When Dave asked me to write about the first three feature films directed and written by Lee-Chang Dong (playing soon at the TIFF Bell Lightbox), my initial reaction was, who? I consider myself a film buff, but I must admit I mostly know about cinema from North America and Europe. Before watching Lee-Chang Dong’s films, I can only recall one or two other South Korean films that I’ve ever seen. However, I’m always excited to explore a filmmaker that I haven’t heard about before, and the films looked appealing.

Green Fish, Peppermint Candy and Oasis have many differences, but they also have their share of similarities. Lee-Chang Dong is clearly interested in characters who are alienated, with society against them, and who have also lost their innocence.

Green Fish is a neo-noir that works beautifully as an homage to the classic  period. The male protagonist (Makdong) is a soldier who has been discharged from the military. He goes back home to find his family struggling, and the business they had gone, replaced by high rise buildings. He takes a dark turn, and dives into the criminal underworld. This leads to him finding a brotherly bond with the leader of his gang. The film explores a doomed protagonist who goes too far to prove his “manhood”, which leads to him being betrayed, and losing the woman he falls in love with. Like many great neo-noir movies, it has everything from dark neon lighting, a bleak world view, apathy, crime, and destruction. It’s deeply moving, as well as visually powerful with the simplest of images.

Peppermint Candy has a narrative device that we’ve seen in other movies. The film goes backwards in time from 1999 to 1979. Here however, we only get fragments of the main character’s (Kim Yeong-ho) life over the course of 20 years. The film explores the question of whether or not life is beautiful, and in this film it certainly isn’t. Like Makdong in Green Fish, Kim Yeong-ho also wants to prove that he is a “man”, and as a result he destroys himself, his family, and he loses everything. We initially sympathise with Kim at the beginning when we see him in distress, but since the film goes backwards, we come to learn, little by little, that he’s been a toxic person, moulded by society, and it’s now too late to go back, and fix the damage he’s caused to himself, and his family.

Oasis is my favourite out of these 3 films. It explores the inability to communicate and the stigmas against mental health issues. In this case the two main characters (Jong-du Hong and Gong ju-Han) literally can’t communicate due to their mental illnesses. Gong ju-Han’s character has cerebral palsy. It isn’t clear what Jong-du Hong has because he doesn’t even know what he has, and the film doesn’t necessarily say he has a mental illness of some kind. His family treats him like a burden and abuses him. They even tried to abandon him. Gong ju-Han is also shuffled around to different apartments within her family, and is treated as if she doesn’t exist. 

What I find the most compelling about the film is that Lee Chang-Dong doesn’t treat Jong-du Hong purely as a victim because he has a criminal record and even tries to rape Gong ju-Han. Lee-Chang Dong doesn’t give any easy answers about him, and the audience is put in a position of making up their own minds about his character. Is he awful or is he mentally ill with no one to help him? Since both characters are alienated and lonely, they form a bond, which gets broken by their families over a misunderstanding, but is left somewhat optimistic in the end, whereas Green Fish and “Peppermint Candy end in tragedy.

Like all great movies, these three films by Lee Chang-Dong leave the audience with moving emotions, compelling characters and themes. He also brings up thought provoking issues about society, mental health, toxic masculinity, among others. In some ways Lee Chang-Dong was ahead of his time with these three films, as these types of topics are more carefully examined today. The beauty of cinema is that filmmakers can use their work to raise awareness, encourage empathy and compassion, and to me, Lee Chang-Dong does all of that beautifully and more.

“The Films of Lee Chang Dong” are beginning a North American Tour and they hit the TIFF Lightbox on May 18th. See the full schedule at this link. And check out my YouTube channel at this link.