David Tizzard is a professor at Seoul Women’s University, holds a PhD in Korean Studies, and hosts the Korea Deconstructed podcast. He has lived and worked in Seoul for more than two decades. Reach him at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.
The subversive optimism of 'Castaway on the Moon'
A scene from "Castaway on the Moon" / Courtesy of Netflix
By David A. Tizzard
Contemporary Korean cinema and dramas have become synonymous with a certain brand of high-octane bleakness. Color-graded trauma porn, 4K nightmares about gapjil, psychological torture, zombies, rape and an omnipresent sense of societal rot. Then, there is Lee Hae-jun’s "Castaway on the Moon (2009)."
To watch it is to experience friction against modernity. You will be immediately struck by the wonderful blues and greens. The color and cinematography by Kim Byung-seo is fantastic. As is Jung Jae-young’s face, which gives you fear, disbelief, happiness and boredom all perfectly.
But most importantly, I love that it is a film that refuses to treat mental illness as a commodified set-piece. It doesn’t want to you suffer. It wants you to heal. It dares to approach the fragility of the human condition with color, jazz, humor and, perhaps most radically, a genuine empathy that warms the heart without ever becoming marshmallow-sticky. It is a masterpiece of gentle subversion — the religious metaphors and social criticism stand alongside the numerous poop jokes. It tells you that boredom can be perfect.
The geography of isolation
The premise is deceptively simple: A salaryman, stripped of his dignity by crushing debt, leaps from a Seoul bridge only to find himself stranded on a small, vegetation-choked island in the middle of the Han River. He cannot swim and therefore the absurdity is realized. He is surrounded by 10 million people and yet furiously alone. The metaphor of late-stage capitalism brought to film.
Initially, the island prison is a nightmare. But as the film unfolds, it transmutes into a sanctuary. For the protagonist, "Male Kim," the island is the first place he has ever been truly permitted to exist outside the coercive gaze of the urban machine. For better or worse, he is the master of his own small, muddy domain. Having failed in another suicide attempt, he removes his suit and tie, the latter serving as an urban noose, and becomes instead free. He now resembles Jesus with his beard and headband while, at the same time, acting like Buddha. He tastes the salvia flowers and begins life anew.
Then there is the other side of the moon: "Female Kim," a hikikomori played by the captivating Jung Ryeo-won. Her connection to humanity is mediated by a laptop screen and the long-distance gaze of a telescope. Afraid of the outside world, disfigured somewhat in her face, she has retreated into a virtual world and created a series of online avatars possessing designer goods and luxurious lifestyles. Her life is just as much a mess as Mr. Kim’s was. Yet she has one solace: looking at the moon. She photographs it, watches it wax and wane. She also comes alive twice a year when the country performs a civil defense drill and everyone in the city has to stop. When they do, she pores over the empty streets and parks through her lens, imagining a life without people. As she does this, she encounters Mr. Kim on his island. Standing naked. Shouting at the city, waving his willy at the millions of oblivious windows opposite. Oblivious except one.
Symmetry in solitude
What makes the film so elegant is the way it orchestrates their inevitable convergence. These are two lost souls whose trauma has been shaped by modern expectation. Their meeting is an arduous, slow-motion negotiation of humanity. The word “hello” written in English — one word — suddenly carries the existential weight of an entire life. “I’m fine” becomes a message to the world and the self. They literally and metaphorically bring light and hope into each other’s life.
Because while they are talking to each other through the outrageously absurd method of writing in sand and the other lobbing bottles from a bridge while dressed in a motorcycle helmet, it’s almost as if they are talking to themselves. And, more than that, they are talking to God/the universe/tian. When you are alone on an island, you look to the sky. You ask why you are here. You seek answers to existence. The island functions almost like a monastery for Mr. Kim. He strips away desire. He grows food. He lets go of status. Then when the rain comes and washes away all his hard work he screams “Fuck you” into the void (or at least writes it in the sand). Mr. Kim does all of this as the film stabs at our evolutionary past and our explorations of religion. “Birds taste better than fish. Maybe evolution is a process of becoming tastier,” he says.
Male Kim, once terrified of the water, learns to cultivate his own existence; he learns that hope, when combined with the desire for a bowl of jajangmyeon (black bean noodles), can taste like heaven. It suggests that even amongst the garbage of a capitalist society, two people can reach out across the impossible distance of their respective islands and find a signal. That love is axiomatic.
This film is art. Moving as a picture that moves. Presenting emotions that can’t be explained through words. But more than anything it’s a feeling. An exploration of what it means to be alive in an age that demands we be productive. As Henry Miller once noted, "To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself."
Castaway on the Moon is a film about finding a way to stay. It reminds me of Wong Kar Wai’s "Chungking Express", Park Chan-wook’s “I’m A Cyborg…”, “Amelie” and “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” (at least for the music and color) And if that isn’t reason enough to watch this, I’m not sure what else is.