Film Analysis: Chihwaseon the Painted Fire - Essay Example

Film Analysis: Chihwaseon the “Painted Fire” Chihwaseon also known as Painted Fire, Strokes of Fire or Drunk on Women andPoetry is a 2002 South Korean film which was directed by Im Kwon-taek about Jang Seung-up, a Korean painter in the nineteenth-century who helped change the direction of Korean art. It is a biopic representation of the life of Jang Seung-up. He taught himself art and often struggled to live to other people’s expectations of him. He discovers his own style through his life and truly captures the essence of beauty through his paintings. The film begins with Jang Seung-up becoming suspicious of a Japanese art-lover who valued his work. It then goes back to his early years. Beginning from a low point and with a talent for drawing, and that for imitating other peoples art, he is urged to go on and develop a style of his own. This process involves a lot of pain and he depicts a drunken behavior and become hostile to those who care about him and try to help him. He was however a crude drunkard with a talent for spotting beauty around him.  This is first manifested by his attraction to the local kisaeng and the devotion he had to his bosss sick younger sister.  The women in his life were the recipients of some of his most priceless works, which they achieved through manipulation or homage.  The character was however a conflicted man whose talent provoked an admiration that denied domestication. Unable to be pinned down by these women or even his own king, Jang Seung-up alternated the great works he did with commissioned bird and flower paintings, which represented the commercial art of his day, yet he disparaged the art stars of the time which included poetry. This brilliant and talented actor broke new ground with his work amidst the turmoil of political change in his native Korean country, (Chi-Yun, and Julian Stringer, 32). The events of this film are set against the struggle for reform that existed within Korea that was caught between China and Japan. By depicting the artist, his life and his work, the film gives the real sense of the politics that was there at the time as the Korean monarchy was threatened by surging Reformists. This was a Japanese-backed movement who were to oust the royals from power in 1884. This overbearing attempt by the Japanese to bring forth a puppet government was then followed by the Peasants Revolt in 1887 that brought down the whole feudal system. In the new socialist world, such patronized artists like Jang Seung-Up became outcasts in their own society (Min, Eungjun, Jinsook Joo, and Han 48). The actor offers a presence that is reminiscent of the great Toshiro Mifune and holds the center stage effortlessly. His depiction of the volatile Jang brought out the self-destructive aspect of the artist who would rather consider destroying his own art pieces than seeing them fall into the hands of those he believes are unworthy. The film’s production credits were uniformly high quality. The Cinematographer had a painters eye as he composed his shots in a form that complimented the artwork under his scrutiny. The Art designer created a believable world of 19th century Korea as the winds of change engulfed through that country. The film’s costume design was carried out in a superb manner on a number of levels, contrasting the dark, somber clothes of Jang with the crisp white linens of the court artists. For the story of this legendary man, the techs were definitely up to par. The final scenes of the film found the artist an old man, in destitution; this was after the Rebels Revolt and Peasants Revolt which brought Korea apart.  He however still found beauty, meeting up once again with a gorgeous beloved Kisaeng and in the more humble setting of a pottery business where he looks for work.  Chihwaseon is also a mystery explained. After his fall from grace and artistic prowess, the character disappears without a trace. Rather than leave the audience with an ambiguous finale, Im Kwon-Taek has created a sudden, plausible end to the artists story that is shocking, though not entirely out of expectations. The film is a good combination of content and character as it explores the life of a brilliant artist virtually unknown in the West while effortlessly teaching about a tumultuous period in Koreas past. This work was undertaken at a time when Korea was struggling to retain its identity in the shadow of its more powerful and imperially minded bordering countries, Japan and China and is understood as an expression of the strength and uniqueness of Korean culture Chilsu and Mansu on the other hand was a 1988 South Korean film directed by Park Kwang-sus and served to mark a major step towards freedom of expression in South Korean cinema. It starts with an upbeat mood with the protagonist Chilsu falling in love with Jina and appears very moved and excited about the changes going around him. Korea had begun to democratize too at the time. He is so excited that he finally decides to quit his job of painting movie billboards to work with Mansu, openly telling his former boss that he had a freedom of choice. The film revolves around two down on their luck blue collar workers, Chilsu, a pathological liar; and Mansu, a little older, but a constant drunkard who drinks to forget his problems. The two men represented the working class Koreans and their living conditions at the time. Like the other creations that focused on the much ignored working class, this film concentrates on the two main characters as they struggle through life, overcoming the life obstacles one after the other. These obstacles are courtesy of the world around them, which they have little control over. Both of these characters are billboard painters trying to survive off the available meager work opportunities. Chilsu, being a pathological liar, desperately tries to hide his status as he pretends to be studying art to Jina, a girl of higher status he is trying to court, telling everyone that he would soon be leaving for Miami Beach. Mansu on the other hand is a reserved man trying to get as much work as he can, calling prospective employers and even assuming provincial dialects until he is able to find work. In his off time however, he drinks heavily. They are both members of the working class who have been relegated to the fringes of society through faults that is not theirs. The isolation that engulfs them is what brought them together. Mansu lived in the shadow of his father who was