By Seo Soo-min
Staff Reporter

SEOUL-The movie "Friend" has become a phenomenon. It premiered on March 3l and swiftly became the most popular Korean film ever. "Friend" is expected to reach 7.5 million tickets sold by the end of this month, meaning that every other adult between l8 and 35 will have seen it.

Signs of the movie’s success can be seen everywhere, from the popularity of the distinctive Pusan dialect, where the movie takes place, to phrases like "Aren’t we friends" or "Friends don’t have things to be sorry about," which apparently left a strong impression on the audience. In short, the movie is creating a fad of its own.

And also debate. Perhaps no other film has received such harsh criticism and raves at the same time. It’s not the same old critic-audience disparity, which leaves the viewers wondering why the renowned critic slashed the Spielberg that they loved so much.

Go over to any Internet bulletin board or alternative media sit these days and one is bound to see discussions on the movie; there are only two creeds, friends and foes of "Friend." Here, the very elements that have made the film a success seem to be the same ones that some deplore the most.

So what is behind the movie’s huge success? And for the stubborn few that still haven’t seen the movie, what is "Friend" about, anyway?

Late l970s, in the port city of Pusan. Three boys who swam along the beaches and played pranks together meet in high school. There’s the fantastic-looking Dong-su, (played by Chang Dong-kon) a regular bad turn, who has some reservations about his best friend Chun-sok (Yu-O-song), who happens to be the best fighter in the whole school.

Then, there’s the third friend and narrator of the story, the good student Sang-taek, who despite briefly flirting with the wild life with his two buddies, ends up going to university and leading a normal life. Dong-su and Chun-sok lead lives of gangsters after dropping out of school, due partly to a fight caused in an attempt to protect Sang-taek.

"Friends don’t have anything to be sorry about," the famous line, is spoken in the scene in which Chun-sok refuses Sang-taek’s offer to run away from home, just after he was kicked out of school.

Throughout the years, the threesome preserve their friendship despite the contrasting lives they lead. They support each other through good and bad, until a tragic twist of fate and misunderstandings leads Chun-sok to kill Dong-su.

Despite the tragic end, the message of the movie seems clear: that such a friendship which has undergone the test of time is the most noble thing of all.

"It made me think, after a long time, of what friendship really means," wrote Kim Jin-suk on the Internet homepage of the movie. Hundreds of similar articles appeared there.

Without doubt, the movie has struck a chord with a large number of people who were eager to receive such a message. The film’s biggest fans are males in their 30s and older, those who are not the typical moviegoer and who had been thirsty for movies that were not meant for twenty-somethings out on a date.

After watching too many tear-jerking movies that often lacked a touch of reality and portrayed middle-class characters living in a fantasyland, many men apparently raved over "Friend," in which more down-to-earth figures spin out a distinctively male story.

"The director (Kwak Kyong-taek) knows what men think, and I am ready to believe him when he said that the film was based on a true experience with his friends," said a netizen who hails from the Pusan area.

The movie’s sensitive depiction of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s also triggered much emotion among the audience. Some remarkable details, such as children running after cars that are spraying pesticides, or teens hanging out in the rollerskating rinks that were a popular venue for dates at the time, are good examples.

It must also be remembered that the ongoing retro fever in Korea helped fuel the movie’s success. From commercials to catwalks, modern Korea is obsessed with its past, and the movie’s very creation was made possible because of this atmospere.

The result? That the film’s audience was reminded of the "good old days," longing for the days when there existed a pure friendship, one that transcended all interests, and something one didn’t need an explanation.

Such an emphasis on protective and unconditional friendship is precisely what critics of the movie base their arguments on. A movie may just be a movie, but the active voices that are at work on Internet sites do not hide their dipleasure at the film’s phenomenal success.

In fact, the movie shows precisely the problems Korea must deal with before going further into the 2lst century, they argue.

First of all, foes of "Friend" criticize the distorted picture of friendship the movie gives to the audience. While there may be some beauty to the unselfishness of the characters in dedicating themselves to their friends, they see little merit in a friendship in which you can even kill for your friend

"I found the emphasis on friendship disturbing; their rule is such that while for friends, no questions will be asked, there is no mercy for outsiders. How similar to our society, where among friends, too much is tolerated," remarked Lee Hyun-jin, a student, after seeing the movie.

