A pair of butterflies left the peach blossum
but they returned missing it.

An odd paradox about the viewing habits of Americans in relation to “foreign films” is that we seek them out to experience something that is different from our own culture but we’re most likely to embrace those foreign films that are the most like our familiar American fare. It was Kurosawa, for example, the most Westernized of Japanese directors of his generation, that first broke through into the American film market. Here we have a film from South Korea that makes little concession to Western artistic sensibilities. In Chunhyang, director Im Kwon Taek presents a traditional Korean folk tale, as famous in its home country as Romeo and Juliet is to Westerners, in the context of a Pansori stage performance – an art form and style with which few Westerners will have previous experience. The result is a quintessentially Korean experience and experiencing the essence of another culture is one of the greatest rewards to be derived from choosing a foreign film. That it is also an exceptionally moving film experience is frosting on the cake.

Historical Background: Pansori is a traditional form of Korean performance art reminiscent of Chinese opera, but with a single vocalist. It developed initially in the Cholla region of Korea as a kind of religious chant, but then evolved into secular applications, becoming the favored medium of minstrels who traveled from village to village to entertain the people with folk tales sung to the accompaniment of a small-barreled Korean drum, called a puk. Pansari uses an emotionally intense, rasping vocal style, reminiscent of wailing. Pansari has the kind of deep emotionality that Americans associate with early blues singers like Leadbelly. Europeans might think of the Fados singers of Portugal. The drummer sometimes interjects welps or exclamations of encouragement (as might be familiar to some Americans in the music of certain Blue Grass groups or to Europeans in Spanish Flamenco music). Pansori has made something of a comeback in Korea as Koreans have become interested in preserving their indigenous folk traditions as a partial counter to the influx of Western influences. Pansori performers require training as rigorous as that received by opera singers in the West.

The Story: The story is framed by a Pansori stage performance of the classic Korean narrative. The film opens to a blackened stage where we hear the Pansori singer. Shortly, we are able to make out in dim lighting the singer (Cho Sang-Hyon) on a nearly barren stage, performing beside a single drummer (Kim Myung-Hwan). A large audience sits in the theater in rapt attention. From time to time throughout the story, the camera returns to the stage performance for a few moments and, other times, we hear the singing as basically a kind of musical voiceover narrative. Most of the tale being sung by the performer is translated into the English subtitles.

The story tells of a young student, age fifteen, named Mongryong Lee (Seung-woo Cho), who is the only son of the Governor (Choi Jin Young) of Namwon Province. Mongryong is studying intensely for the civil service examination, but demands that his servant, Pangja (Hang-Yun Kim) escort him to some of the local sights, including Kwangharu, a magnificent wooden temple, and the famous Ojak Bridge. There, Mongryong spies the lovely Chunhyang (Yi Hyo-Jeong), skirts aflutter, gliding daringly on a nearby swing. Thunderstruck, Mongryong demands that Pangja summon the young girl to him. Chunhyang is the daughter of Wolmae (Kim Soung-Nyeu), a courtesan, from a one-night stand with a former governor. Wolmae has taken great care to raise Chunhyang as a lady and intends her for something better than her own life. (Courtesans were the Korean equivalent of Japanese geisha girls, brought up to cater to the needs of men, in the performance arts as well as sexually.)

The proud Chunhyang is not about to be summoned to appear for any lad – even the Governor’s son. She sends Pangja back with a message: “The wild geese desire the sea, the crabs desire their holes, and a butterfly desires a flower.” Mongryong thus learns that his beloved is not only beautiful, but educated and intelligent as well. He will have to go to her if she is the flower he desires. That night, he visits her household, is politely received as his station requires, and asks Wolmae for the hand of her daughter. For her part, Wolmae assents, but it is up to Chunhyang. Chunhyang requires that Mongryong swear his undying love, which he does – with the sun and the moon as witnesses. On her red taffeta skirt, he scrolls in black calligraphy, “Like the Sun and the Moon, my love will never change.” The two shy lovebirds then bill and coo and bit by bit fall head-over-heels in love with one another.

