The Way Home

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

'The Way Home' Review
I just saw this movie at the Korean Cultural Center on Saturday. That was interesting to me since I didn?t know about the center until going to the movie.
I?m giving this movie a rating of 2 thumbs up. I found both the subject and the cinematography great.
It deals with the culture class of a poor woman, the grandmother, living in a very remote village and her grandson from Seoul. The movie shows the humanity of the village life. You don't feel sorry, as so many movies do for the people in the village.
I went to the movie with a friend whose family if from a small village in Mexico. She could totally relate to the movie. She hated the kid at first because of the lack of respect he showed. Then she was mad at the mother for not teaching the kid better.
I think this would be a good movie to show in the classroom because some of the kids definitely could relate their own lives to the lives on the film. I think it would thus show the similarities between the lives of the families of the different nationalities in my classes.
Also on a side note, my friend and I were discussing after the movie, that you didn?t really need the English subtitles to understand the movie. The fact that the grandmother was mute let this happen.
The view of the Korean countryside was great. The times when there was no music so you could hear the countryside was spectacular.
Melody

[Anonymous]

Is it still playing at the Korean Center. Where is the Korean Center? Thanx, Pennie

[clay dube]

The Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles is located on Wilshire Boulevard:

Address: 5505 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036
Phone: 323-936-7141 | 323-936-5712 fax
Open Hours: Monday thru Friday: 9AM - 5PM

http://www.kccla.org/

The film was screened there briefly, but it had a long Los Angeles run earlier. The 2002 film is available on dvd

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00008K76Y/002-3950803-7970457?v=glance

and, therefore, should be available for rent from many outlets.[Edit by="Clay Dube on Oct 11, 4:13:31 PM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

This sounds interesting.....Although i am a year late. I will rent this movie; hopefully they have it at Block Buster or Hollywood video. I definately need to show this to some of my students. It would be interesting for them to compare and contrast their cultures and the Korean, but also help them see that soem of them might need a change.

[Anonymous]

I watched this movie with a large group of Americans, and there were very mixed reactions to the movie . . .
a majority of the viewers found it very touching, but some really couldn't get past very negative feelings about the little boy, and found his behavior even at the end lacking. It was a really interesting look at the results of child-rearing behavior in South Korea, to be sure, and I felt in some ways the director was taking a sly poke at a generation of children who are growing up without much parental discipline (by American standards) Since Korean school life can be very regimented and disciplined, combined with postwar prosperity that made providing material advantages to children possible for parents who in many cases grew up with very little had made for a lax approach to disciplining kids in many households.
I have mixed feelings about the romanticized view of the countryside in this movie . . . I'm glad the director included touches to show just how difficult and isolated rural country life can be (the film was set in a VERY remote part of the mountainous Kangwon province), and it was a realistic representation of how some people in Korea do still live ~ in my host family, the maternal grandmother lived in a somewhat similar situation. I do worry, however, that people outside of Korea will not comprehend the ENORMOUS difference between the exceptionally rural setting of the movie and the very "modern" life most Koreans live. My concern is not to be taken as a criticism of the movie, however ~ I have to say, it's one of the most moving films to come out of Korea. Part of the popularity of the film in Korea is based on the fact that it shows a dissapearing way of life that echos the nostalgia many city-dwellers now feel, and I hope that it's the sense of nostalgia, not an image of backwardness (to which the Korean movie-going public is very sensitive too when the images originate outside of Korea - witness the indignation of the most recent Bond movie), that is transmitted to foreign audiences [Edit by="jflinn on Mar 22, 3:40:49 AM"][/Edit]

[Anonymous]

Seem a nice movie!

I will get hold of it soon.

[Author]

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