Night Flight
Openly gay Korean director Leesong Hee-il's revisits LGBT themes from his other movies, such as blog favourite No Regret, in his 2014 film Night Flight. His portrayal of gay experience from a uniquely Korean perspective and distinctive direction makes his work highly watchable. But his warping of his stories under the magnifying glass of the strictures of Korean society can make his fatalistic view of homophobia and anti-gay violence tough to stomach at times. Night Flight is monumentally grim, despite its deceptively pretty BL-style high school promotional poster, but it's no less riveting for that.
Summary: Three friends since junior high are now in senior school, but they are steadily growing apart. Yong-Ju is secretly gay and tries to keep a low profile, hoping to cruise through school more or less unnoticed by the bullies and bad teachers, not liked but not disliked either. He's had a crush on strong, silent Gi-Woong ever since junior high, but they are now completely alienated by Gi-Woong's status as senior bully and violent gang leader. Nerdy overweight Gi-Taek still hangs around with Yong-Ju and bears the brunt of the bullying. When Go-Woong steals Yong-Ju's bicycle to escape some thugs, Yong-Ju pesters him repeatedly to return it, following him everywhere. Gi-Woong tries to ignore him, but deep down he knows the real reason for the persistence.
God, I loved this film, but it doesn't make it easy. Leesong Hee-il's practice of placing his characters within brutally oppressive social settings often feels exaggerated and excessive. Night Flight has three distinct types as its main characters, but the harrowing horror show of a savage school life, unhappy families, and repeated physical and psychological violence unravels each character and remoulds their hearts into stone. The key turning point in any other movie would generally be how they react to the pressure. But this is a Hee-il movie, and no one makes a good decision, even when it feels like it's the right one to make. The world turns upside down, regardless. As a result, this movie ends up being an uncontrollable descent into hell.
I often wonder why the director chooses this path for his movies. Does the exaggerated fatalism help him underline how abhorrently Korean society treats those it views as outsiders? Does such a deathly backdrop set its characters into starker relief? It regularly feels as if his world has no place for free will, and where love is the only saving grace. He puts pieces of clay as characters on a stage and then the gods strike them down, one by one, with an inevitability that destroys the soul. It's the ruthlessness of the situation that drives the story forward, not the characters' futile reactions to it. You have a lonely gay character? Expect him to be beaten to a pulp (or worse), then end up desolate, hopeless and loveless. You have an adult? Make them bitterly resent the corruption of the people who have populated their failed lives, and then stand back as they take out their anger on the children around them. You have a bully with a conscience? Watch him as he violently ruins the lives of his schoolmates anyway, because it's expected of him. You have a school system that invokes the critical importance of exam scores above everything else? See how many children collapse under the pressure and commit suicide. Night Flight does all of these things and then some. Life is just meant to be like this, there's no other way to live it. Experiencing the horrifying inevitability of such an unrelentingly oppressive and violent death spiral in his movies makes you numb and sick, but I also feel purged watching his movies. Somehow, through all the tragedy, love still survives.
Because there's so little in the way of happiness and lightness in his movies, the viewer really needs something more positive to cling onto to be able to keep watching. Fortunately, when you exclude its cruel narrative and characters, just about everything else in the movie more than compensates. The most impressive feat of this movie (and his movies in general) is the gentle, lyrical beauty that can be found in its direction and its magnificent cinematography. Scene after scene takes your breath away with astonishing images and compositions that barely draw attention to themselves but create an ethereal atmosphere of isolation that places them high above the horrors happening around them. A bike ride to a quiet marshland on a sunny day. Hiding in a darkened alleyway to avoid thugs, knowing that the person you love is also hiding, barely visible, in the shadows next to you. The swaying shadow of a tree branch on a bedroom wall at night, seen through open curtains flowing gently in the breeze. Watching a neighbour hang out their laundry through the prism of a plastic water bottle. Switching on fairy lights at night and gasping with joy at the simplicity of its charm. This alternate world is the one we wish the characters could live in forever. It gives us a taste of the beauty of life's smallest but greatest moments and what it means to share such simple pleasures with someone you love. I'll keep coming back to Hee-il's movies for exactly this reason.
Rating: 16 out of 20
Ending: I'm not sure if you can call it happy, but it's relatively happy compared to what's gone before it.