Mongryong and Chunhyang are secretly married but Mongryong must keep the arrangement secret because his father would disown him for marrying outside of his caste and he would be denied opportunity to take the exam. The blissful days of the young couple are cut short after one year when Mongryong’s father is promoted to a minister position with the King in Seoul. Mongryong will have to move with his family to Seoul and Chunhyang will be unable to accompany him. He promises to return when he has passed his exam, which will be about three years. Chunhyang is heartbroken by the separation but her determination to be faithful to her husband is absolute.

The new Governor of Namwon Province Byun Hak-Do (Lee Jung-Hun) is cruel and corrupt. He taxes the people heavily and subjects transgressors to brutal punishments. He has heard about the rare beauty Chunhyang and demands to know why she is not among the courtesans. He is unimpressed with the explanation that she is married to the son of the former Governor and is preserving her chastity for her husband. He demands that she be summoned and orders her to bathe in preparation for his sexual enjoyment. When she refuses, he has her tied to a chair in the courtyard and beaten with a wooden club. This is an incredibly moving and transcendent scene, reminiscent of the martyrdoms of Joan d’Arc or Jesus of Nazareth. She is struck ten times and with each blow reasserts her devotion to her husband:

After the first hit:
One and only one!
My love is only for one man!
So why are you doing this to me?
Just kill me!

After the second hit:
Two can never be!
What’s the difference between loyalty to a husband,
And a minister’s to a king?
I know a woman’s duty; so how can I serve two men?
This is impossible so I can’t accept two!

After the third hit:
In our three lives, in my three obligations,
I’m loyal to my father, my husband, and my son!
I’m not a whore.
So just kill me!

After the fourth hit:
A noble governor like you,
do you not know any justice?
Even if you tear me into four pieces
And hang them on the four gates,
I still won’t accept you.

[Now the camera shifts back to the stage performer, where the stunned audience listens raptly, with tears streaming down their faces or blank-faced with pain. I bawl like a baby with them.]

After the fifth hit:
You rode with five horses.
So keep this country’s five ethics!

After the sixth hit:
I have six organs and my love is in each one of them.
So it’s useless for you to tear them apart!

After the seventh hit:
If you raised a seven-foot sword and cut off my head like a horse,
it’s no use.

After the eighth hit:
Try as many as eight hundred times,
but my love will never change!

After the ninth hit:
You’re the King’s official!
So stop your corruptive ways!!
My intestine has nine curves.
My love flows deep in them!

After the tenth hit:
Ten cries for my love!

It’s an amazing scene of brutality juxtaposed against passionate nobility. But, where is Mongryong, we wonder. Will he learn of her trials in time to save her. Back in Seoul, Mongryong has been earnestly preparing for his examination. The essay topic is posted and Mongryong is the first to finish. He is also later awarded the highest score and a position as a Minister of Ethics for the King. Disguised as a beggar, he will return to Namwon Province and investigate the practices of the Governor and his aides. On the way, he encounters peasants who sing the praises of Chunhyang – she having become a legend in song and story. He reaches her home and finds her mother praying, “Please make my son-in-law a royal emissary or a lord of Cholla Province.” Even so, but Mongryong must maintain his disguise as a mere beggar.

Chunhyang is scheduled to be beaten to death the next day, as part of the Governor’s birthday celebration! Mongryong shows up and, despite his meager attire, is recognized as a nobleman who must therefore be served. He is challenged to produce extemporaneously a poem incorporating the word “lives” in the second line and the word “feast” in the final one and soon offers this little gem:

This wine in golden vases is the blood of a thousand people.
The food on these jade tables is the flesh of ten thousand lives.
When the candle wax drops, tears of starving peasants fall.
And the people’s complaints get louder to pair this noisy feast.

