A Melody to Remember

The early 1950s, the Korean War. Second Lieutenant Han Sang-yeol leads his platoon and shows nobody the injuries he carries inside. Near the front he comes across a group of children who have lost everything in the war. The children have formed a choir. Sang-yeol tries to protect them, and in time the choir becomes the way to stay standing in the middle of a war. Lee Han's South Korean film rests on the story of a real orphans' choir formed during the war. Yim Si-wan plays the lieutenant and Ko A-sung the woman who looks after the children. The telling does not turn the war into spectacle and does overplay the feeling; even so its subject is clear: it is the children who pay for the war.