Two monsters in Jang Jun-hwan's films
"To stop seeing a monster, you need to become one"
The first (Save the Green Planet) and the second (Hwayi: A Monster Boy) feature films by the famous Korean director came out 10 years apart.
But although these works are very different in style and plot, there is a deep semantic connection between them. Both films deal with the theme of monsters.
Both films reflect the ruthless, ugly side of the world, where money can buy or sell human life, and even the police are on the payroll of gangsters. And those few police officers who can be called honest are too limited and are not able to see a living person behind the dossier. So the hero, who finds himself in an inhuman situation, can only rely on himself.
(This review contains spoilers)
In both films, the central image is the hero, who, due to age, character, or social position, looks like a "little harmless man".
But being driven to despair, he turns into a cruel and furious monster slayer.
However, not all the monsters he sees are external. Some of them live in his own soul.
Save the green planet - a film-cabbage, a film - snag. At first, you think you understand what's going on. Crazy from grief and drugs, a man invented aliens and hunts them. By the end of the story, you start to wonder - what if he's not crazy? What if aliens are real? But the final shots make you wonder - what was actually happening on the screen in general? Or did everything really happen only in the imagination of the poor Byeong-gu?
Aliens, bloody revenge, a strange image of either a girl or a circus woman - as if Lee Byeong-gu took the image of a girl from some old memories and tried to "grow" it to himself.
But then what is the movie about? Perhaps about the struggle for their inner humanity. But moral choice comes from the state of freedom. And freedom has two sides. To truly be human, you need to be aware of the inhuman in yourself.
Byeong-gu and Hwayi have very different personalities and destinies. But there is a bright unifying feature - they both see what others do not see. Hwayi calls it a monster. Byeong-gu - aliens. And in both cases, these images carry a dual meaning. That is, they cause fear and disgust of the characters, but at the same time, somewhere in the depths of the soul, they attract.
Declaring those whom he hates "aliens", Lee Byeong-gu , as it were, takes them out of a multitude of people, thus solving his moral contradiction. You can hate "non-humans", while continuing to feel your connection with the world of humans. As if taking out of the brackets of the human world what is unbearable, what Byeong-gu cannot accept and agree with.
But at the same time, the alien is Lee Byeong-gu himself. That part of him that feels superfluous in this world. And at some point it comes to the question: is this world worth saving? Or rather, is it worth to save his connection with this world?
The image of the monster in "Hwayi" is also ambivalent. On the one hand, the monster appears when Hwayi meets evil. The boy, stolen from his parents as a child and adopted by bandits, is used to taking his fathers and their "work" for granted. But the underlying feeling that something is very wrong here haunts Hwayi all these years, incarnating in the form of a monster at especially critical moments.
The conclusion suggests itself that the monster is an image of evil inside. But Hwayi's monster has the sparkling, mirror-like scales of a toy whale from his childhood. A single spark of memories of family and home.
Why did a child's toy turn into an image of a monster? Because it reminds him about something that does not allow Hwayi to integrate into the system. Fully adapt to the world of his "fathers", become the same as them - and no longer be afraid.
Byeong-gu had a victim's fate. Hwayi had a fate of a criminal, a predator. But the inability to fit into the system and just live life according to an already prepared scenario is what unites these two heroes. Natural sensitivity does not allow them to come to terms with life as it is. But the inhuman cruelty of the surrounding world seeps in, drop by drop, giving rise to a grave contradiction. And at the moment when the hero surrenders to the monster, he feels relieved for a moment.
In the life of both main characters there is also the image of a "monster mentor". In Byeong-gu's case, it's more of a part of himself. "Alien prince" (even a title straight from the fantasy of a child from a poor family), who became disillusioned with people and life in principle. And he wants to end this whole world that hurts him.
In Byeong-gu's internal struggle, after the death of his mother, this part of him wins.
In Hwayi's case, this monster is a very real external figure. The main of his "fathers", the most terrible and at the same time with him the strongest emotional connection.
It is interesting that if other "fathers" live like animals - doing evil, but not feeling it as evil, just living by their instincts. He always felt "dirty".
And judging by how eager he is to get Hwayi completely on his side, he still feels like that. Other bandits are not even puzzled by excuses. He brings an entire ideological base under his villainy - that becoming a monster is the only way out for people like him.
As if the thirst for warmth is combined in him with the desire to destroy it.
Young Hwayi turns out to be stronger than all his fathers - even the one who tried to hide from reality behind prayers. Because he can be a monster and a human at the same time.
Byeong-gu loses his battle with the aliens, either completely losing touch with reality, or dying from drugs. Hwayi survives - accepting his inner monster enough to cold-bloodedly shoot the man who ordered his father's murder. But the final shots of Byeong-gu's memories and Hwayi's drawings give the feeling that the dream of lost harmony is alive.
The monster can be creepy, ugly. But his mirror skin is visible because it reflects the inner light















