I have never quite indulged in Korean culture or films, which is obvious by my confused reaction to this one. However, I work at a hotel and we get large tour groups of Korean people coming into stay for numerous nights everyday. Through this, the Koreans I have had experiences with are overly polite, nodding and smiling at me as they pass by the reception desk or terribly angry about something in the room, but who knows what because I’m being yelled at in a language I don’t understand.
As for Asia, I visited Vietnam and Cambodia when I was 15 wth my family and spent a month in Japan when I was 18 and fell in love with it. Japan is so rich with culture and reminded me of another dimension where everything lights up and anything can be bought from a vending machine.
Apart from this, I have nothing to do with Asia. I was born and have lived in Australia all my life, aside from the 6 months I spent in England at the beginning of this year and have had a classic suburban Aussie upbringing, playing cricket on the street on Christmas day and having a Barbecue at least three times a week.
On Wednesday this week our class viewed ‘The Host’. It’s a 2006 Korean Sci-Fi Thriller and to me it was unusual AF. I pointed out this out in my live tweeting, one tweet reading ‘Comedy or horror???????? #BCM320‘ … I also related the direction style to that of ‘Scary Movie 4’, specifically the war of the worlds part. The rest of the class was just as confused why the production team behind this movie intentionally mixed thriller and slap-stick, overacted comedy. One classmate tweeted that this was because the films makers believed that there needed to be more comedy in thriller films.
Honestly, the class was laughing at the parts that were supposed to be funny so I suppose it was successful. There was a genuine sadness in me for the family as they mourned the loss of their niece, Hyun Seo. All in all, I was very entertained by the movie and, although, 13 years old, was ahead of its time (in my opinion). I can relate various elements of the film to certain episodes of Black Mirror or Stranger Things, both very modern “Netflix Original’s”.
I mentioned in my tweets that I also found it “Funny how a stubborn old white American man is the reason for all this turmoil in Korea …. this film was beyond its years”, not to hint to American politics at all. As soon as the film, began we were notified of who the evil force was, with the very discernible contrast between the attitudes and cultures of the two lab workers.
I’m looking forward to delving deeper into the realms of Asian Film Land 🙂