That’s enough to send shivers down the spines of the assembled nobility and several prepare to leave. All hell breaks loose, leading up to a conclusion that I’ll leave readers to discover on their own. In the final return to the framing Pansori performance, you’ll want to stand and join in the ovation given to the performers by the theater audience.

Themes: There are two main themes in this film: the self-determination of women and the brutality and exploitive nature of highly authoritarian cultures and regimes. On the surface, the romantic element sounds a lot like a hundred other love stories told in every culture, but this one also has the feel of timelessness and profound universality in the manner of the great Shakespeare tragedies, like Romeo and Juliet. Chunhyang’s nobility in the adherence to her principals elevates the story into the realm of the great stories of martyrdom. Some may argue that a woman’s “perfect devotion to her husband” smacks of male chauvinism, but it has to be understood in Chunhyang’s context, in which the alternative was having to cater to the sexual needs of any man demanding as much. She was fighting for the right to love just one man and for her mother’s hopes that she not follow in her own path as a courtesan. Her fight could just as well stand for every fight that women have waged over the centuries to acquire the right of self-determination – in roles, and opportunities, and the right to choose with whom they make love. Chunhyang martyred herself to the cause of women’s rights even if the particular issue was the right to be faithful to her husband.

Obviously this film is also decrying the rigorous, authoritarian political system of eighteenth-century Korea (and similar systems wherever and whenever they exist or existed). Im Kwon Taek lashes out against the exploitation of the peasants (by taxation and confiscation) as well as the relegation of women to serving the pleasures of men. Conversely, he is extending praise for the enlightened rule of the King exerted through his ethics ministers.

Production Values: The design of this film is sheer masterpiece. The framing of the narrative within the Pansori stage performance gives it a cultural authenticity rooted in its Korean origin. Several critics, including Roger Ebert, express difficulty taking pleasure in the raspy timbre of the Pansori soloist, but I found the music totally enthralling. Although I had not previously heard Pansori music per se, I have a pretty good familiarity with several other kinds of Asian music, including Chinese opera, traditional Japanese music, Indian reggae music, and, especially, Indonesian music (some of which I deeply admire). Between the music, the images, and the dialog, the intensity of the beating scene is almost without parallel in film.

The cinematography is uniformly excellent and, at times, stunningly lush. There are shots of a setting sun behind storm clouds and shots around the Ojak Bridge that are as beautiful as you’ll find in any travel book. The hues are strong. There’s lots of motion and activity to break the stillness of the nature shots.

I’m not sure that Westerners truly have the wherewithal to effectively judge the performances by Korean actors, especially if the film is not largely Westernized in the manner of Shiri. Without knowing how the people of a particular culture behave naturally or behaved in the 18th-century, in this case, how are we to know whether a performance is, for example, realistic. I personally thought the performances by the two leads, Yi Hyo-Jeong (or Lee Hae Eun) and Cho Seung-Woo, quite effective, even breathtaking, considering that they were portraying naïve and innocent fifteen year-olds at the beginning and, perhaps, nineteen year-olds by the end of the story.

Bottom-Line: Chunhyang was Im Kwon Taek’s 97th feature film. Can you imagine? Most of his work has never been seen in the West because of the bureaucratic restrictions in Korean. If this film is typical, that lack of exposure is our loss. Chunhyang is the most expensive Korean film ever made or was so at one time. Supposedly, the film used more than 8000 extras and 12,000 costumes.

This is a beautifully emotional film. I cried helplessly through most of the second hour, but I wasn’t alone. Every person in the audience in the theater for the Pansori performance was in a state of emotional thrall. If you’re not the type who can get into a great love story or you get annoyed by music that you aren’t used to from other cultures, you’ll probably want to pass on this film. For everyone else, I can’t recommend this film too highly. It is cinematic poetry that will tear at your heart strings. Chunhyang is in Korean with English subtitles and has a running time of 120 minutes.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Korea:

Shiri
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age