[yasr_overall_rating]
A widowed father and taxi driver takes a German reporter from Seoul to Gwangju to cover the 1980 uprising.
I’m coming off of this one pretty fresh you guys. When I started this movie I had zero expectations. The Blu-ray cover made it sound like a goofy-taxi-driver down on his luck scores the craziest cab ride of his life when he agrees to take a foreigner to Gwang-ju, a city under siege by the military police. I expected, well, I don’t know. What starts out as this grumpy-Taxi-driver-gets-in-over-his-head story, whips around from moment to moment tonally changing. I swear I went from a comedy to a journalism story to a historical drama to a noir to a car chase to, I just don’t know, but that’s in an impressive way.
By setting myself with zero expectations this movie, by and large, succeeds in gripping my emotions. We have a clearly established character in Song Kang-ho who plays the surly driver in all his delirious forms with gusto and often raw emotionality. His companion, a German reporter played by Thomas Kretschmann, practically drags his taxi driver through the military border and into the war zone that is distant South Korea.
Impressively shot (I assume they had a hefty-sized budget) in bright colors through chunks, the movie’s cinematography runs when the story runs and jogs when the story jogs. Within this movie, we see Dutch angles for the raw tension. We get two-shots within the taxi. Most of the Korean countryside looks practically emerald. The conflict lingers with every frame and most importantly of all, the camera never looks away. In fact, this movie lingers on the raw trauma of soldiers shooting down civilians in a way that feels both gratuitous (after the first four shots we get the point) and propaganda-esque. But that’s the thing. This movie just doesn’t know when to quit.
Our story centers on an anonymous taxi driver who ferried this German reporter in and out of war territories. Initially motivated by greed, he overcomes that selfish motivation through a period of getting to know people in Gwan-ju as well as spending some time outside of the city. Emotionally, he connects to each and every one. In an especially vibrant dining scene, our protagonist realizes his German friend (the source of all his trouble thus far) is really just another guy who doesn’t quite have it together. But this movie has to hit ALL the beats. Just when you think the point has been made the camera keeps rolling driving past story and into raw emotion.
It’s funny to me the way we create national myths. Our heroes are our heroes and no other nation can assail our propaganda-level myths despite their best interests. The novelty of this taxi cab driver is his every-man atmosphere. Beautifully captured as a man in debt, with a young daughter to support, who takes a last-ditch job only to find his belief system challenged by what he sees. We witness his struggle to escape, and once he does how does he balance the horror of what he saw (and the duty he has to help the people of Gwang-ju) with his desire to see his daughter again. It’s a beautiful moral dilemma and it occurs halfway through the movie.
I liked watching this film because I felt like an outsider listening to someone telling me a story. Like if a bunch of Americans told tall tales about Davy Crockett to a bunch of Koreans. Nobody has all the facts straight. They all just blend into this seamless vat of fiction that churns out an everyday guy who steps up to be the hero they need him to be (not once, but SEVERAL times.) It serves as a focal point for the violence of that time.
One of the things this movie captures thematically is how terrifying it truly is to be cut off from the rest of your country. What if Denver went dark tomorrow? We never heard from anyone in Denver except rumors there were riots and the city’s been seized by the Army to take back control from criminal elements. Would you believe what you heard? Wouldn’t you wonder? Maybe there’s some truth to the narrative being told? Still, with no way to communicate with them, there’s nothing to stop speculation. This movie examines that idea from both sides: as a city of people forgotten by its country and by a country with nothing to know about its people. Our protagonist straddles both sides and recognizes the true value of reporting this violence to the general public, and that’s where the movie leans heavily on the value of journalism.
As far as political messages, this one’s arguably the most on-the-nose about it all and strangely enough, the least supported by its most appropriate character. Instead of our German reporter delivering the important dogma of journalism, our protagonist has to learn it from his own countrymen when they beg him, on their knees, to tell their story. People need to know. In fact, our German reporter delivers so little that I felt as if I was taking this journey with both of them to fully understand what’s happening.
The raw violence of a coup. The eerie sensation of isolation. The mythical heroism of an everyday taxi driver. The incalculable impact of professional journalism. These are the elements that drive the emotions at play in this film. These themes come hyper-focused through this taxi cab driver so much so that the German Reporter takes a backseat in the story as a crutch. It was kind of nice for a change to see a white man play the emotional aide to an Asian protagonist. I got a little schadenfreude out of that one.
While particularly strong in character work, this movie ends up beating a dead horse a bit. Something tells me the emotions are still strong regarding the events in Gwang—ju in 1980. You can feel it in the way they painfully pan over students being shot by soldiers or the moment the camera lands on the young boy. Remember, we started with a movie about a goofy taxi cab driver trying to make ends meet. Just as his arc brings everything to a close we feel the emotional drama, the movie goes on for another forty minutes paying off more than what they set up. That might be the only thing holding it back from a higher rating. It just languishes in the drama well past the point of narrative cohesion and into the realm of raw emotion. Someone is trying to live out the horrors of their past and we are all driven through it, backseat to this incredible taxi ride.
Available on Blu-ray Tuesday, April 17th
