Yeah, for today's flick we're going old school, and I do mean OLD. This film can be found in a box set called "The Past Unearthed." For all you black & white movie haters, get over yourselves. You’d think that in this complicated world in which we live, you’d be able to appreciate the simplicity of a black and white movie. There, somebody get this soapbox out from under me!
Sweet Dream (with the tag title “Lullaby of Death”…charming, eh? No foreshadowing there!) is one of Korea’s oldest films that still survives. Directed by first-timer TANG Joo-nam, this was the first Korean film to make use of ambient sound recordings (i.e. car horns honking in street scenes, etc.) and was the third talkie in Chosun, a technical marvel at the time.
The reason Americans should watch this is because it shows how a completely diverse culture from our own deals cinematically with the same issues of gender expectations that Western culture also had to deal with. This is a tragic morality tale about what could happen to a female who is seduced by the modern world of materialism.
Ae-soon (played by actress MOON Ye-bong) is a housewife who wants more out of life. From the first two images of the film (a stationary, stable tree panning up to a bird in a cage) the audience is given its too visual metaphors for females in Korean society of the time. The visual landscapes explored in this film would have fascinated movie goers of the day. In an attempt to escape her ‘cage’, Ae-soon is seen going to hotels, cafes, a dance theater, and a beauty shop. Director TANG made use of extensive tracking shots to add to the audience’s sense of movement making this an impressive technological achievement for its time.
So frightening was the advancement of modernization that this film included an extended shot of a driving safety class. This would have been to assuage the fears of viewers also dealing with these modern machines rolling all over the place in big cities. In the end of the film, Ae-soon is hurrying after the dancer she has fallen for in a taxi and she keeps encouraging the taxi driver to speed. He politely refuses reminding her that speeding is illegal. This seems more of a public service announcement than a cinematic achievement; however, it functions as a narrative device as well.
For me, though, the fascination of this movie lies in the characterization of Ae-soon. Before I saw this film, I would say the best depiction of the modern Korean woman as destructive social force would have to be the character of Sun-young from
Madame Freedom (an amazing film achievement we’ll get to some day when I feel like writing a lot!). The difference is that Ae-soon is unsympathetic from the start and remains so until, well, I’m not sure she ever gets our sympathy! She tries in the end, but it’s a bit too little too late.
In the opening, she sits facing a mirror while her husband sits facing another direction reading the newspaper. The scene design is stark vertical lines reinforcing the impression that Ae-soon lives in a cage. They get into an argument because Ae-soon wants to go shopping. This reinforces her vanity for the audience, and when we find out that she’s buying clothes for herself instead of for her daughter Jeong-hee, she has lost our sympathy from the get-go. Before she leaves, there is a discussion about ‘face’ or losing face. Face is an important part of Korean culture and tradition. Ae-soon’s flippant disregard of such a concern would also have shocked viewers. The case against her is mounting. When her husband asks, “How can a housewife not care about housekeeping?” She replies simply that he should divorce her at which point he is then reflected in her mirror, boxed in as if HE were the one living in a cage.
Ae-soon continues to illustrate all the things a Korean woman should NOT be: she treats her daughter rudely, she buys the most expensive dress in the shop, she drinks with a stranger. Back at home, the husband has had enough and tries to remind her that her identity is that of
Jeong-hee’s mother. When she curses him, he calls her an “animal bitch.” Things are not going well. He gets violent and the only thing that saves her is the pleading of the daughter. Ae-soon leaves and gets a hotel room with her lover (whom later she finds out is broke, a crook, and she turns him into the police without a single qualm). While she is out, her daughter dreams of her mother. This would lead the audience to believe is the ‘sweet dream’ of the title, but by the end of the film we see that it’s more an ironic nod to a dream of modern life that many subjugated females probably shared.
Ae-soon attends a dance show and falls for one of the lead dancers. Ironically, he is shown sitting in front of a mirror putting on make up much the same way as Ae-soon was shown in the beginning. This alignment may be hopeful, but this is a tragic melodrama after all. The ultimate irony though is that Ae-soon is in a taxi chasing after the dancer, encouraging the driver to go faster and faster, the driver refusing saying, “I might have an accident,” when boom! You guessed it. The taxi hits her daughter crossing the street. This has to be one of the most ludicrously contrived plot devices in cinema history (well except maybe every time James Bond is given the exact kind of gadgets he needs to help him escape in EVERY Bond film).
So here we are at the end of the film and our naughty girl has to face punishment for her desires of a modern, care-free, FUN life. Not to disappoint, director TANG shows us Ae-soon is redeemable buy making her so over the top dramatic at her daughter’s hospital bedside. Ultimately, she kills herself by drinking poison (which she just so happened to have in her purse) and her husband runs in with a gun to shoot her only to see her flop onto the floor…dead as a doornail. Jeong-hee still calls out for her mother and hubby looks off distantly to the heavens for support. Cut. Wrap. Print. Oscar! Not hardly, but all of this in 48 minutes. I think modern daytime dramas could learn a bit from this flick.
