Tag: Christian church

1985

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Here’s a Christmas movie with a difference. It’s December 1985 and young New York ad agency man Adrian (Cory Michael Smith) flies home to Texas to see his family for the first time in several years. Tensions are immediately apparent between go-getter son and his blue-collar worker father Dale (Michael Chiklis) from the moment the latter picks him up from the airport. Once Adrian gets to the house, his devoted mother Eileen (Virginia Madsen) can’t stop fussing over him while his younger brother Andrew (Aidan Langford), in his early teens, is distant having never forgiven Adrian for leaving.

Each of the family members presents Adrian with a different challenge. Dad is horrified at his Christmas present of an expensive leather jacket while Adrian is slightly shocked to receive a brand new Bible. Mom encourages him to call up Carly (Jamie Chung), a girl with whom Adrian grew up who also left Texas and is likewise home for the holidays and who he hasn’t seen for years. Andrew quit the school football team for its drama society, which is giving him issues with the father who understands contact sports but doesn’t really get the arts.

Underneath all of this is the presence of the local conservative Christian church, briefly heard as dad sits listening to sermons on a Christian radio station and seen as a worship service which the family attend in Sunday best where Adrian struggles to sing the words of hymns which make him uneasy. Elsewhere, Adrian has an embarrassing encounter with former high school jock turned supermarket manager Mark (Ryan Piers Williams) who has become a Christian and apologises for his past treatment of Adrian, although the two clearly have nothing in common.

Adrian learns from Andrew that his younger brother’s Madonna music cassettes and Bryan Adams poster have been taken off him because the local pastor deems them ungodly. When Andrew discovers that his brother saw Madonna on tour, he suddenly has a new-found respect for him. As a covert Christmas present, Adrian gives him a $100 voucher for the local Sound Warehouse to replenish his audio cassette collection, admonishing Andrew to keep his purchases hidden.

Contacting Carly, Adrian is invited to see her do an impressive improv stand-up gig where she expresses “all the shit you daredn’t say in real life”. Following some time at a dance club, they go back to hers which ends badly when she comes on strong to him but he isn’t really interested. As he tells her, “I’ve had a shitty year.”

Shot in aesthetically pleasing black and white by Ten’s cameraman and co-screenwriter Hutch, this boasts a strong script with deftly sketched characters and is beautifully cast and acted to boot. It completely understands its chosen time period of the mid-eighties, a time of LP records and portable music cassette players, before mobile phones and the internet existed. The film grasps very profound topics: the pain of the gay community being decimated by the AIDS virus in urban locations like New York and the deficiencies of Bible Belt Protestant fundamentalism in its inability to comfort those feeling that pain. And it grasps them without judgement of one side or another.

This is full of genuinely touching moments. Via an overheard conversation in another room, Adrian hears his mother tell his father he really ought to wear that leather jacket to work. Carly’s stand-up routine details her heartfelt experiences of racism as a Korean-American. And in a frank conversation with his mother, Adrian learns that she… well, you’ll have to see the film to find out.

Most people have experienced the joys and heartaches of spending time with their families at Christmas. While 1985 is set in the Christmas of that year, and some of its issues are specific to that date and time, there’s also much here that relates to wider human issues of family, how children deal with parents and siblings, how parents deal with children and how, sometimes, with the best intentions, that can all go horribly wrong. And can then sometimes, somehow, tentatively, in small steps, be at least partly put right.

A Christmas treat.

1985 is out in the UK on Thursday, December 20th, and then on VoD on Monday, December 24th. Watch the film trailer below:

The Journals Of Musan (Musanilgi)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Jeon Seung-chul (writer-director Park Jung-bum) is a defector from Musan, North Korea trying to survive in the social underbelly of Seoul, South Korea. He has a badly paid makeshift job putting up fly-posters, operating on the fringes of the law. He dresses cheaply and is in need of a haircut.

He lives in the apartment of Kyung-chul (Jin Yon-guk), who occasionally brings women back for sex. His landlord has no scruples about shoplifting and also runs a lucrative scam in which other North Koreans give him money to send to North Korea.

Seung-chul reads his Bible in his room while listening to Christian worship music. He puts up with his flatmate’s pickups but draws the line when Kyung-chul takes him to a department store and steals a pair of trousers which Seung-chul wants. Seung-chul returns the pilfered item. He later alienates Kyung-chul by bringing a stray puppy home.

He attends a medium-sized Christian church on Sundays complete with pastor, robed choir and free after service meals. But he doesn’t know anyone there. The church fails the Biblical admonition that believers should welcome strangers into their midst because no-one there ever sits with Seung-chul or talks to him.

