Saturday 23 July 2011

Choyonghan Kajok - Quiet Family

1998 by Jee-Woon Kim - Korean

Film makers, across the world, tends to give so much importance for Luck. Irrespective of how good or bad the movie is, they think luck is really important for the movie to get public recognition, awards, festival screenings or even critic ratings, at least some critics should get to see it, right? So there are so many under rated movies across the world, which inspite of being much better than the most average movies from their region or even better than the acclaimed classics, tend to end up as an unsuccessful movie. I have seen some of these under rated movies and sometimes wondered what the hell is wrong with the world that this movie had this kind of a fate. A love song for Bobby Leong, from Hollywood is one such movie, which will always be one of my favourite from Hollywood. I just came across one such hugely under rated movie from Korea.

A family, father mother uncle son and two teenage daughters, buys a lodge by a prominent hiking trail, they did not have any experience with hospitality though. They wait eagerly for their first client, but there isn't any. Finally after a few weeks, a man check in and kills himself on the very first night. Afraid of bad publicity, they decide to bury the body in the woods. Well, that was just the beginning of a series of burials for the poor family. 

A wonderful movie which is hilarious through out. It has a treatment which is followed by art house movies, but there is incredible fun, in spite of the slow place, awaiting us at each and every turn making it a wonderful entertainer actually. Except the teenage daughters, all the rest have some inborn subtle stupidity around them. Who else will go and invest money on a lodge, without knowing anything about that industry or the client prospects. So it is fine with the characterisation, but as you laugh with them you cant help feeling sympathy for them. The script lose some charm towards the end and leaves some pot holes, but I would gladly ignore them and am really glad I saw this ridiculously funny movie. For some people can call it as a kind of horror or black comedy movie, because of all the dead bodies and the blood dripping injuries and for the kind of lighting used. But it is not intended to scare the viewer, I would say, and actually only give us more chances to laugh out.

One particular scene, when the hapless couple has to use their fingers to count, as they are not sure about the number of corpses around, is ridiculously brilliant. And even if it is nearly a fantasy topic, it is told very realistically that I was wondering how in the world did this writer imagined this theme. Brilliant.

The whole family, the father, the mother, the son, the 2 daughters and the uncle all were very fresh in my mind, even when I woke up today morning. I couldn't help laughing on my walk to the gym and saw people looking at me like a weird. An excellent comedy. Such a pity that very few people have rated this movie outside Korea.