Sunday, January 21, 2018

We Like to Watch/The Netflix Connection (#1): THE SILENCED (2015)


January 21, 2018

Holy crap! It’s 2018!
Happy New Year, dear faithful blog-readers*!

Last year I started and/or worked on several posts for this blog. Uh... sixteen, to be exact. Jeez.
JEEZ!
Okay, to be honest, some of these drafts were only titles of films with an intention to "bang out” some sort of review (or at least puke out some feedback on) later and it just never came to be. Some were actually a few paragraphs long and I just wasn’t able to finish the deal. So, yeah: sixteen. Pretty impressive number, huh? Wait, hang on... For actual published posts in 2017, I had...

...ONE.

Oh, man. Lame.
Alright, alright... in my meager defense, 2017 was an INCREDIBLY stressful year for me. My wife and I moved for the first time in 18 years out of our first home as a married couple (yes, we lived in joyful sin in a couple apartments first). We thought that first home was going to be our ‘starter home” but... EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER. So, now we’ve moved into our retirement home, dammit! And yes, moving is stressful on its own, but the real stress was we were doing a lot of remodeling and... by philosophical choice, I’m not a home improvement person. At all. As to why, I’ll only explain simply by saying that when I helped my dad out doing home repairs around the house as a child and eventually as an adult, it was like watching Frick and Frack at work. Our “efforts” at fixing things around the house left much to be desired aesthetically, and as a result I eventually became a perfectionist AND also felt I’d never achieve those standards, so I avoided home repairs completely.
And then 2017 totally bit me in the ass. Our “new” house - which we inherited from my dad when he passed away in 2016, and was actually my home when I was nine until sometime after college and then I finally moved out - needed a lot of work. We hired various contractors to do the main work, but I did most of the painting inside. There were some other smaller tasks, too. So, anyway, I was distracted in 2017, big time.

“Okay,” interrupts the faithful blog reader, “that explains your laughable output in 2017. But, in 2016 you only posted five times. And in 2015, why, no posts at all! What was keeping you from writing those years..?”

Those are valid points and that is an excellent question.
Um...

Okay, enough about me!
What about this damn movie, THE SILENCED?

In an effort to post substantially more this year, I’ve enlisted my good pal, Mermaid Heather.
Heather has been chugging along spectacularly (or, should I say, swimmingly - ha!) with her own unabashedly self-titled horror-movie review blog, Mermaid Heather, for over a decade. This will be her 12th year reviewing! Plus, she also is the main contributor at Top Horror Movies Club. She is a movie-watching AND reviewing machine!
Anyway, several times she reviews films I’ve never even heard of before. Okay, that ain’t saying much. I rarely see movies in the theater or watch commercial television, so I don’t see a lot of trailers for new films. So, most new titles I’d see were on the shelf at our former Family Video, which I’d go to infrequently. Also, Heather had Netflix and I didn’t.
Until we moved.
In a game-changing technological advance in our humble household similar to the year when we got a new computer that could finally handle the Youtube channel (that was HUGE), we now have a TV that allows us to watch Netflix and indulge in the modern magic of streaming movies and TV shows. For instance, I finally saw the first season of STRANGER THINGS, a show I’ve only read about in other people’s Facebook posts! Also, in an equally earth-shattering development, I now have a new set of headphones so I can finally watch movies properly with sound. See, my wife usually goes to bed before me and in our old house our TV was downstairs below the bedroom. So, when I watched TV, I didn’t want to disturb her, so I’d mute the TV and watch with the subtitles on. Not quite the same as watching with the sound on.
But now, now I’m catching up with social media, current popular culture and my own impulsive cinemaphilia. Comparatively speaking, at least.

But getting back to Heather’s numerous reviews of things she’s seen on Netflix:
So, I asked her if she’d be interested in having a very small “movie club”- me and her, specifically - and check out horror movies on Netflix together. My motivation was two-fold: to increase my blogging output and review more films, but more importantly, to be able to discuss a film more thoroughly with someone else who had seen the film.
And Heather, forever patient and forgiving**, said yes.
The format: we each post our own review of the selected film at our own blog on the same date (with a link to the other’s review, natch!). We follow it up with a discussion of the film (NOTE: SPOILERS!).
For our maiden effort I invited Heather to make the first choice, and then we’d alternate picking films from there.
She picked THE SILENCED.


