Peppermint Candy (1999)
"Bakha satang" (original title)

Consist of 5 phase of man's life about why he commit suicide in the end.

Director:

Chang-dong Lee

Writer:

Chang-dong Lee

Stars:

Yeo-jin Kim, Kyung-gu Sol, Jung Suh

6 wins & 3 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Yeo-jin Kim	...	Hongja
Kyung-gu Sol	...	Yongho
Jung Suh
So-ri Moon	...	Sunim
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
In-kwon Kim
Seo-hie Ko
Dae-yeon Lee
Ji-Yeon Park
Se-beom Park
Yeon-su Yu

Storyline

Yong Ho, a problematic guy, is walking alone at the riverside. He suddenly bumped with his friend's reunion. He join them and after that go to the railway to commit suicide.Then, the train reverse back to show why he become like that from the beginning. Covers five phase of his life.

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Plot Keywords:

friend | reunion | suicide | train | innocence | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Official Sites:

East Film

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean

Release Date:

1 January 2000 (South Korea)

Also Known As:

Peppermint Candy

Company Credits

Production Co:

East Film Company

Technical Specs

Runtime:

130 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Quotes

Yongho: It's leaking, in a new place. Last night, the rain fell on my forehead, as I lay in bed. You, sit down! Fucker! This isn't a game, sit! Isn't the way I live pathetic? Wonder why I live this way? Although I don't know who sent you, I want to talk with you.

User Reviews

Incredible

I saw this movie in a college class, and it's possible to have an entire lecture on it. Unfortunately, my professor only had about twenty minutes, though I'm sure he would've loved a couple hours.

Granted, the subtitles weren't the greatest. Being Korean, I had a much easier time understanding everything, because if there was something I couldn't quite understand in Korean, I had the subtitles to help me along.

To paraphrase my professor, this movie isn't just about the story of one man, but how this one man's life signifies the past fifty years of Korean history as well, a people subject to the influences of forces greater than they.

To give a quick Korean history lesson, for the first half of the century, the Koreans were brutally subjugated by the Japanese, who not only wanted to colonize it, but to assimilate the people and culture completely into their own. Then came WW2, and following that, the start of the Cold War conflicts, beginning of course with the Korean War, where brother fought brother and a people was torn apart.

The second half of the century, following the Korean War, has been defined by dictatorships, as the oppressive Korean government put down democratic student movements, as seen in part of the film. It is only recently that true democracy has begun to form and strengthen.

The main character of the movie is shown in the beginning, a ruined man, and one can assume from following sequences, shown in backwards chronological order, that he is an evil and corrupt man. However, the purpose of the movie is to show how he was corrupted by larger forces, mirroring the Korean people's own search for their lost innocence. It is in the seemingly mundane scenes of his life that we see how trite and ordinary violence and depravity have become, yet we also travel back to see where every part of him came from.

I'm sure I could say a lot more, but basically it's about a lot more than the story of one man, and the seemingly irrelevant stories of his life signify more about both him and the Korean people as a whole. Terrific movie.