He likes a girl in the choir Young-sook (Kang Eun-jin) but she hasn’t noticed him and he can’t bring himself to talk to her. Stalking her, he learns she works running a sleazy karaoke bar where there’s a job vacancy. The twin prospect of more work and getting to know Young-sook better propel him to apply for and get the job.

The one person who appear to genuinely have Seung-chul’s best interests at heart is a cop, Detective Park (Park Young-dong), who tries to help him find better paying and more secure work. But it’s hard because Seung-chul’s ID number identities him as North Korean so no-one wants to employ him.

Shot in highly effective, long takes that really make you feel like you’re in its protagonist’s shoes, this is a slow yet compelling piece that really gets under your skin and marks out its director/ writer/ actor as a unique and articulate voice.

The film portrays a precarious existence. Various elements in Seung-chul’s insecure way of living threaten to collapse around him one by one. His fly-posting boss (Seo Jin-won) thinks his work is substandard and two thugs repeatedly beat him up for working on their turf. He falls foul of Young-sook when she finds him karaokeing to Christian choruses with the club hostesses. Then Kyung-chul’s scam unravels and the two men find themselves relentlessly pursued by three North Koreans he’s defrauded.

Made on a shoestring and breaking numerous conventions, this extraordinary independent movie is like a breath of fresh air. That’s perhaps because first-time director Park is working out how to shoot a feature as he goes along. Although things happen later on which to some extent redeem the way society and church characters here deal with the underclass, this is a searing indictment of their attitudes to some of Korea’s most vulnerable people.

Park’s second feature, the three hour long Alive (2014), plays in the LKFF on Tuesday. If it’s anywhere like as good as this debut, audiences are in for a treat.

The Journals Of Musan plays in the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF). Watch the film trailer below:

And here’s the trailer(Korean, no subtitles) for his follow up film Alive – showing in the LKFF Tuesday, November 13th:

Tickets here.

Mad World (Yat Nim Mou Ming)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Lorry driver Wong (Eric Tsang) lives in a cramped apartment block in Hong Kong. He collects his estranged adult son Tung (Shawn Yue) from the hospital. Tung is bipolar and the doctors say there is nothing more they can do in order to help him. He must return home.

But “home” is less simple than it sounds. His mum (Elaine Jin) was bipolar, too. Dad walked out on the family years earlier. Tung resents him for it just as he resents his brother, his mother’s favorite, who impressed her by doing well in school and getting himself a lucrative job in the US where he now lives. As he pointed out to his mother while she was still alive, it was Tung – and not his idolised brother – who stayed behind to look after her. She was incontinent and he had to help her wash and shower regularly. In the end, that didn’t work out because following a heated argument between the two of them, she had a fatal accident in the shower – an incident which keeps coming back to torment Tung.

Then there’s the matter of Tung’s former girlfriend Jenny (Charmaine Fong) who left him the night of their engagement when he unexpectedly and violently turned on her. He wants to find her and get back together. But that may not prove possible. When Tung tracks her down, Jenny explains that although she’s paid her share of their mortgage, if he can’t pay his share she stands to lose everything. She’s also managed to pay off the debts he got the couple into which she only discovered after they split up. Determined to make the relationship work, he accompanies her to the Christian church service she now attends where she goes up to the front and explains to the congregation how he destroyed her life and she hates him, but God will help her to love him. Not exactly the best basis to build a relationship, Christian or otherwise.

Tung’s one friendship which seems to work is with the trusting 10-year-old (Ivan Chan), who lives with his mother next door to Tung and his dad. She doesn’t want her boy to get his hands dirty since she thinks manual work is beneath him, but unbeknownst to her, he loves gardening. Tung helps him grow plants on the roof – until the boy’s mother discovers he’s bipolar and bans him from seeing Tung. But the pair secretly communicate through the paper thin walls anyway.

The script, co-written with Florence Chan, really gets under the skin of those living with bipolar disorder. Director Wong gets terrific performances out of his cast too, particularly Tsang and Yue. Hong Kong cinema is not generally noted for sharp movies about social issues, but this is one of those films that bucks that trend. It’s pretty obvious that none of the characters here, from Tung himself through to the housing block residents around him, are coping well with Tung’s bipolar condition. There are lots of complications and no real solutions offered except the implicit suggestion that Hong Kong society has failed to deal with this difficult issue and it might be a really good idea if people were at least to start openly talking about it. Clearly this film is a welcome nod in that direction. Wong and his team are to be congratulated on putting this extremely dirty and largely taboo issue out there in such a compelling way.

Mad World played in Creative Visions: Hong Kong Cinema 1997 – 2017, which took place in London between November 17th and 19th. This is a filthy genius movie worth keeping an eye on, and we will let you know about any further opportunities to watch it. Just follow us on Twitter!