Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet

Korea under Japanese occupation. Dong-ju writes poetry. His cousin Mong-gyu chooses organising; to him, writing poems changes nothing. The two grew up together, studied together and went to Japan together. There Dong-ju studies literature, goes on writing in Korean and cannot publish; publishing in Korean is forbidden. Then both are arrested. The interrogation sections are the narrative's present, and the past opens backwards from there. Lee Joon-ik directs. Kang Ha-neul plays Dong-ju and Park Jeong-min plays Mong-gyu. The person at the centre is real: Yun Dong-ju is among the most read poets in Korea and died in prison in Japan; his poems were published after his death. The film was shot in black and white on a low budget, a choice both aesthetic and economic. The opposition the narrative builds is action against writing; the film places neither above the other and shows that both cousins paid. The poems are read as narration and the texts come directly from the poet's own work. The section on medical experiments in the prison rests on historical claims and is shown directly. It was an unexpected commercial success in Korea and the poet's collection returned to the bestseller lists. Who it is for: viewers who like historical biography and plain telling. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, little happens, and some sections are closed to anyone without a knowledge of the poetry.