Korean Movie Set in Vietnam War
There are a couple of Korean movies that have hit it big this summer. My wife and I caught one of them last Sunday. Titled ‘My Love is Far Away’ (though it appears to be marketed as ‘Sunny’ in English), it’s the story of a young woman who travels to Vietnam to find her husband shortly after he ships out with the Korean army to fight. It’s out of duty, rather than love, that she goes.
Until I came to Korea, I never knew the country had sent soldiers to fight in the Vietnam War. Over the years, I’ve met a handful of the 320,000 who fought. It was not their war, but they were proud of their service. As far as I know, this is the first Korean movie to deal with their sacrifices.
The movie begins in 1971, a period when Korean culture had yet to let go of many traditional practices. Once a woman married, she no longer was part of her father’s family. She belonged to her husband’s family from that day forward. Wives usually lived with their in-laws, especially if her husband was the only or eldest son. When we first meet Soon Ae, singing a song to some local women who are taking a break from hard work in the rice fields, we find her in just that situation.
The husband, Sang Il, is off doing his mandatory military service. Soon Ae makes regular visits to him at the urging of her mother-in-law in order to produce a son. She’s reluctant, but dutiful. There’s no love between her and Sang Il. He still has a thing for an old flame. The visits are awkward and tense.
Eventually, Sang Il is shipped off to Vietnam. His mother, desperate at the thought of losing her only son, packs her belongings in preparation to go and find him. Ultimately, Soon Ae bids her to stay and insists on going in her stead. Again, it is out of a sense of duty, and perhaps guilt at her mother-in-laws taunts, that she does so. But once she decides, she’s all in and is determined to let nothing get in her way.
Soon Ae learns that its generally impossible civilians to travel to the war zone. Then she discovers that entertainers are allowed to go. After first being rebuffed by an agency that arranges such trips, she is aided by a conman named Jung Man. He needs a new singer for the band he intends to take to Vietnam. Having been there before, he’s now in debt and looking to make a wad of money on another trip. And so Soon Ae’s adventure begins.
I’ve not seen many Korean movies that I really thought were good. Most of the ones I’ve seen suffered from poor acting, silly stories, and poor direction. So I went in to this one with low expectations. I can say I was pleasantly surprised.
The acting is fantastic. Soo Ae, who plays Soon Ae, is great. But the performance by Jung Jin Young, who plays Jung Man, is outstanding. Even as we see the transition in Jung Man’s attitude toward Soon Ar (whom he names ‘Sunny’ for the benefit of the American troops for whom he wants her to perform), we never lose sight of the heart of the character. The guy is still a greedy con man, even as he begins to sympathize with Soon Ae and to see her as more than just an object to make money for him. Really, a superb performance. The only really bad acting in the whole film came from the western extras they hired to play American soldiers. Not much anyone can do about that, though.
I honestly expected the story to be silly. The previews of the movie looked great, but I was sure the story would be a let down. I was way, way wrong. To be fair, there were three or four scenes that I found to be ridiculous or unbelievable. But overall, the story flowed well, was plausible, and, more importantly, achieved suspension of disbelief well enough that the movie just flew by. It clocked in at just over two hours, but I wouldn’t have known it without a watch.
Kudos also to the director, Lee Jun Ik. He managed to pull the best out of his actors while crafting an environment that seemed quite real. There were a few quirks that ruined a couple of otherwise good scenes. Particularly, in scenes where there was fighting going on, he didn’t coordinate the background well enough. It was really bad in one scene where a Korean army encampment fell under a surprise bombardment while Soon Ae and the band were performing. It’s obvious Lee was going for chaos, but he really overdid it. The soldiers were running aimlessly all over the place, with people getting blown up in areas that had already cleared out, areas where they seemed to have no particular reason to be. It was horribly distracting. But a few little nits like that don’t ruin the whole movie.
If you get a chance to see it, I recommend it. Now I’m looking forward to seeing the other big Korean hit of the summer, ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Weird’. Perhaps it’s the first in a new genre of Kimchi Westerns!