THE SILENCED (2015, South Korean; Written and directed by Hae-yeong Lee; Cast: Bo-young Park (Joo-ran/Shizuko), So-dam Park (Yeon-duk/Kazue), Ji-won Uhm (Headmistress), Ye-ji Kong (Yuka), Seong-yeon Park (Counselor), Bo-Bi Joo (Kihara), Se-in Park (Eguchi), Won-Hee Go (Shizuko))

NOTE: What in tarnation! 848 words later he finally gets around to his freaking review..! (I know, it’s either feast or famine...)***

The film begins with an aerial shot of a car driving along a winding road through a forested landscape. It’s reminiscent of the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980). In the car there is a teenage girl sitting alone in the back seat. In front a well-dressed woman sits and the driver is a chauffeur. Right from the start, there’s tension.  The girl, also well-dressed in red, looks apprehensive. The woman’s expression seems cold and distant.
The car pulls up to a closed gate and it is let in. It opens up into a clearing and we see the grounds and a large building, where a title informs us, “Sanitorium School Near Seoul, 1938.” In the headmistress’s office, we learn that the girl, Shizuko, is being left there while the woman goes on to Tokyo, whose husband is already there. The headmistress, Kato Sanae (played by Ji-won Uhm), who seems very kind, sits across from Shizuko and tells her that “she’s on her own now. But, so is everyone else here.” The headmistress also assures her that she’ll be healthy again soon. We see Shizuko clutch a white handkerchief in her hands.
As soon as Shizuko’s mother leaves the school, it seems the young student is in for misery. All her personal things are removed and her outfit is replaced by a uniform. When she tries to at least keep her diary, the Counselor admonishes her to behave and suddenly slaps her, informing her strictly that she must follow “regulation.”
We also learn that another student was previously at the school and then abruptly left. Coincidentally, her name was Shizuko as well. Due to circumstance, our protagonist - the second Shizuko (Bo-young Park) - is now taking her place, not only numerically but physically as well, such as using her old bed. This perceived act of replacement along with the similar name seems to be stirring up conflicting emotions with two students, Kazue and Yuka, who knew the departed girl. Yuka’s interactions with Shizuko are immediately confrontational, even bullying as she throws little stones at Shizuko in the middle of the night as she more or less interrogates her in front of the other students. Kazue, meanwhile, turns out to be more supportive and helpful by comparison, something you would hope for from another student when you're brand new to a place. Although, this also causes tension and confusion in Yuka who feels that Kazue is betraying the first Shizuko’s memory. Another student, Kihara, seems to be friendly towards Shizuko, although unlike Kazue, is a bit more awkward and eccentric in personality.
While all this drama is going, Shizuko is also constantly dealing with her sickness. When she has a coughing spell in front of the students, she coughs up blood, and Yuka wonders aloud if it’s TB, with the other girls immediately trying to distance themselves from Shizuko.
The headmistress soon learns that Shizuko has coughed up blood, and prescribes a regular IV for her in hopes of making her better. But even the first IV process looks painful with the needle going into her arm and the poor girl lying there in bed for the treatment. My heart totally went out to Shizuko for her situation and the sensitive way actress Bo-young Park portrays her.
Finally, there’s a mystery going on at the school, foremost is why did the first Shizuko leave so suddenly and without explanation? But then another student suddenly leaves in the middle of the night. And Kihara, the awkward student, suddenly acts erratically, even violently, with no apparent reason. And our troubled Shizuko seems to be the lightening rod for all these developments. Was the first Shizuko’s departure actually the tip to a more ominous iceberg? And are there other secrets, perhaps of a more sinister nature, going on at the school? It’s this persistent mystery of the story that distinguishes it from becoming simply a teen drama and pushes THE SILENCED quietly into genre territory.
But which genre?