Best scene: the absolutely horrifying moment when Gi-Woong cracks and unleashes furiously is unforgettable. He's completely out of his mind with rage, and he brings down the wrath of God on everyone. It's legitimately terrifying and so impressive, and also brilliantly directed and filmed.
Summary: Three friends since junior high are now in senior school, but they are steadily growing apart. Yong-Ju is secretly gay and tries to keep a low profile, hoping to cruise through school more or less unnoticed by the bullies and bad teachers, not liked but not disliked either. He's had a crush on strong, silent Gi-Woong ever since junior high, but they are now completely alienated by Gi-Woong's status as senior bully and violent gang leader. Nerdy overweight Gi-Taek still hangs around with Yong-Ju and bears the brunt of the bullying. When Go-Woong steals Yong-Ju's bicycle to escape some thugs, Yong-Ju pesters him repeatedly to return it, following him everywhere. Gi-Woong tries to ignore him, but deep down he knows the real reason for the persistence.
God, I loved this film, but it doesn't make it easy. Leesong Hee-il's practice of placing his characters within brutally oppressive social settings often feels exaggerated and excessive. Night Flight has three distinct types as its main characters, but the harrowing horror show of a savage school life, unhappy families, and repeated physical and psychological violence unravels each character and remoulds their hearts into stone. The key turning point in any other movie would generally be how they react to the pressure. But this is a Hee-il movie, and no one makes a good decision, even when it feels like it's the right one to make. The world turns upside down, regardless. As a result, this movie ends up being an uncontrollable descent into hell.
I often wonder why the director chooses this path for his movies. Does the exaggerated fatalism help him underline how abhorrently Korean society treats those it views as outsiders? Does such a deathly backdrop set its characters into starker relief? It regularly feels as if his world has no place for free will, and where love is the only saving grace. He puts pieces of clay as characters on a stage and then the gods strike them down, one by one, with an inevitability that destroys the soul. It's the ruthlessness of the situation that drives the story forward, not the characters' futile reactions to it. You have a lonely gay character? Expect him to be beaten to a pulp (or worse), then end up desolate, hopeless and loveless. You have an adult? Make them bitterly resent the corruption of the people who have populated their failed lives, and then stand back as they take out their anger on the children around them. You have a bully with a conscience? Watch him as he violently ruins the lives of his schoolmates anyway, because it's expected of him. You have a school system that invokes the critical importance of exam scores above everything else? See how many children collapse under the pressure and commit suicide. Night Flight does all of these things and then some. Life is just meant to be like this, there's no other way to live it. Experiencing the horrifying inevitability of such an unrelentingly oppressive and violent death spiral in his movies makes you numb and sick, but I also feel purged watching his movies. Somehow, through all the tragedy, love still survives.
Because there's so little in the way of happiness and lightness in his movies, the viewer really needs something more positive to cling onto to be able to keep watching. Fortunately, when you exclude its cruel narrative and characters, just about everything else in the movie more than compensates. The most impressive feat of this movie (and his movies in general) is the gentle, lyrical beauty that can be found in its direction and its magnificent cinematography. Scene after scene takes your breath away with astonishing images and compositions that barely draw attention to themselves but create an ethereal atmosphere of isolation that places them high above the horrors happening around them. A bike ride to a quiet marshland on a sunny day. Hiding in a darkened alleyway to avoid thugs, knowing that the person you love is also hiding, barely visible, in the shadows next to you. The swaying shadow of a tree branch on a bedroom wall at night, seen through open curtains flowing gently in the breeze. Watching a neighbour hang out their laundry through the prism of a plastic water bottle. Switching on fairy lights at night and gasping with joy at the simplicity of its charm. This alternate world is the one we wish the characters could live in forever. It gives us a taste of the beauty of life's smallest but greatest moments and what it means to share such simple pleasures with someone you love. I'll keep coming back to Hee-il's movies for exactly this reason.
Rating: 16 out of 20
Ending: I'm not sure if you can call it happy, but it's relatively happy compared to what's gone before it.
Best scene: the absolutely horrifying moment when Gi-Woong cracks and unleashes furiously is unforgettable. He's completely out of his mind with rage, and he brings down the wrath of God on everyone. It's legitimately terrifying and so impressive, and also brilliantly directed and filmed.
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