Jeonju 2025 Review: THE DREAM, Gender Politics Take Center Stage in Dark Period Fable
After tearing through the 1980s with a range of celebrated films such as People in the Slum, Whale Hunting and Deep Blue Night, all starring Ahn Sung-ki, director Bae Chang-ho kicked off the 1990s with The Dream--once again starring Ahn--a dark period fable based on the Buddhist folk tale "Joshin's Dream".
Joshin's Dream is a cautionary tale about a monk who yearns for a beautiful aristocrat who is engaged to be married. He begs at the feet of a statue of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara to be united with the woman. His wish is seemingly granted, but the pair endure decades of hardship, at the end of which... the monk wakes up from his dream in front of the statue.
Bae adapted this story with co-screenwriter Lee Myung-se, who had debuted as a director a year earlier with Gagman, also starring Ahn (yes, he was in everything in the 1980s) and co-starring Bae. Lee would go on to make such classics as Nowhere to Hide and Duelist.
The pair rework the material into a ferocious fable of lust and murder, in which rape and toxic masculinity take center stage. Garish, melodramatic and superbly entertaining, The Dream somehow works as a scathing indictment of toxic masculinity while also being unremittingly chauvinistic. It's not that it walks a fine line between the two, there simply isn't a line in this landscape of murky gender politics.
Here Joshin (Ahn) begins his relationship with the beautiful Talleh by raping her while she takes a bath as she readies herself to be presented to future husband Molleh, a celebrated swordsman. When next we catch up with Joshin, he is a textile merchant in a far away land with Talleh and their two children at his side. This is no happily ever after. The utterly broken Talleh clearly despises Joshin while he constantly battles with his guilt and fear--especially when a former monk pal shows up informing him that Molleh is out for his neck.
Yet Joshin's greatest battle is the one he has with himself. This is a man who is so insecure that he does not consider his own daughter to be his, because at the moment of her conception while he was raping Talleh she at first thought that she had been set upon by Molleh. In Joshin's twisted mind, the fact that Talleh had been thinking of another man during the act was enough to rob him of his paternity.
The film is also filled with over-the-top imagery that complements Joshin's deranged worldview. Following much trauma, Talleh does eventually leave Joshin but only after she contracts leprosy. She leaves with her daughter at the crack of dawn, stepping out into a plain covered in autumn leaves. As she walks away, the film cuts to an image of a dead leaf blowing along the ground--a brutal parting shot for a character who has been utterly consumed by one man's feeble sense of self.
While the film paints a grim picture of its leading character, the way it paints the long-suffering Talleh--repeatedly raped, almost entirely lacking in agency and quasi-mute--is undeniably problematic. In this and other aspects, not least its four-season structure, The Dream seems to preempt the works of the quintessentially problematic filmmaker Kim Ki-duk, particularly Bad Guy and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring. Kim would debut just six years later with Wild Animals but the Korean film industry of 1990 and 1996 were worlds apart.
Watching The Dream, you could easily be forgiven for thinking it was made at least a decade earlier. It feels old and anachronistic but this only adds to its otherworldly charm, brandishing an aesthetic dominated by lurid colours, grim sensuality and vivid flashes of violence.
The Dream is quite possibly Bae's last great film and, thanks to its spinning moral compass and delightful genre flourishes, it feels primed for rediscovery.
