the near future, or should i say, in Time.