Guest Post: Dan Bielefeld Goes to a Screening of “Crossing” at the National Assembly

[Update: Apologies — I had Dan’s name misspelled before.]

I met Dan Bielefeld at a LiNK event in Washington two years ago, and he has been living in Seoul since shortly thereafter. After Dan’s excellent photography of the Chinese riot in Seoul last month, I invited him to guest-post here. He was recently invited to a screening of “Crossing” at the Korean National Assembly, and here is review. Since this is Dan’s first post, I’ll introduce him this time.

=============

I saw Crossing today. Just last week I had been disappointed to learn the original release date of June 5 was pushed back — so I was thinking I’d have to wait another month to see it — and then suddenly a friend invited me to a big showing for the National Assembly this afternoon (at the 국회 의원회관, which is next to the National Assembly building).

We got there maybe 10 minutes before the program began, and there were already people standing in the aisles. Through some luck, we ended up with front-row seats (basically the big-wigs only occupied them before the movie began). Before the movie Dr. Vollertsen apparently was sitting next to the older brother of the president and a few seats over from Park Geun-Hye (who, along with a few other people, spoke briefly before the movie). Dr. V with a smile remarked to me afterwards on the nature of Korean politics that yesterday he was briefly arrested in front of the Blue House and today he was patted on the knee by the president’s brother!

Park Geun-hye’s entrance generates a lot of attention.

Crossing, as others have said, is very moving. Yet, as affected as I was, there were two reasons I don’t think I felt the “punch” quite so much as I would have otherwise. First, much of the main storyline is based on the experiences of an extraordinary man who comes to the weekly 444 demonstrations in Insadong, so I roughly knew what was going to happen. And, second, I was sitting next to (the only other?) non-Koreans and we were frequently given translations by a Korean friend. Normally, I prefer watching movies without commentary or other interruption, of course, so it sort of broke the mood for me, if you will.

The director, Kim Tae-gyun, speaks briefly before showing his movie.

That said, I cried several times; I doubt there were any present who didn’t at some point. As someone pointed out afterwards, the director intentionally included very little politics in the movie; it’s just the story of a man trying to help his family. This makes it all the more powerful. The script, the acting, and most aspects of the movie (it was shot in three countries) are excellent, though I thought the music was so-so.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to people in the crowd today to see what they thought, though I suspect many of them were like us; ie, they already are aware of / active in NK issues or at least politics in general. Those I went with all thought it was very good — including the North Korean among us, who said it reminded him of many things he went through in getting to South Korea.

So the stage is set. The movie is good, there’s a well-known star, Cha In-pyo, in the lead roll, and fingers-crossed that the marketing will be sufficient”¦now the real question is how will the Korean public react, if at all, when the movie is released June 26th? A few weeks ago I started asking Koreans if they’d heard of it yet, and most of them hadn’t. But now it appears the media campaign is getting going. For example, last night apparently there was a big promotional gathering in Jamsil with entertainers, singers, etc. Eg, see photos here. Also, late last night I happened to see Cha In-pyo interviewed on a Charlie Rose-type interview show on KBS.

I heard there is a showing this Friday at 2pm at COEX for the western media, so English subtitles will be shown. I may try to go to that so I can pick up more of the nuance.