Mankind has shared the story of the heroine in Director Im Kwon-Taek's CHUNHYANG since Adam and Eve, and now he has brought the Korean version to Western audiences. What is startling about Kwon's film is that it lets us, if we allow it, to partake of the ancient tradition of pansori.

Pansori began among the Shamen of the Cholla region of Korea, like many art forms, as a religious ritual. The Shaman would move and chant in a rhythmic way to convey spiritual truths. Gradually, the musicians for the Shamen wandered off to become minstrels. They traveled from village to village, adding song, dance, stories, tumbling and magic to their performances. In the Chosun Dynasty of the 18th Century, the Aristocracy adopted pansori performers. Chinese influences were added; the performances, which lasted six to eight hours, were refined; vulgarities were removed. As the art form came down to our time, certain pansori artists spent their lives perfecting particular stories and delivery.

The tradition is evident in the way CHUNHYANG begins with a stage performance. We hear his keening cry for several minutes before a spotlight picks out Pansori Singer Sang-Hyun Cho on a darkened stage. A single drummer encourages him, intermediates with the large audience, and keeps the beat on his puk (or drum). Sang-hyun keeps up this remarkable combination of song, chant and dance the greatly condensed two hours it takes to tell the story.

Early in the Chosun Dynasty, a young student, Mongyong Lee (Seung-woo Cho), is sent by his father, the governor of the province, to study for University Exams in the quiet of a small village. Soon bored, he spys a beautiful girl across the valley. He sends his reluctant servant Pangja (Hang-Yun Kim) to make a date for him. Presently, carrying the heraldic yellow fan and handkerchief of a pansori singer to impress her, he is trotted across on his pony to meet her.

Chunghyang Sung is the sheltered, virginal daughter of Wolmae (Sung-Nyu Kim), a famous courtesan, now retired. Mongyong, in love at once, courts Chunghyang with the encouragement of her mother. They eventually marry, after a fashion. (At her direction, he writes caligraphically with a black brush on her red taffeta skirt: "Like the Sun and the Moon, my love will never change.") He initiates her into the pleasures of love. Her appetites surge, but abruptly, father is recalled to the Capital at Seoul, and Mongyong must go with his family. There is no possibility of her going with him, given the difference in their class positions.

The potential tragedy is heightened when the new governor, Byun Hakdo (Jung-hun Lee), turns out to be a high handed chauvinist, who immediately inspects all the courtesans in the province for possible service. That Chunghyang is the daughter of a courtesan makes her marriage a nicety easily ignored. She tells him, "I cannot serve two husbands any more than I can serve two kings!" When she resists further, has her beaten with sticks and thrown in jail.

At that juncture, the pansori singer, drummer/prompter and the entire audience raise a keening cry that can be heard in Seoul, where Mongyong has been dutifully studying for three years. At last, he acts. Love is on the way.

Im Kwon-Taek, regarded as one of the Master Directors of the World, has long studied the techniques of pansori. Many of his nearly 100 films feature some reference to the art form, particularly SOPONJE (The Pansori Singer, 1993), which is said to be his masterpiece. When I saw it several years ago at The San Francisco Film Festival, I was moved by the story of a highly talented artist forced to lead his dwindling little troop before increasingly indifferent audiences, eventually into American brothels and tragedy during the Korean War.

The parallel of this hero to Kwon-Taek is clearer if we know that the director was born in 1936. He saw the end of Japanese rule in Korea, and the upheavals between North and South. His family suffered great loss, and in his teenage, he moved from Kwangju in the South to Pusan to find work as a laborer. After an attempt of become an entrepreneur, recycling U.S. Army boots into plain shoes, he got a chance at the bottom of the ladder in the Post War Korean film industry. For 15 years after his first directing opportunity in 1962, he made all sorts of films. It was in 1978 he released Genealogy, and his serious work was first recognized.

Kwon-Taek, like his beloved pansori singers, is attempting to adapt the ancient traditions of Korean life to the changing patterns of Western Society. The story of Chunghyang has been adapted in the movies many times, but her adventures and travails have usually been seen as woman's picture. Kwon-Taek has adopted the rare the point of view of his hero first -- and then that of his heroine. How successful Kwon-Taek will be with a mass American audience is problematical. Many Americans don't know where Korea is, and they think Asian languages are funny -- or maddening.

Certainly, pansori is an acquired pleasure, but the gawky Seung-woo and the ravishing Hyo-jeong are indeed lovable. (Their love scenes are truly erotic, not just borderline pornographic.) Kwon-Taek's direction is sure, Il-Sung Jung's photography golden and the arrangements of Chong-gil Kim grow on you.

Perhaps we should give one of the greatest living directors the benefit of the doubt. Americans, possessors of the most mongrelized culture in the World, should look at older, purer cultures than our own occasionally -- that is to say if we are going to remain the World's Super Power for long.

Take a marginal chance.





Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older