Chun nyun hack (2007)

Director:

Kwon-taek Im

Writers:

Kwon-taek Im (writer)
Chung-Joon Lee (novel)

Release Date:

12 April 2007 (South Korea)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A drama centered on brother-and-sister musicians trained to perform the epic Korean poems known as pansori. |

Plot Keywords:

Brother Sister Relationship | Asian Culture | South Korea | Based On Novel

Cast

Hyeon-jae Jo
Jung-hae Oh	...	Songhwa
Seung-eun Oh
Seung-yong Ryoo

Also Known As:

A Thousand Cranes (South Korea) (DVD title)
Beyond the Years (International: English title)

Runtime:

Canada:106 min (Toronto International Film Festival)

Country:

South Korea

Language:

Korean

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Certification:

Canada:PG | South Korea:12 | France:U | Philippines:PG-13 (MTRCB)

Company:

Kino2 Pictures

Trivia:

This is the 100th feature film by Im Kwon-taek.

A story of familial love, but perhaps an unnecessary companion to Sopyonje

A Thousand Cranes is a sort of sequel to director Im Kwon Taek's potent art film about pansori, Sopyonje. However, rather than focusing on the art of pansori and its practitioners this time, he takes the characters of the original and crafts a story about the relationship between the adopted siblings.

Cranes is not a typical case of storytelling. While it's set where two old acquaintances meet up as the brother searches for his sister and relate to each other their knowledge of the sister, the primary story is not told through their interaction but by the many flashbacks that occur throughout the film, which relay a story over thirty years. Many of the stories presented resemble, at times, parts of the original film, but told from the viewpoint of Dongho, who became largely absent in the second half of Sopyonje. This is the story of how the siblings run into each other, either by effort or by chance encounter and in some ways, a story about their love for each other, although it's left ambiguous whether it's a familial love, or something more (as they aren't blood relatives).

There is a bit of a story and it's mostly Dongho's story, about being torn by his love for his adopted sister, his hate of his adopted father and his other relationships. While I admit that I appreciate this story about the obsession of love, some of the situations that occur seem to trying too hard for melodrama and result in being unbelievable, much of which starts happening more in the third act. Technically, the film is fine and also commands some decent performances from the actors, although the pic still doesn't appear to have the same immediacy as its predecessor, despite its obviously higher production values.

Im clearly has a affectation for pansori, which was awakened by this film's predecessor and although this film is welcome enough for being interesting enough throughout, it doesn't really come close to hitting the same force that Sopyonje does. It does act well as a companion piece, but the lack of narrative focus, especially on Dongho's story in relation to his sister, coupled with some harder to swallow reaches for melodrama in the third act cools the effect of this work. It's not bad and is certainly a watchable, and even at times appreciable, film. Being tied to Sopyonje just raises the question if it was really a necessary one. 7/10.