Just as Lee said, Korea is basically a country of friends, with everyone from your elementary school buddies to army comrades valuabe assets that can, if you have the chance, bail you out of almost everything, given that they are in the right position.

Regionalism, which is synonymous with the ills of Korea politics, is another kind of friendship that went wrong. Such blind adherence to a group based on region, with litttle regard to the actual beliefs a person might have, has all brought about the catastrophic results that we see in society today.

"That the politicians liked the film is no wonder, since they are the ones used to doing everything for their cronies, and always emphasize the ‘pecking order’ so important in the world of gangs (portrayed in the film)," said Jidun on the Internet. President Kim Dae-jung as well as opposition leader Lee Hoi-chang have both seen the movie. Whereas the former said that the excessive violence in the movie points to people’s frustration with life, the latter jokingly made the remark "Aren’t we friends?" in dialect, of course.

Such a remark might not be all a joke, because Lee hails from the very Kyongsan province where the movie took place, and he more or less takes it for granted that people from the area will support him if he runs as the opposition party candidate in the next presidential race.

The movie’s portrayal of women is another issue that many viewers found disturbing. On top of all the violence and the masochistic bent the movie contains, many viewers asked when, if ever, Korean cinema will break free from the overused metaphor of sexual abuse for virtually everything.

For instance, one of the main incidents that define the movie’s destiny is when Chun-sok invites Sang-taek to "share" his girlfriends. Jin-suk, just about the only notable female figure in the movie, later reappears in the movie as Chun-sok’s wife. When Chun-sok suffers from a drug addiction, the other buddies visit him, and in front of them all Chun-sok openly insults his wife sexually. There is nothing the friends can do, and later on in the movie he simply disappears from the story line.

"The degradation of women is justified because of friendship," said Yu Gina of Dongguk University, a feminist film critic.

"The charismatic image of Yu O-song (who played Dong-su) covers all other ethical faults," she pointed out, warning against the belated revival of a male fantasy, under which category she puts other recent Korean movies such as "Failan" or "The Humanist."

And what did the director, Kwak Kyong-taek say about all the controversy surrounding his megahit? Basically, he said that the violent scenes are not an end to themselves, and should be understood as a cinematic device.

"It’s a film to be seen with the heart, not with the head," Kwak said in a recent magazine interview.

Asked whether his portrayal of the past did not take away the pains of growing up and focused only on the good parts, he answered that it is the tendency of the general public to remember only the beautiful memories of the old days, and also admitted that the last parts of the film were roughly edited.

Thus the regressive quality of the movie seems obvious. It’s a careful step aimed to bask in the memories of the past, selectively ignoring parts one would rather not remember.

From time to time, we all feel the urge to go back to the old days, to rummage through old memories of a bygone era. For those living in the present, which keeps pushing us forward and moving on without looking back, resisting this pressure is itself a small rebellion that almost everyone can afford.

"With the exception of a few, most people unable to improve their wearisome life by themselves try to find some solace in the hazy memories of the past," concedes professor Kang Nae-hee of Chung Ang University, with regard to the popularity of "Friend" and the retro fever that hit Korea last year.

The problem is, no matter how cozy recollections of the past are, they never provide the answer, and can never overrule the agonies of life we are in, he says.

And speaking of the past, wasn’t it the very period when dictatorship oppressed every brethren on the peninsula? Or the Japanese colonial period when things were even worse?

Remember the U.S. movie "Pleasantville," in which the boy longs for the kind of life he sees in the television drama, dreaming of the l950s when things like teenage pregnancy, drugs and divorce were unheard of?

By some miracle, he suddenly finds himself inside the drama, and, alas, once in the society he realizes that behind the veneer of harmony and normalcy, there lurked a bigger kind of evil, the intolerance of difference.

Similarly, the glorification of the present in Korea in the year 200l also masks a past where similar evils such as discrimination against women, the prevalence of violence, both in state and on personal level, abounded.

"With neoliberalist globalization having made our lives even more difficult I dare say that the present is where we start," professor Kang says.

Vigilant with hopes for a better tomorrow, it’s time we left the theater of old friends and started making new acquaintances.