Untypically for a Korean director, Min Byung Hoon's second feature film is set in a small village in rural Uzbekistan, where Muhammad has returned after failing in his attempts to be s successful concert violinist in Moscow. He tells everyone that he is back for a short holiday, and his friends and family are happy to see him, proud that someone from their village has done so well and become a renowned international orchestra musician. Muhammad's stories of his fame and success are somewhat exaggerated however, and the truth is that he has lost all the money he possessed through gambling some, or perhaps all of it, having been borrowed from friends, and they're looking for their money back.
Min Byung Hoon manages to capture the same sense of a remote community isolated from the rest of the world as Abderrahmane Sissako's Waiting For Happiness - a world with its own pace and rhythm, but one that is nonetheless aware of the world outside and affected by its influence. In many of the characters there is a sense of longing for something more, for a sense of importance and influence, and that can only be acquired through money. Muhammad's neighbour is a rich man, bullying his workers to finish the elaborate preparations he is making for his son's wedding, and getting special planning permission through bribes to the local authorities. There's also a sense of wanting more for the family in Muhammad's grandfather's search for gold in the mountains, a search that has led to the death of his father. Most evidently it's there in Muhammad's desire to escape. Having to live with his other and younger brother again after having had a taste of a bigger world outside is unbearable to Muhammad, but clearly that world is beyond the reach of a smalltown boy with bigger ambitions than he can handle.
Like Sissako's film, Let's Not Cry manages to capture the sense of frustration and the impossible position this engenders in Muhammad, his family, his friends and his neighbours, doing it almost entirely through the pace, rhythm and tradition of the Uzbekistan village, as well as through a means of expression that is not immediately or easily readable or symbolic. From the grandfather, living far outside the village on his own in his daily unending task of breaking rocks, to the young girl who leaves an egg every morning on the window sill of Muhammad's bedroom, it all adds up to an indefinable sense of human living, hopes, frustrations and failings.
Min Byung Hoon manages to capture the same sense of a remote community isolated from the rest of the world as Abderrahmane Sissako's Waiting For Happiness - a world with its own pace and rhythm, but one that is nonetheless aware of the world outside and affected by its influence. In many of the characters there is a sense of longing for something more, for a sense of importance and influence, and that can only be acquired through money. Muhammad's neighbour is a rich man, bullying his workers to finish the elaborate preparations he is making for his son's wedding, and getting special planning permission through bribes to the local authorities. There's also a sense of wanting more for the family in Muhammad's grandfather's search for gold in the mountains, a search that has led to the death of his father. Most evidently it's there in Muhammad's desire to escape. Having to live with his other and younger brother again after having had a taste of a bigger world outside is unbearable to Muhammad, but clearly that world is beyond the reach of a smalltown boy with bigger ambitions than he can handle.
Like Sissako's film, Let's Not Cry manages to capture the sense of frustration and the impossible position this engenders in Muhammad, his family, his friends and his neighbours, doing it almost entirely through the pace, rhythm and tradition of the Uzbekistan village, as well as through a means of expression that is not immediately or easily readable or symbolic. From the grandfather, living far outside the village on his own in his daily unending task of breaking rocks, to the young girl who leaves an egg every morning on the window sill of Muhammad's bedroom, it all adds up to an indefinable sense of human living, hopes, frustrations and failings.
