Busan 2024 Review: THE LAND OF MORNING CALM, Grim Coastal Drama Offers Satisfying Character Portrait

Following his intriguing debut The Girl on a Bulldozer, which screened at the Busan International Film Festival in 2021, directed Park Ri-woong returns to the festival with the New Currents competition title The Land of Morning Calm.

Set far away from the big city, the film examines social prejudice and small-mindedness in a tiny and hardy coastal town where it is impossible for anyone to get away from prying eyes and wagging tongues.

Opening at the break of dawn looking at an ominously quiet sea and lighthouse under a darkening sky, with only a few seagulls showing signs of life, the film soon shows how deeply ironic its title is.

The protagonist, played with crusty authenticity by Yoon Joo-sang, is the ageing captain of a small fishing boat, who heads out for his catch long before the sun rises each morning with his one crewman, and winds down his days with a few too many bottles of soju at the local inn.

Though younger, his crewman is similarly dejected in life. Unsuited to the work, he lives with his mother and a Vietnamese wife who he finds it hard to be seen out in public with. One day he convinces his boss to head out earlier than usual and let him off on a distant shore. The captain is handed a bundle of cash and when he returns to port, he claims that the crew hand was lost at sea.

Faced with a grieving mother and wife, the captain becomes even more cantankerous and removed from the people around him, especially as the investigation into the disappearance drags out, making it difficult to get his hands on the insurance payout the younger man set this bizarre affair in motion for.

The Land of Morning Calm doesn't make things easy for itself at first by foregrounding a very unlikeable character, but this is precisely where the film finds its strength as well. Over time we steadily learn more about him, but we also learn more about the close-minded community surrounding him, who at first seem more openly empathetic but gradually show their true colours. In doing so, we begin to understand why the captain is as sour as he is, not that the film ever absolves him of his own racist behavior and questionable actions, some of which led him to be estranged from his daughter.

Soberly put together and strongly performed, Park's film is more textured and nuanced than his debut, and boasts a more cohesive style and tone, though once again he occasionally relies on histrionic episodes that pull us out of the film's otherwise naturalistic character. This includes a very sudden miscarriage that is staged in a way that feels over-the-top and unnecessary.

Though it attempts to be a portrait of a community as a mirror for a larger society, the film is most successful as a portrait of its fascinating lead character, wonderfully played by Yoon. The various side characters are generally well acted and each have their moments, but in the end they come off as slightly caricatured by comparison, which weakens some of the films messages.

Despite these issues and some occasional pacing problems, particularly in the first half, The Land of Morning Calm is a compelling follow-up for Park that pulls its best elements together to coalesce into a strong final act that gives our miserable but magnetic sea captain's character arc a satisfying conclusion.

The film enjoys its world premiere at Busan International Film Festival.