[K-FILM REVIEWS] 즐거운 인생 (The Happy Life)

It was Myeongdong up to its postwar renaissance, until the throne passed to Hongdae during the last twenty years. But, to find the real pulsating beat of Korean music, you had to frequent those clubs and jazz bars, the coffee shops and underground meccas of Seoul; you had to feel, hear, smell all that soul. Nowadays, there are enough places to satisfy all brands of accounting in the peculiar world that is called taste. You have the major league like the good old Freebird, Watercock for jazz or Yang Hyeon-Seok's NB for hip hop heads; but also places so tiny, you can tell whether the pretty girl with the skimpy miniskirt over there is really going out with big Bubba in the white shirt.

How? Simply judging by the air, as you're welcomed by this concerto of fragrances, a sort of bastard child of Flower by Kenzo and Armpit Machismo No. 5. Hordes of bands from all genres try to make it in this jungle, a sort of Rucker Park of Korean music which can either send you back home, make you a bubble legend worth 100,000 won per gig, or raise the eyebrows of people whose name cards weigh tons of pomp and circumstance. Then, in no time, you'll possibly have people dancing around you. And stink up my TV.

But you wonder. Back then, when the bald grandpa was running his junta, when the 386 generation was in Olympic Games-mood preparing for the Molotov Throw Finals, and Bong Joon-Ho was seeing strange black beasts emerging from the Han River (maybe they were rats heading for that building with the blue roof?). How was music back in the 80s? Oh, I didn't mean the Jo Young-Pil, Nami -- the one Oh Dae-Soo made unilateral love with in 올드보이 (Oldboy) - and Kim Wan-Seon of the world. I was thinking of that event which started in 1977, and by the early 80s had become a burning furnace, the mold creating some of the biggest acts of the 80s and 90s. No need to cite legends like Shin Jung-Hyeon and Han Dae-Soo, since they were doing their thing already. But where would Kim Chang-Wan's Sanullim (Mountain Echoes), or Jeon In-Kwon's Deulgukhwa (Wildflower) be without the advent of College Festivals? And where would the protest rock and folk of the 80s, that collection of insanely talented artists be without that spark which ignited the fireworks?

Some of them have become shades of their old selves, getting the occasional "I'm still breathing" moment on 콘서트 7080 (Concert 7080) and trampling over their legacies. Some, on the same show, demonstrate how fire and energy have nothing to do with those four digits on your driver's license and the size of your waistline. Some others tragically die, like Kim Chang-Ik, and some re-invent their careers, like his brother Kim Chang-Wan, who has now become an accomplished actor. It's a shame to see those talents often wasted, enjoying the broadcasters' 15 minute-long bones in the cultural ghetto those programs have become. Those bands were all about the fun of making music, of enjoying the camaraderie, the women, the booze, and... hell, even the money, although it wasn't much.

But today's Korean mainstream music scene is full of breathing, walking banner ads with no interest in music; jail bait girl groups who bank on miniskirts the size of 10,000 won bills, and so artistically inept they'd make Miss Aguilera look like Aretha in her prime; boy bands, sulking with the pathos the love child of Mad Max and Roseanne Barr would ooze, and the vocal talents of a fowl with bronchitis. And the craziest thing of it all, those backdancers who accompany them, as if we needed the Bizarro world rendition of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake to understand the deep meaning buried inside some bubblegum pop turd saying "Yo Baby! Me love you so much, I'd gladly create the 2028 Olympic Water Polo team with you" in half-assed Konglish. Or maybe shaking momma's jewels along with Lee Hyo-Ri, if that's today's menu.

It's no surprise, then, if real musicians decide to almost completely avoid television and such embarrassments, unless it's something proper like Yoon Do-Hyun's 러브 레터 (Love Letter). It's equally not much of a surprise, if some of those "만능 엔터테이너 (multi-talented entertainers)," whose sole claim to fame was ventilating their nipples on live-TV and then crying a river about it, debut on the big screen complete with scorched-earth coverage, and end up whining around about how "hard this is." Well, no shit, kiddo. As Uncle Axl said, welcome to the jungle. But such is life, especially when business invades the arts in a way that erases all that was important about it. Then, culture becomes pornography of the mind. It's like Burger Kinging cuisine, Hyundai Sonataing car design, or Wallmarting fashion. No passion, no flair, just the accounting details.

You could connect what happened to Korean music with what is slowly happening to Chungmuro, strictly based on that little nuance. If the JYP and YG and SM of the world put their strategy all on dancing miniskirts and human Teletubbies dressed in Goth clothing, on the other side you have uber-producers banking their flicks on superficial flag-waving and allegedly funny gangsters, the finer points of scatology and whatever turns the neighboring okasan's nether regions in a frenzy this year. It's kind of ironic, then, that Lee Joon-Ik's 2007 film 즐거운 인생 (The Happy Life) deals with those issues, although in peculiar ways. It's both an ode to the real spirit behind those college rock bands, resurfacing after decades; but also what's sorely lacking in today's Chungmuro: the "happiness" that honest commercial filmmaking can give.

