If the angst-ridden film stopped mid-way at the prison scene where the heroine offers her full forgiveness to her son's killer, then it would be a flop and I would stop watching Lee Chang-dong then and there. To my relief, it goes on for another hour or so on how the now disillusioned woman takes revenge on the religion that has once lifted her from extreme pain of losing her beloved son, the townspeople that lead her to put her trust on God, and, finally, even the man who really deserves her affection and love. After a painful journey that ends with rehabilitation after a suicidal attempt, the finale is a 'blank's shot: storming out from a haircut by the reformed daughter of her son's killer, she sat at her sun-lit backyard to finish the cut at home. Her hair falls to the ground, the camera tracks them, and then stays on the dirt before the closing credits come up. Whose point of view is it? The director or the protagonist? And what does it mean? Life is meaningless like the dirt on the ground? Though rather baffled, I have now come to realise there couldn't be a more apt finale, especially given it is from a director who is known for his critics on the contemporary society.
Like other two films I have watched from him, Secret Sunshine tells the lonesome and uneasy struggle of an ordinary citizen who is left to her own device when given a bad deal in life. In Green Fish, it is a bright young man whose fatal encounter with the mistress of a mobster that leads to his demise in a desolate town where none of his family members are finding life easy. In Peppermint Candy, it is the traumatising experience of a young man in the army during the military regime that sows the seeds of his gradual disintegration. None of them makes a comfortable watch, but who says film is for entertainment only?
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