Free Korean Movie Night NYC: Forever the Moment (우리 생애 최고의 순간)

On Tuesday the 22nd, the Korean Cultural Service in conjunction with Subway Cinemas will be hosting its final installment of the current series of Free Korean Movie Night featuring sports films at the Tribeca Cinemas. Like it says in the title, it's free, but seats are on a first-come, first-served basis. You can find more information here.

Between this film and another recent entry in the Free Korean Movie night series--Lifting King Kong (review)--I was made to consider two things: first, there are Olympic categories for both women's weightlifting and handball, and second, that Olympic athletes seem to have fairly unrewarding post-athletic careers. Of course, it goes without saying that once the glory goes, so does everything else, but it seems to strike these athletes more profoundly. They tune their bodies up to the peak of perfection for a couple of key moments throughout the year, culminating in a shot at going to the Olympics every four years and in turn really only receiving recognition if they earn the gold.

As with Lifting King Kong, Forever the Moment is based loosely on the true story of real Olympic competitors--in this case, the team that reached the 2004 Athens Olympics. Unlike LKK, this film deals squarely and evenly with its subjects, and its director Yim Soonrye is more adept at modulating the tone of this sports drama, allowing for lighter moments in the midst of some brutally bitter heartbreak and disappointment for its characters.

The heart and soul of the film is Mi-sook (Moon So-ri), a veteran player who--despite taking her team to Barcelona 8 years before is still on the borderline of poverty. She's effectively a single mom after her husband runs off to avoid creditors. Life after Olympic handball is hawking vegetables at the local grocery store. She gets recognized, but it's more a point of trivia than anything else. When she's offered the chance to join the team attempting to qualify for the 2004 Olympics, she doesn't see the point--it's not like she'd get paid much and who would watch her son. But Hae-kyung, a former teammate and the interim coach of the team needs Mi-sook and agrees to front her the money so that she'll join.

In fact, the team has four veterans (including Mi-sook and later, Hae-kyung) who've been around for a while, working alongside brash youngsters who have no time for them. It seems like unlike some other sports the ceiling for how long you can play handball is a bit higher. Much of the film is about the efforts of the veterans to earn the respect and trust of the younger players and the coach who replaces Hae-kyung--the cold Mr. Ahn. He would prefer the quartet of older players left the team to give the younger players a chance.

Again, we come up against a typical sports drama, but in this case it's enlivened a bit by some of the circumstances of its characters and why they persist in playing the game. We infer that one plays because she's unable to have children; another, because she has no life outside of the game. We understand by the closing minutes of the film that the sport means something to them, even if it's novel to us (or well, at least to me). Again, that question of striking the right balance in tone comes up, but the drama never rubs up against farce in any way, threatening to derail the film as it did with LKK. While it lacks the precision of some other sentimental sports films--call me a softy, but I always go back to Rocky as the best in this genre--it shares with the best films of this type that quality that allows it to find the heart of its story and stick with it. When Mi-sook leaves the story for a brief period, the movie doesn't forget about her. There's a great gaping hole in the shape of her character throughout which affects the rest of the plot. This then is the real power of the film: to make us remember the athletes--or at least the characters they inspired--long after the game is over.