Aimless Bullet

Yu Hyun-mok's 1961 Korean film follows the disintegration of a family in post-war Seoul. Cheol-ho, an accountant, is too poor to have a tooth pulled; his brother, wounded in the war, cannot find work, his sister turns to American soldiers, and their mother raves about returning north. The story takes each of these figures to the bottom. The film follows a path close to Italian neorealism but leaves no room at all for hope. The military government pulled it from screens on the grounds that it made the reconstruction period look bleak; it was shown two years later, in 1963, at the San Francisco Film Festival. It is now counted among the most important films in Korean cinema. Because of the condition of surviving prints, the sound quality of the available version is poor. Who it's for: viewers interested in the history of Korean cinema and post-war realism. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a hopeful ending, or who will find stories of poverty and collapse heavy.