말러를 위한 작은 모임

얼마전 씨애틀에서 상영한 한국영화 '만추'의 리뷰입니다. 씨애틀 영화제 웹싸이트에 올린것을 확대 보충했습니다. 얼마전 소개해드린 테렌스 맬릭의 'The Tree of Life'의 기법과도 조금 연관이 있다고 생각되네요. 오리지널 영어 원문을 보내드립니다. 그냥 시간 있으시면 ... 읽어 보세요~~ 소모임 생기면 그쪽으로 옮기도록 하겠습니다. Enjoy the movie! (Or, have you already?) Agony and Passion hidden under the skin – ‘Late Autumn’ directed by Tae Yong Kim In the opening scene, we see a young woman, Anna (played by Tang Wei) in a brown skirt, stumbling as she walks outside a house complex. She looks as though she is dimly conscious with a touch a delirium in her clumsy stance. The grey sky is unmistakably that of Seattle in late autumn, but the scenery captured has a dreamy haze that feels somewhat unrealistic. With the camera sliding ever so slowly and steadily, her image gradually comes into focus. Soon we get to learn what might just have happened; beaten and bruised all over her face, she appears terrified and frustrated. She then turns around and starts running toward her house. When she rushes into the house she finds her husband lying dead on the floor. These are the first few minutes of director Tae Yong Kim’s ‘Late Autumn’, a somber, moody romantic tale set in the urban landscapes. The sequence (shot on a long track) sets the tone and premise of the film vividly enough, but if you are an average moviegoer expecting a high drama with a conventional storytelling you might be baffled rather than pleased with what follows in the next 110 min. For throughout much of the film’s course Kim relies heavily on Tang Wei's silent acting and her facial expressions substituting much of its dialogue with the visual elements. The director also makes a good use of the Korean actor Hyunbin, who is playing the opposite male character most handsomely and agreeably, eliciting awkward but timely body language from him to punctuate with Tang Wei’s movements. By today's standard, the pacing is slow and sometimes dangerously comes to a stall, but it's completely in harmony with the mood and atmosphere Kim sets out to create. As for the plot, it has a few genuinely creative moments and pleasant surprises, such as when Anna confesses her dark past in Chinese; although the man does not understand what she is saying he acknowledges her with occasional ‘good’ or ‘bad’, the only two Chinese words he picked up somewhere before. From the purely cinematic perspective, this is a bold filmmaking at its best. Film is, after all, a visual art and Kim seems to be fully aware of the strength and limitation of his medium. There are moments abound in ‘Late Autumn’ in which the two characters scarcely exchange a conversation, but merely staring into each other, through the window, or into the sky. And when they exchange words, they do so in two or three different languages! Yet the film works beautifully because Anna's pain and agony are visually and brilliantly conveyed in Tang Wei's quiet, subtly passionate acting. While I was watching ‘Late Autumn’, time and again I was reminded of films of David Lean, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick, and Terrence Malick, all of whom more or less applied the same technique in their films. In a typical David Lean epic, e.g., 'Dr. Zhivago' or 'Ryan's Daughter', its profoundest moments are generated not by the dialogue but by the images and by juxtaposing them in a manner that maximizes the visual impact. One potential risk with this approach is that the audience might think they are only watching the actors walking or moving through the beautiful historical or - in this case - striking urban backdrops without an engaging storytelling to cling to. That is, it might give them a false impression that the movie provides nothing but the empty theatrics. That Kim took such a risk and the bold act of following the footsteps of these old masters is something to treasure and give a compliment for. The film also confirm‎s that Tang Wei is one of our finest actresses acting today; no other actor can possibly match her intelligence and skill in portraying the quiet yet thunderous passion hidden in her silent look and stare. Unforgettable as she is, Tang Wei looks gorgeous and (dare I say?) cute in Kim’s directing. The same thing goes to Hyunbin, whose exemplary constraint and the suave, masculine charm shine in many scenes of the film. 'Late Autumn' unfailingly reminds us that it's a grim thing to go through the life crisis as painful as Anna's. But shouldn’t we be thankful that there are a couple of gorgeous human beings still around us in this world, giving us much pleasure and comfort? In this sense, watching the film was both a touching and blessing experience indeed. Review by Poincare,