Right off the bat, let me say I really enjoyed this film. I think Hae-yeong Lee did a wonderful job with both the writing and the direction, and he was ably assisted by the performances of the cast, especially Bo-young Park as Shizuko, So-dam Park as Kazue and Ji-won Uhm as the headmistress. At the beginning of the film, Shizuko's behavior is extremely tentative, she’s barely audible when she speaks due to shyness, and her movements are tentative because of her illness. Her misery is palpable.
Also, the way Lee introduces the mystery elements are very carefully done. Shizuko is startled in the middle of the night by the appearance of a student under a bed who then scurries away in the dark. Did Shizuko dream it? When she sees a bloody student under the staircase and then she tries to tell someone to no avail, is Shizuko hallucinating? Or are these bizarre moments red herrings? Meanwhile, Shizuko and Kazue’s interaction together deepens into a friendship, but also yields more fragmented answers and questions about the first Shizuko and her unsatisfactorily explained departure. Altogether, I thought it was good storytelling assisted with good performances.
Besides the excellent work of the leads I also wanty to mention the multi-faceted, sympathetic portrayal by actress Bo-bi Joo as somewhat goofy, friendly Kihara, who also has two separate scenes where she’s required to be very specifically physical with her own body and in a disturbing, believable way.

As a horror film, this really isn’t. It’s more of a dark mystery. Maybe even a historical mystery, but not so much like a period film, but more in that as the story plays out there’s a reason it’s set in the late 30s. But the film’s main selling point for me was the interaction between the cast, particularly the growing friendship between Shizuko and Kazue.
And for me, another element of interest was historical. At one point, Kazue takes Shizuko to a “secret basement” no longer in use “where everything is broken” and she asks Shizuko what her given name was. It’s Joo-ran. Kazue’s says her name was Yeon-duk. Huh? Yeah, that whole exchange confused me. ****
At the end of the movie, I realized that the film pointedly takes place prior to World War II, and more importantly, involves Japan. Other than what basic things I knew about U.S. and Japanese involvment during the war, beyond that scope my actual world historical knowledge is limited or nil. I knew previously that Japan had invaded China (at some point), but I knew nothing about Japan and Korea. Hell, I know little specifically about Korea (either North or South) as it is today. So, I wondered (incorrectly) if the school had assigned Japanese names to these Korean students. But after watching the movie, I did a little internet research and according to the “Korea under Japanese rule” Wikipedia page, the Japanese Empire annexed Korea in 1910. Imperial Japanese rule of the country ended when the Japanese surrendered in 1945, with the country breaking into North and South Korea, self-ruled but under different systems: the North supported by the Soviet union, the South supported by the U.S. But, I digress.
During the years of Korea’s Japanese rule, at one point Japan formally decided to assimilate the Koreans into Japan and the Koreans adopted Japanese names. Actually, this formally happened in 1939, a year after the film takes place. Prior to that, historically, Japan followed a completely different policy, where they didn’t want Koreans changing their names. So, if that’s true, the movie is fudging that timeline.
But, whatever, it helped me understand this whole double-name thing better. Some kind of understanding of this Japanese-Korean history also deepens and ultimately informs the film’s story, too.

I’m making a point of not saying too much about the plot because I think it’s more enjoyable to see how the story develops without knowing too much ahead of time. I think the strange triangle of friendship and distrust involving Shizuko/Joo-ran, Kazue/Yeon-duk and Yuka was well-executed. One of the things I liked about this story was the use of genre/fantasy to comment on social realities. When Shizuko/Joo-ran and Kazue/Yeon-duk reveal their given names, they make a point of using those names amongst each other. When the counselor talks about the importance of “regulations,” are both of these elements deliberate comments about Imperialist Japan’s influence on society, especially Korean society?
When the drugs seem to be working on Joo-ran’s health, actress Bo-young Park does a nice job showing Joo-ran’s growing confidence in herself, physically and emotionally. When the film starts to approach the more fantastic repercussions of the story, like Joo-ran’s spectacular standing up to another one of Yuka’s bullying outbursts, writer/director Lee deftly utilizes this plot development to also expand on the relationship and tragic secrets of Yeon-duk and the first Shizuko. And that also works in a thread about personal self-repression which seems appropriate at a setting with maturing adolescents learning to handle difficult and strong emotions.
There’s also a nice bit where we see how the Counselor learned how to be so strict.
I wonder if the headmistress’s ultimate motivations in how she ran the sanitorium are based on some cultural background of the time, too, in terms of a woman’s place in either Korean or Japanese society. I’m not sure. I’ll have to do some more Wikipedia-ing and Googling.

