Movie Review: Chunhyang

by refresh_daemon

Director Im Kwon-taek‘s Chunhyang is a notable film for many reasons. Principally, it is perhaps the most formalistically adventurous works from the director, nearing his hundredth film. It is also one in a long line of adaptations of the Joseon-era pansori, “Chunhyangga,” perhaps one of the best known and most widely appreciated traditional folk story-songs in Korea.

The legend of Chunhyang has a long reach in the Korean arts: in addition to continuing performance by pansori artists even today, the story has been adapted into written, drawn and cinematic media, including over a dozen feature film adaptations. Furthermore, the story continues to inspire tertiary works like the television drama Delightful Girl Chun-hyang as well as cinematic narrative deconstructions like The Servant.

Hailing originally from 17th or 18th century Joseon, Chunhyangga is a story that bears some similarities to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet because of a forbidden romance and secret wedding. However, the story itself is more of a protest against the perversion of Confucian ideals into an unjust class system and abuse of power, having been conceived under the strict hierarchical Confucian-influenced Joseon society, a five-century-long dynasty that is the direct predecessor to modern Korea. And perhaps because the strains of hierarchical Confucian-inspired culture continue to affect Koreans to this day, the story of Chunhyang remains popular to this day.

The titular Chunhyang (Lee Hyo-jeong) is a daughter of a courtesan and a governor. Because only being the offspring of two nobles in Joseon society gave you noble status and courtesans were considered peasant servants, despite their court skills, Chunhyang herself is of the servant class. While normally even being the illegitimate offspring of a noble would afford Chunhyang and her mother Wolmae (Kim Seong-nyeo) some benefit and comforts, he passed away, leaving the pair to their own devices.

But the story actually begins from the viewpoint of the present governor’s son, Lee Mongryong (Jo Seung-woo), a studious, talented, and earnest, if arrogant, youth. One day, he gets permission to take a day trip and heads off to a pavilion for inspiration when he spies Chunhyang on a swing and approaches her as a courtesan. But having been raised by her mother like a noble, despite her lowly status, she resists him and demands that he marry her and promise eternal fidelity if he truly desires a relationship with her. Won over by both her intellect and beauty, he consents to an instant marriage, but in secret because of possible disowning by his parents.

As the newlyweds engage in post-nuptial affections, their relationship is put to the test when Mongryong’s father is promoted to the king’s cabinet in Seoul. Mongryong cannot take Chunhyang with him because if his marriage to a peasant is discovered, he will be disowned, leaving him a vagabond. So he promises that he will study hard for three years and pass the royal examination, gaining a position in the king’s government, and then return for Chunhyang.

Unfortunately, after a bitter farewell, a new governor (Lee Jeong-hun) arrives and desires Chunhyang, whose beauty is renowned in Namwon, and orders her to submit to him as a peasant should to a noble. However, Chunhyang rebels, affirming her duty as a wife to remain faithful to Mongryong and questioning why Governor Byun would ask her to break the one of the five major Confucian relationships. Enraged by her throwing the very fundamentals on which his whole power rests in his face and by her intelligent defiance, he orders her beaten and sentences her to death.

Meanwhile, Mongryong passes the government test with highest marks, becomes the king’s emissary and is sent back to Jeolla province, where he left Chunhyang three years ago, to report on the state of the kingdom in the guise of a vagabond noble, arriving in Namwon on the eve of Governor Byun’s birthday celebration and Chunhyang’s execution.

The story itself is clearly a criticism of the abuse of power by the noble class, especially as we see Byun and his chief officials use their power for selfish gain while Mongryong reaffirms the basis of the system by claiming that the officials and Byun were supposed to use their power to benefit the whole populace rather than for personal gain. Along the same lines, the story also critiques the separation of the classes as well, making the listener root for the cross-class relationship between the two.

It’s not a complicated story and it’s obvious why regular folk, both in the past and now, have an appreciation for the story as it speaks to the abuse of power of the elite at the expense of the average person, both on an individual and class level. At the same time, the story retains some rather patriarchal modes of thinking, including the value of female chastity, the place of a woman as a daughter, wife and mother before an individual, as well as not criticizing Mongryong’s aggressive behavior when it comes to his initial interaction with Chunhyang, eventually making Chunhyang a damsel in distress.

But for the times, this story was probably still a bit of a provocative statement, given the power of the class system of the time, and it makes sense that such criticism came from the folk form of pansori over some courtly writing.