Sure, it'd be the greatest thing since late-night Jjajangmyeon delivery, if something like 스페어 (Spare) was released over 600 screens, visionaries like Kim Jee-woon or Bong Joon-Ho were the norm, and anybody mentioning the word "jopok" without blood, tears and bravado a la 비열한 거리 (A Dirty Carnival) was impaled, Bram Stoker-style. But it's not going to happen anytime soon. The key, then, is a healthy balance. Having the bottom-scraping star vehicles and the flag-waving blockbusters yes, but also well meaning genre cinema and pure cinematic flow mixed with that raw power all the works of Lee Myung-Se and Ryu Seung-Wan ooze; the sexy and irreverent black comedies of Im Sang-Soo, and the ironic mea culpa about men of Hong Sang-Soo. Animation like 아치와 씨팍 (Aachi & Ssipak) and sageuk like 궁녀 (Shadows in the Palace), and so on. Hell, I could handle even some more Kim Ki-Duk, if it meant I won't have to wait another twenty five years for Jang Jun-Hwan's second film, be it about poker or "The Fart Knight."

But that is simply not happening, because the men behind the steering wheel aren't really film people anymore. They're mostly CEO and accountant types, responding to the huge venture capital moebius, people who couldn't give a giraffe's rear end if, despite the risk of spending 10 Billion won, XX project could become a timeless masterpiece. They want to spend the next quarter in the black, no matter if all they produce are mere side dishes to the popcorn and chiaroscuro petting of 20-something moviegoers. But then there's people like Lee Joon-Ik, the anarchist nomad of Chungmuro. He shoots fast without going the indie route, on the cheap despite maintaining high production values, is able to make something very palatable to all ages despite always putting the spotlight on non-mainstream characters, and always - always - ends up telling you something worth listening to, no matter how many cliches you'll find.

And you know what? He even makes good money. The Happy Life went a bit in the red, and it's likely his latest 님은 먼 곳에 (Sunny) will not bank all the 3.3 million tickets needed to break even, but that's nitpicking. He's never had a flop since he decided to make his comeback as a director in 2003, and never had a stinker in his filmography. He makes entertaining, well meaning commercial cinema with a soul, passion, and flair, although that's more of the philosophical kind than anything dealing with cinematic fire. It's like your mother making you a cheeseburger. The ingredients might even be similar to the McDonald's down the street. But there's love, honesty, that "touch" in it. It suddenly stops being junk food, because she did it with your pot belly in mind, took out all the cholesterol magnets, and used only fresh ingredients. It smells of that human touch, it tastes like real people made it. And that's the key, ladies and gents. In cuisine, painting, car manufacturing, music, and even films. Yep. It's the soul that counts.

Under scrutiny, The Happy Life could feel like yesterday's old socks in the pantheon of world cinema. It is, after all, nothing more than a Korean Full Monty with touches of Brassed Off and 와이키키 브라더스 (Waikiki Brothers), if you want to be very blunt. There's two ways of dealing with influences: one, you can copy it hook, line and sinker, without any personality; the other is adapting it to your own sensibilities, revitalizing what was someone else's creation through personal touches, turning into something entirely new in the process. This is our case. The structure is essentially the same, although the cultural underpinnings moving the four characters in The Happy Life are perhaps even more significant, as it's not something that just revamps their joie de vivre, it's a dormant dragon re-awakening inside them. You could ask yourself how a group of Englishmen becoming strippers could possibly compare with three 40-something Koreans just deciding to revive a 20 year old college rock band, but put in a Korean context, it's just as "shocking" an idea.

Director Lee has always been accused by female critics of avoiding women on purpose, drawing only male fantasies on his canvas, perhaps one of the reasons which moved him to go for a female protagonist in Sunny. He says it's because he doesn't understand women enough to portray them realistically, which certainly works better as an excuse than the pseudo-feminist vibes of many big screen rom-coms. But, if you think about it, it's the kind of absence drawing the spotlight on who's absent, and the void that absence created, rather than just forgetting there's also those strangely charming creatures on the other side of the river. Kind of like what happened with mother figures in 괴물 (The Host).

Think about it. 황산벌 (Once Upon a Time in the Battlefield) is a critique of war and regionalism, pitting men and their machismo against each other, and making a parody of the whole battlefield culture. Yet, one of the most striking moments is Kim Seon-Ah's silly yet telling cameo, which ends up highlighting what fails in the logic of going to war, even sacrificing your family over it. In 왕의 남자 (The King and the Clown), set aside the silly maneuvering of western critics to superficially label this as some sort of "gay-themed" drama, one of the biggest themes is actually Yeonsan's mother complex, and the explosion of rage behind the poisoning of Lady Yoon, recently touched upon by 왕과 나 (The King & I).