To be honest, I think the ending may be just a bit too much believability-wise for some viewers, but I liked it. But we do go more into speculative fiction in the last half hour. Still, as we learn about what’s going on at the school, part of me wondered about/predicted some of the climactic developments, and they were more or less fulfilled to some degree, at least in spirit, so it didn’t bother me too much.
Having said that, there is a lot that does happen in the end. The film moves steadily along showing us more information, going from point A then to B then to C, etc., but at the end when things accelerate in intensity, there are some convenient storytelling devices to move things along from, like, uh, point M to Z. For example, a film projector that suddenly and conveniently turns on mostly to help with exposition in a scene, for instance.
But I still found the whole film satisfying, an enjoyable experience especially through the eyes of the characters Joo-ran and Yeon-duk. In that regard, I greatly appreciated the fact that the filmmakers found time to have a little epilogue in the secret basement.

As a footnote, after watching this film I’m reminded (very superficially mind you, but that won’t stop me from bringing it up) of another film I saw in the past year or so, that has some similarities: it’s set in a school (an American public high school), and a student has afflictions that seem beyond real. In fact, as the story progresses they seem to be of a spiritual/demonic nature. That 2014 film is HIGH SCHOOL EXORCISM (aka HIGH SCHOOL POSSESSION). In that film’s case, the filmmakers made a broader effort at embracing their genre elements and it was a bit misleading, arguably, unless you were speaking metaphorically (am I being vague enough for you, dear annoyed reader?). Although, the ending in that film gets more extreme in behavior towards the end, too. Still, from what I remember (and comparing apples and pears really), THE SILENCED's various elements were handled much better.

Finally, watching this film was a bit of a cultural eye-opener, which I welcomed. Sometimes, you watch foreign genre films and it seems the biggest difference is language. But occasionally, you see some other things that have to be explained. There are some cultural things that we take for granted in this country, because it’s our country and we’re more familiar with its history. So, for instance, the Civil War is part of that knowledge and regional cultural teaching, rightly or wrongly. There are some assumptions we make or are led to believe about the south and southern people, etc., even if it’s a stereotype, sometimes, but we know those stereotypes, because we’ve been taught them or we’ve seen them. So, that sort of similar knowledge that a Korean or Japanese audience has about their own country is lost on us. But, I think it’s cool when a film allows us a bit of a foot (maybe a toe is more acccurate) into one of the doors opening into a country’s history and culture and invites us to open it wider.

And here is the link for Mermaid Heather’s review of THE SILENCED.
Holy cow! I watched the movie AND reviewed it in time for the deadline! I’m gonna buy a lottery ticket!

POSTSCRIPT: Heather and I also did a follow-up conversation about the movie on Facebook messenger. One of the reasons I wanted to do this “film club” with Heather was to also talk about a film that we both have seen while we still remember it. Heather posted our discussion at her blog and you can read it here. NOTE: SPOILER ALERT!


* HAHAHAHA! I used a plural! I kill me!
** Heather has enlisted my help on reviews in the past with mixed results from me. My spirit was enthusiastically willing, but my flesh was weakly inconsistent in the execution. I’ll leave it at that.
*** (No, it’s “someone needs an editor...”)
**** Further confusion. In the film, the subtitles had the spelling of Joo-ran’s name as “Ju-ran” but on IMDb, it’s "Joo-ran.” There’s a number of different spellings, including for some actresses and also the writer/director’s name. I think I tried to keep it consistent to the IMDb spellings, but there’s no guarantee. I’m not used to these Korean names, so I was mostly trying to spell them correctly on top of keeping them straight. That was the intent, at least...

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