For Im Kwon-taek, the choice to make a film about this classic tale is appropriate given his deep art-film exploration of traditional Korean culture starting in the 1980’s and especially given his enormous success with his previous pansori film, Sopyonje. And Chunhyang, being one of the most beloved of the surviving pansori epics, is an obvious choice for him.

But for Im, it wasn’t enough just to relate the tale of Chunhyang as it had been done too many times before, so instead he chooses to reframe the narrative in the context of an actual pansori show. The film opens with the pansori performer reciting part of the Chunhyang pansori before we see a bunch of students heading into the show on a class assignment, but clearly unenthusiastic about sitting down for a five hour recitation.

The exterior story and audience reaction to the show is rather blunt in its message about valuing the traditional arts, but rather ineffective. It undermines its message since much of the strength of this adaptation of Chunhyang comes from the cinematic interpretation, not the actual pansori performance, which is provided both in cuts to the actual performance and the audience reaction and also in voice-over narration.

For example, the point of heartbreak for Chunhyang as she reacts to Mongryong’s news about having to leave Chunhyang behind doesn’t feature the pansori singer at all and in the wake of her first winter without her husband, Im provides a visual alternative interpretation of the actual text. That the power of these moments rely on the cinematic interpretation, it renders the argument about the value of pansori null.

Im uses the pansori voice-over primarily as a transition device from the exterior narrative of the performance to the interior narrative of the Chunhyang story, and its effectiveness is hit or miss. When Mongryong’s servant Bangja (Kim Hak-yong) goes to retrieve Chunhyang, Im chooses to directly visualize the narrator’s words and the effect simply feels redundant. We are hearing and seeing at the same time and it seems unnecessary. On the other hand, a different running scene occurs where the pansori singer is narrating a conversation of some guards going to bring Chunhyang to an audience and in this scene, Im chooses to simply show the guards running, the pansori singer speaking their thoughts about Chunhyang’s uppity attitude and giving voice to what was unseen. This works.

While I applaud Im for exploring this formal space, he doesn’t quite have a subtle enough hand to pull it off consistently and when he provides the collision of aural and visual redundancies, especially when the characters onscreen are speaking the same words that the pansori singer is narrating on the audio track, it simply becomes jarring, breaking the fourth wall in a rather unpleasant way.

Interestingly enough, the moments in the film that are most convincing all happen in the first half of the film as Chunhyang and Mongryong amorously initiate their marriage through and especially during the fallout when Mongryong leaves Chunhyang. In these cinematic moments, Im’s style is at its peak and even works well with the pansori voice-over. While the more intellectual critique of the abuse of power is still convincing, it’s simply a drier, less personal story and not as effective.

Although the film’s beautiful cinematography and direction highlights some of the exquisite production and art design, it also struggles with some jerky editing from time to time. The prestige that Im earned through multiple international film festival competitions seems to have given him a lot more budget to work with and it’s all up there on the screen, although the actual film stock and some of the actual crane and dolly work is still subject to Chungmuro’s limitations on the cusp of the Korean cinematic renaissance.

I think this all comes together to make Chunhyang a frequently beautiful and occasionally moving experience, but also a highly uneven one. Framing the story within a pansori show isn’t always effective because it sometimes results in some distractingly redundant voice-over, and the external performance, especially as the camera turns back on the audience, is overly prescriptive and rings a bit hollow. It would have worked better if we only saw the pansori performers from the perspective of the audience. As for the story of Chunhyang itself, Im presents it well, especially in the second and third acts, thanks to a healthy dose of interpretation, but for those already familiar with the tale, you’re not getting anything novel here outside of the incorporation of pansori.

A final kudo to Lee Hyo-jeong for her portrayal of Chunhyang. There isn’t much space for her to fill out the archetypal character, but she manages to convince especially as a young lover and in her moments of heartbreak.

Because of the uneven framing of the narrative in a pansori show, I hesitate to give Chunhyang a recommendation without reservations. If you don’t like pansori, you’re going to find this film unbearable and even if you do like pansori, the film’s use of voice-over sometimes works and sometimes it doesn’t. However, if you can get past the occasional unsuccessful intrusions of the pansori show into the story and can deal with the sometimes antiquated traditional story, Im Kwon-taek’s Chunhyang can still be quite an affecting couple hours. 7/10.

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