jailed for being a communist sympathizer. The character having attended higher learning as a youth, he found the opportunity to work abroad, an opportunity that would have resulted into him having a respectable career when he returned. This is however not realized and hurts his ambitions as he is denied a chance because of the political leanings of his father, which he did not ascribe to. This thrusts him to the working class from which he could no longer escape. Chilsu in the film on the other hand is a more vibrant character, sociable and seems able to get by. The character dreamt of going to Miami he constantly saw in the colorful billboards he was paid to paint, dreaming of escaping to a place that is fictional and which he had a hand in creating. He lived a life that was a lie, especially when it came to Jina, the pretty girl of higher status whom he fell for; he did not give her any details of the condition of the life he lived. He went as far as costuming himself so as to present a false image. He wore a military fatigue t-shirt adorned with an American flag, after lying to Mansu about his position in the armed forces and got him to play a part in it by dressing him up as a Parisian artist as they went to a nice club in the Korean Capital. Both men in the film were painters, and while they painted parking garages and movie billboards within the burgeoning and growing big city in Korea, they were mostly invisible and did not count in the larger scheme of things around their persons. Whenever the two men were interacting with the ever shifting and ever-growing South Korean world around them, the film placed against gigantic and towering structures like billboards. These things made the characters look small, insignificant and unheard. The characters in the film were visually linked together in the film as they worked side by side up in the sky painting billboards, largely ignored by the society. By the end of the narrative, they get so inseparably bound that they travel together on a tandem bike, experiencing the emotional highs and lows together. For instance, as they were returning home for the final time before the narrative’s climax, they cycled along a wide, busy road and their bike twist bringing both of them down together. As they landed briefly on their rear ends, they saw cars driving by anonymously, symbolic of a society that passed them by. At the beginning, the film clearly demonstrated who the characters were. It began with a civil defense drill where the film introduced two characters separately in shots that were both framed by windows they were stuck behind. Mansu was met looking out of a window forlornly and then up at the sky while Chilsu was met sleeping on a bus before being woken by the conductor and told to disembark due to the drill. This gave a clear image of who these characters were. Mansu was more aware and jaded with his conditions while Chilsu was unaware and transient largely due to his youth. Both characters were found to be downtrodden later on in the film. Chilsu came from an area that depended on the American soldiers for income. His problems came majorly as a result of his sister being disowned for selling herself to American soldiers and his father leeching off his new wife. Jina also led him on the entire time and this meant that the dreams he always had of emigrating and marrying her was always just a delusion. Mansu’s problems on the other hand, came as a result of his fathers affiliation with communists that denied him the opportunity to pursue and obtain a better life. Their frustrations reached a climax when they both confided their secrets to each other. They went and climbed up to their just-completed billboard and vented out their frustration at everyone below in culminating to a tense standoff with authorities. Chilsu and Mansus anger symbolized the frustrations the Korean working class underwent of being marginalized from the Korean economic miracle, and the standoff between them and the authorities near the end of the film represented the society’s inability to understand their plight (Kim 52). The film in its entirety was engaging with its message of hope and the need to fight for change at the time. The film followed the daily pointless lives of Chilsu and Mansu, joined by their desperation and lack of employment. Some of the important messages from the film included that of the daily struggle that the common man in Korea in the 80s with no education underwent. It reflected the hopelessness of the poor and the outsiders alike. This was shown by Chilsus constant dream of migrating to Miami which he considered an escape from his world and a solution to his life, even though he had never been there before and Mansus inability to obtain a stable job, due to his fathers history of being a communist. The film also expressed cultural imperialism by the West in Korea through the relationship which Jina and Chilsu had and their separate social lives; Mansu dressing up as a painter from France in order to impress the women while Chilsu wearing a shirt resembling the American flag. The billboard the 2 men painted was also an advertisement for American whiskey. Chilsu and Mansu in the film depicted the hopes and aspiration of Korean youth in the late 1980s, when the country was gradually democratizing. However, as it progressed, it did not turn out to be what would be expected as it ended with a standoff between the protagonists and the establishment. The conclusion to the film however served as a harsh indictment of Korea under the then military rule. Two oppressed individuals who had had no intention of protesting or being involved in any social unrest wound up dead and in jail due to the paranoid institution which suppressed and censored any activity that could be construed as anti-authoritarian (Carter, 72). Since the characters, in the end, became unable to successfully integrate within the society and could no longer attempt to do so, their actions unwittingly took them out of it. Work Cited Shin, Chi-Yun, and Julian Stringer. New Korean Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2005. Print. Min, Eungjun, Jinsook Joo, and Han J. Kwak. Korean Film: History, Resistance, and Democratic Imagination. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2003. Print. Kim, Kyung H. The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema. Durham [u.a.: Duke University Press, 2004. Print. Carter, David. East Asian Cinema. Harpenden: Oldcastle Books, 2010. Internet resource. Read More