Most of my life I’ve been faced with entertainment in which
the forces for good in our society - law enforcement, medical science, the free
press, religion, dissidents - combine against the oppressive (anti-communist)
authorities who wish to destroy democratic government. It’s a comforting
fiction and when it’s delivered in a film like Constantine Costa Gavras’ Z,
it can be immensely compelling.
Well, Joon-hwan Jang’s 1987: When the Day Comes (no
one seems to have the original language title) is a better iteration of this
idea and it comes, surprise, from South Korea where a cycle of these is proving
a major element of their film production, last year’s Taeksi Woonjunsa/A
Taxi Driver directed by Hun Jang, Ji-hun Kim’s 2007 Hwaryeohan
hyuga/May 18 and even Deok Noh’s 2015 Teukjong: Ryangchensalingi/The
Journalist.
In 1987: When the Day Comes there is unrest in
President Chun Doo-hwan’s South Korea. Starting as they intend to go, the film
shows us the police rushing a doctor to drive a needle into a young man’s heart
in close up in an attempt to revive him after, as it turns out, drowning him in
a toilet during interrogation. The police have the practiced manoeuvre of
raising their riot shields to prevent any outside crowd view of people coming
or going.
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| 1987: When the Day Comes |
Imposing Yun-seok Kim’s special anti-communist force goes
into damage control but is thwarted at every turn. The doctor won’t sign a
heart attack death certificate for a healthy twenty-two-year-old and lets slip
that he had to dry the patient. Hip flask carrying prosecutor Jung-woo Ha (much
better part than as the guide in Yong-hwa Kim’s Singwa hamgge/Along with the
Gods:The Two Worlds also currently running) refuses to let them proceed
without an autopsy, knowing he’ll get fired. “I am a stray dog without a
master.” Abusive journalist Hee-jun Lee, who accuses him of not doing his
job, discovers that Ha has deliberately driven off leaving him the
incriminating files on the kerb.
After the autopsy, the body is hurriedly cremated without his
mother seeing it and the boy's father is left to scatter the ashes in the frozen
river where they refuse to sink.
The matter is drawing attention at the Blue House
Presidential Palace and the newspaper editor, growing more and more indignant,
wipes the instruction not to run any stories on the incident off the chalk
board. A raid with tear gas through the window will follow their refusal to
stay quiet.
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| 1987: When the Day Comes |
Meanwhile prison guard Hae-jin Yoo, who was suspended
for his union activities, is smuggling messages out of the jail for his agitator inmate,
and gets his freshman niece Tae-ri Kim (from the new version of The
Housemaid), to deliver them to the joint Catholic-Buddhist group hiding a
wanted agitator. She’s not interested, but the gift of the Walkman she wears
running the errand sweetens the deal. Considerable suspense from taking
information carefully restored from prison records through the police lines in
a girlie magazine where the cops want to look at the pictures
When the girl sees a demo her reaction is that student leader
Dong-won Gang is cute but she gets caught up in the action, fleeing charging
police. She goes to his campus cartoon club and is shocked by the Gwanju
Incident footage that was actually shot by the German photographer (played by
Thomas Kretschman in A Taxi Driver).
Things are not going well for the Special Forces lot. The
jail captain is outraged when they rough up one of his prisoners. The goon retrieved
from police rough treatment objects to the notion that he should take one for
the team. “I have five mouths to feed” Yun-seok Kim re-assures him that his
family will be taken care of and tells him about his own experience of
Communists killing his family while he watched from hiding and shows a photo of
the heavy's own family with the threat of what could happen to them. It's a
strength of the film that these contemptible characters achieve a measure of
sympathy, with the imposing Yun-seok Kim, facing his smirking opponents, a
tragic fall.
There is vivid material of unrest in the streets with scenes
of troops facing off the demonstrators with tear gas. The shot of masked troops
lowering their rifles to fire CS grenades directly into the crowd are as
disturbing as the similar footage in A Taxi Driver.
The finale is irresistible where the streets fill (plausibly)
with a million people singing the Korean anthem and the potential dictatorship
crumbles.
Craft aspects are excellent and the cast is made up of Korean
name players often doing bits. This lot can even get away with conflating the
leftist fugitive with a stained glass Christ.
You couldn’t get a film more different than the new Japanese
toon Mary and the Witch's Flower from Hiromasa Yonebayashi whose
long association with Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli shows. We get riding the broom
like Kiki’s Delivery Service, the wizard class of hooded white face
students looking like the spook in Spirited Away, distant Endor College
resembling Howl’s Moving Castle, a
red-headed girl lead like Arriety and another menacing old lady. The
familiarity in some ways adds to the appeal. Yonebayashi has absorbed the
master’s style even if he can’t handle all the refinements - the Miyazaki skies
are absent and the movement free pauses disturb but second hand Miyazaki is
still a treat.
Plot kicks off with the flying girl stealing from the burning
castle pursued by the airborne sharks. Comes the present and Mary the red
headed pre-teener has been parked at Redmanor farm with her isolated Great-aunt
who doesn’t offer video games. Best she can do is an old tube TV which never
gets fired up.
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| "...glowing blue Fly by Night flowers..." Mary and the Witches Flower |
However, when helping the gardener doesn’t work out, our
junior heroine follows Peter the young cycle delivery boy’s cat into the woods
to the glowing blue Fly by Night flowers.
Of course she finds herself flying with the cat (first great
set piece) only to be chastised by the talking Rat in Robin Hood suit about
loving her broom. Undeterred by the sign that warns that impostors will be
transformed she enters the
College Garden with its extraordinary wackamole plants
(another standout) to be welcomed as an apprentice witch. They meet master scientist
magician Dr. Dee in his walking wheelchair and get the tour. ”Electricity is a
type of magic.”
Turns out there is a lock up area with all the failed efforts
at transformation - a red eyed koala and a galloping sheep among them. (“Even
in the dark, my ears are filled with screams”) and the forces of good prevail.
Great moment of the rescue, when all is lost, by the liberated animals, a
further set piece.
This one can go toe to toe with the excellence of In My
Corner of the World. We may have lost the musicals and westerns which used
to make regular film going a treat - La La Land and Hateful Eight aside.
However the flow of great animated films which come from Japan, Pixar and
the rest is a great compensation. Add Coco to that succession.
My advice is to pounce on 1987 and Mary and the
Witch’s Flower in a hurry. They look like not making it to Thursday. Both
are exceptional. Is anyone pondering why a disproportionate quantity of the
best film we are being offered is sub-titled, Asian and drawing minimal round
eye attention?
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