The Happy Life works that way as well. Sure, Kim Ho-Jung's considerable talent is mostly wasted, if you measure impact by the minute. And young Go Ah-Seong from The Host is a pleasant but sporadic visitor, a sort of glorified cameo who knocks at the door every now and then. Then again, those little moments speak more about Gi-Young's (Jung Jin-Young) situation than any other exposition could. The idea of a 40-something Korean man supported by his teacher wife, feeling more like a mother than a partner, trying to kick some reality into his Peterpan complex-colored lenses; this grown ass man getting stares from his daughter as if she was dealing with a child, blankly looking at someone who should be towering over her with his presence, but is just fooling around and playing air guitar like a kid. Or how about Sung-Wook and his wife (the criminally underrated Chu Gwi-Jung), unable to step down the ladder of status symbol, and putting everything she has in her children's alleged future like way too many Korean families (truly brilliant is Kim Yoon-Seok's deadpan "애들이 다야? /Are kids everything?").

There isn't a single strong female character with an arc which moves independently, yes. The wives are by-products of the film's statement about its male characters, especially when you look at their initial reaction and the predictable turnaround when their hubbies start rockin' it like it was 1981. But this is no Hollywood. When Kim Ho-Jung smiles at her husband, rocking in front of a few hundred people in that glorious little finale, it doesn't mean the day after she won't scream at him for acting like a teenager. It doesn't mean she won't tell him, repeatedly, that even if they found that full monty, they need to get up in the morning and work to protect it. It's just the smile of a partner, finally seeing the spark in her husband's eyes, not necessarily the spark she fell for some 15 years earlier. Just that spark telling her, he's back. He's found what he was looking for. It could get worse once again, but who cares. He's trying now. It's life.

This is why Lee's films work so well despite the conventions. He doesn't really care about avoiding a cliché, if he really needs to use it. Sscenes which filtered through Hollywood lexicon should give you an emotional high just end in that bittersweet sense of satisfaction, mixing excitement with the realization someone told you something, and you understood his message. That's how the film leaves you. It's predictable, conventional, but really honest. That's not something everyone can achieve. It's pure Lee Joon-Ik: no trinkets, nothing thrown there for the sake of it, just pure storytelling. What he can't or won't communicate with fancy visuals, he does with the smell of people and philosophy of life which penetrates the screen, helped by an excellent cast.

Jung Jin-Young has been Lee's "persona" for so long, a Lee Joon-Ik film without him would feel strange, but the real winner here is Kim Sang-Ho, one of the secret gems of Korean cinema. He oozes the same exact vibes as Bae Chang-Ho did in Lee Myung-Se's delirious 개그맨 (Gagman): part teddy bear-part burning fire and creativity. Kim Yoon-Seok draws a picture of a 40-something Korean family man down to a perfect T, complete with all the life sucked out by his predicament, and the restrained energy he shows performing. And young Jang Geun-Seok, although this role would have made pretty much everyone with enough talent look good, handles Hyeon-Jun with admirable charisma (and some mean vocals, to add).

The Happy Life is a predictable but greatly satisfying ride, hitting all the notes 브라보 마이 라이프 (Bravo My Life) missed. The music is exciting (particularly if you know a little about the 80s college-festival scene), there's that healthy mix of 80s-style realism with a bit of ideology and movie magic thrown in the mix, oozing metric tons of the only smell that counts in cinema, that of people. It's hard to explain the feeling. It's not that explosion and fire you'd expect from those perfectly packaged music flicks, it doesn't have the glorious atmosphere of Radio Star, nor any of the flourishes of Lee's period films. It's a low-key affair, but has a strangely charming force of its own. Simple, well acted, with good music (the actors performed themselves); and, even if it tells you something you might know already, it does so with the kind of philosophy about life you can only appreciate. It's commercial cinema all right, but done with such honesty? We can only be happy....

RATING: 7.5

즐거운 인생 (The Happy Life)
Director: 이준익 (Lee Joon-Ik)
Screenplay: 최석환 (Choi Seok-Hwan)
D.P.: 김용철 (Kim Yong-Cheol)
Music: 방준석 (Bang Jun-Seok)
Produced by: Achim Pictures
Int'l Sales: CJ Entertainment
112 Minutes, 35mm 1.85:1 Color
Release: 9/12/2007
CAST: 정진영 (Jung Jin-Young) as Gi-Young, 김윤석 (Kim Yoon-Seok) as Sung-Wook, 김상호 (Kim Sang-Ho) as Hyeok-Su, 장근석 (Jang Geun-Seok) as Hyeon-Jun, 김호정 (Kim Ho-Jung) as Gi-Young's wife, 고아성 (Go Ah-Sung) as Ju-Hee, 추귀정 (Chu Gwi-Jeong) as Sung-Wook's wife, 주진모 (Ju Jin-Mo) as Gi-Young's friend, 방준석 (Bang Jun-Seok) as Hongdae Club owner, 노브레인 (No Brain), 트랜스픽션 (Transfiction)