Korean Cinema Features: How to Capture Every Viewer?

Forum 8 months ago

Korean Cinema Features: How to Capture Every Viewer?

Each of us, even children, has heard about the series Squid Game - it has become one of the most discussed 2021 issues. It has captured 142 million views on the Netflix platform, with 87 million people watching the entire film. Squid Game enthralled audiences of different ages around the world, once again making us pay attention to Korean cinema.

It is also interesting that the series rating is 18+ - this fuels the viewer’s interest! The plot is filled with cruelty, and the film touches on the most painful aspects of social life. At the center of the story are ordinary Koreans who, due to certain circumstances, owe money. To repay their debts, they accept an invitation to participate in a game with a large cash prize, not knowing that they will have to play for survival.

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Why is Korean Cinema so Unusual?

First, these films are fundamentally different from Western cinema. Their authors apply to opposite issues and tricks than their overseas colleagues. This is also because cinema in the country was formed quite late and with minimal influence of the usual genre conventions. Thus, because of such unique features, Korean cinema is so loved all over the world.

Surely, Squid Game is not the only film that captivates viewers with its gloomy atmosphere. In 2019, the film Parasite, directed by Bong Joon Ho, was released. A year later, the film won an Oscar in as many as four categories, becoming the first Korean film to receive the award. At the center of the plot (as in Squid Game) is the poverty theme. A family of poor people gets a job in the house of the rich, and then a thriller begins.

So why do we like Korean films? The formation of Korean cinema as we know it now - with an eerie, grotesque atmosphere and acute social motives - began in the nineties of the twentieth century. Korean directors deliberately exaggerate phenomena, situations, and character traits. If the hero suffers, then life will destroy him to the end. Both mental and physical suffering are shown in particular detail in Korean films. This is their distinctive feature.

You Can Never Predict the Outcome!

In Korean cinema, genre boundaries are very blurred, and it is often difficult for the viewer to predict what will happen on the screen in the next second. For example, Parasite or The Squid Game seems to be a crazy cocktail of several genres at once - drama, thriller, detective, and even comedy.

Moreover, this can be said about any Korean film, starting with the classic The Island, introduced by Kim Ki-duk, and ending with Lee Kwon’s horror film Door Lock. Korean cinema manages to be cruel and sweet, bloody and funny at the same time. It would seem that the combination is paradoxical, but there is so much charm and novelty in it!

What About Characters in Korean Movies?

Characters in Korean films are usually endowed with complex, contradictory personalities. Often, the focus of Korean directors is the classic ordinary man, played in a new way. The main characters are poor people, strangled by debt obligations, doomed to suffering or difficult choices, or someone with a broken heart.

Another internationally popular film, Train to Busan, directed by Yeon Sang-ho, was released in 2016. Now, the film can be called frighteningly relevant because the action takes place in a post-apocalyptic reality - in a world captured by an unknown virus. But at the center of the agenda is the decline of family values and mutual support in society - that is, the social problems presented in a non-trivial, paradoxical way.

Koreans Know How to Arouse Your Interest!

Koreans are not afraid of cruelty and see in it a special aesthetic, which they transmit to foreign viewers through cinema. These are films of a completely different format, and we are drawn to the difference between Western and Eastern cultures. Among the hard Korean films that have gained mass popularity, one can recall, for example, Oldboy, directed by Park Chan-wook. The film was released in 2003, and a year later, it was awarded the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. Quentin Tarantino, who headed the festival jury in 2004, called the film a masterpiece. We can also recall his film The Maid (2016) - a gloomy story about the relationship between a maid and a mistress.

So, Korean directors are emotional and open. Therefore, they are much more relaxed about topics of sexual perversion or cruelty that are taboo in Western culture. In addition, due to the peculiarities of their mentality, Koreans tend to exaggerate everything they can. If they show suffering in films, they do it as authentically as possible, in close-up, savoring the most unpleasant or intimate details. The films, unusual for European viewers and striving for caricatured excess, attracted fans around the world. Korean cinema declares itself as something individual and authentic and captivates the audience.