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Bereullin (2013)
Now waiting for "The Berlin File - 2"
Be prepared to invest sufficient attention into an arduous story of North- and South-Korean secret service affairs. Mostly North-Korean, because they are the main characters of the story.
"Chekism" (see Wikipedia for definition), triggered in North Korea by the USSR intrusion, is a sort of state-mediated robbery and state-provided terrorism in favor of Pharaoh's family and a narrow circle of his guards and buddies. Having being deprived of usual and legal economical levers, chekist state can only evolve through criminal activities of any kind. Consequently, all people, engaged in these activities, are criminals by definition - by the very fact of their participation, whether it is conscious or not. Nature doesn't care if something happens consciously or not, it just records the instances. The resulting outcome is equitable on a large time scale: those, who participate in crime, have no further chances to participate in evolution. This simple (though not evident) law of nature is not declared explicitly, but in many South-Korean films it's pronounced rather distinctly. And this is what makes them always sensible, yet often unexpected.
Sinsegye (2013)
Subtle, ironic and full of ambiguity
Brilliant movie, definitely one of the best in a row of other Korean masterpieces of the last decade -- such as "The Front Line" (2011), "The Host" (2006), "Crossing" (2008), "The Foul King" (2000), "Santamaria" (2008)...
Hoon-Jung Park has created the whole 'New World' for his audience, where everybody can find his own senses and accents. I watched it four times, just to catch all these nuances, embedded into the fabric of the story. Finally, you are ready to cry at what you were beginning to laugh at, and vice versa. I give it 10 out of 10, because am not able to invent any improvements to this full-fledged performance. Current generation of Korean directors, scriptwriters and actors is definitely a product of a self-contained school, whose distinctive feature is, so to say, Uncertainty. There are no bad guys or good guys, you are free to rearrange your sympathies until the last film shot, and even further. Just like an ordinary life, which teaches us not to be rigid and inexorable, Korean film school shows us, very inventive, ironic and gently, all the variety of circumstances and reactions.