It is late at night, just outside the humble home where a disillusioned young high school student lives alone with her frail grandmother. Despite the late hour and inclement weather the old lady is determined to go out, claiming that the neighborhood theater is about to play an old film the young girl has never heard of, one that grandma herself starred in back in the day. She wanders out into the night, never to return. The girl, now all alone, abandons her schooling to search for her missing grandmother, eventually taking a job in the box office of the theater that was to be grandma’s destination in the hope that if she simply waits there long enough the old woman will finally arrive for her phantom movie screening. But grandma’s movie isn’t the only phantom here, the theater itself playing host to a quartet of singing ghosts who appear late at night, eventually befriending the girl even as they torment the theater manager with memories he’d do anything to just leave behind. This is the Midnight Ballad For Ghost Theater.
An odd little film, though likely not quite in the manner the marketers had hoped, Midnight Ballad came on the scene billed as South Korea’s answer to Tim Burton and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And while both influences are certainly evident – there’s an obvious love for Burton in the production design – there’s a melancholic wistfulness to the picture that prevents it from being the full on campy ride that many expected while also revealing another key influence, that being Tsai Ming Liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn, both films sharing a longing for the glory days when theaters were a sort of temple, temples that are now being allowed to slowly crumble and decay. The fusion of such disparate influences isn’t entirely successful but any time you may be tempted to write the thing off the picture just goes and does something so compelling you just can’t help but crack a great big grin.
In many ways Midnight Ballad feels most like a stage production half-adapted to the screen. Staging and sets are minimal, the action confined to a very limited number of performers – seldom more than five on screen at a time – and dominantly occurring in only three rooms. Even the big production numbers – up to and including the rampaging bull-headed man hinted at throughout the film – are the sort that could easily be executed on stage and while you can certainly argue that it doesn’t take full advantage of all the visual tricks film may make possible the trade off is the sort of natural character interplay you get from theater, with most scenes played out via long takes with all the principal folk involved. It takes a bit to get into the rhythm of the piece as a result but once you’re there you find a depth to the characters and a sort of naturalness to their interplay that lets you buy into things more than you might expect.
The film’s most significant weakness is, however, a glaring one. It is a musical without nearly enough good music. There are only a handful of numbers scattered throughout the piece and of those only two – the stellar bit featured heavily in the trailers and another glam rock number – that truly stand out, the other pieces sadly lacking in pace or catchy melodies. There is still plenty to enjoy in the film but if you’re selling a film built around singing ghosts you really do need more singing – and better – than what’s on offer here.
A film that mostly seemed to confuse local audiences, Midnight Ballad has received a minimal DVD release. The disc and packaging are pretty bare but what’s most important to non-Korean speakers are the transfer itself and the English subtitles, both of which are excellent. The transfer is anamorphic, in the correct ratio and very crisp; the subtitles clear and well translated. It’s a flawed film but still a compelleing one on many levels, one that comes with a cautious recommendation.