WELCOME TO OUR NEXT SCREENING
Lee Chang-dong's
PEPPERMINT CANDY
(박하사탕, Bakha Satang)
(South Korea | 1999 | 130 mins | R16 violence, sexual material, suicide & offensive language)
Wednesday 17 September, 7.00PM, University of Otago’s Castle 1 Lecture Theatre**
(Please do note the early start time!)
This powerful and compassionate early feature by novelist-turned-director Lee Chang-dong examines Korea’s turbulent recent past through the life of one desperate man. |
|
| | “Peppermint Candy spans 20 years—from 1979 to 1999—in the life of its protagonist Yong-ho, from naïve and optimistic adolescence to venomous, self-hating middle age… Filmmaker Lee Chang-dong makes it clear that Yong-ho is in large part responsible for his own moral and spiritual decay, but he identifies one traumatic episode (his military service at the time of the Kwangju massacre in 1980) as a trigger and assigns a pernicious supporting role to the state’s culture of authoritarianism and corruption. |
| It adds up to a devastating indictment of the many mistakes Korea has made as it lurches towards democracy, but the focus on one man (brilliantly played by Sul Kyung-gu, who shot to stardom overnight) gives the film a very humane dramatic centre. Better yet, the inspired decision to tell the story in reverse chronology turns the film into a very moving and sometimes very disturbing quest for Yong-ho’s lost innocence” (Tony Rayns, Vancouver International Film Festival 2000). |
|
FURTHER REVIEW
"But even as Lee’s films are known for their desolation, we see other moods surface as characters attempt to coexist with their despair. These bursts of tonal variance are felt not only through small moments of levity — a character driving into a breathtaking dusk, another chancing on riverside flowers — but in the way Lee asks us to ride out the arc of a character’s grief or rage. No pain can crest forever. What happens after the chest-heaving betrayals, the weeks of violent sobbing?
For Lee’s characters, attempts to |
reclaim agency begin with the search for another way of seeing, some perceptual shift to anchor them to life again, even if it risks newer complications, even if such meaning yields further crises. It takes the form of religious faith for Secret Sunshine’s Shin-ae, poetic expression for Poetry’s Mi-ja, fantasies of high life for Burning’s Hae-mi. Tellingly, Lee never ends a film with some conclusive gesture towards brighter days to come. His films are attuned to the mercurial effects of life’s ongoingness, sentiments that surface not as hope, but something more banal and precious". |
|
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Finally, watch K-Film experts (Jason Bechervaise & Pierce Conran) talk about Peppermint Candy. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
ABOUT THE DUNEDIN FILM SOCIETY
ADMISSION
Free to members.
TO JOIN
To purchase a Half Season membership:- complete a membership form from our website and pay by online bank transfer (06-0942-0696013-00);
- or join at the door before any screening (cash only).
- you can also join at the OUSA office reception at the University of Otago (cash only).
Alternatively, you can purchase a Three-Film sampler ($25), which can be also be shared to bring two friends to one screening. The sampler does not expire and can be used over multiple years.
Membership includes generous discounts at Rialto Cinemas (from Monday to Friday); and FREE entry to the 2025 screenings of all other affiliated New Zealand Film Societies. Each member is entitled to ONE FREE GUEST ADMISSION to a single screening.
**To get to the Castle 1 Theatre: walk up between the University of Otago’s Arts building (Burns) and Information Services building (Central Library), on Albany Street.
WE WELCOME YOUR FEEDBACK!... on this screening, or any other Dunedin Film Society showing, on dunedinfi...@gmail.com –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– |
|
| | |
|
