Introduction
Korean popular culture experienced a renaissance starting in about the mid-90s. This renaissance first started in music but quickly spread over to movies, TV dramas, and etc. If I look back, it is not surprising the phenomenon happened at that moment in time. Not only did the long ruling military government silently fade away into history but the Korean economy was riding high for about a decade prior to that moment. Thus, it was the time for a cultural blossoming to happen like never before.
However, you cannot have a renaissance come out of nowhere. In the case of the Korean pop cultural renaissance, it fed off the nourishment of 70s and early 80s American popular culture and ofJapanese culture which was the leader of modern pop culture in the region. I would actually say the Korean pop cultural renaissance liberally copied off from Japanese culture. Others may use the term “stole”. In fact, compared to these sources, traditional Korean culture had far less to do with the renaissance.
It was more like a pinch or two.
You know … for flavor!
The resulting cultural output of the renaissance was and is not particularly deep but it did not really need to be deep. As the first wave of its kind to happen in Korea, it just needed to give an outlet for the creative energies of those in Korea and create a platform for future waves. And it succeeded!
I mean it is the reason you are here reading this article now.
About 2 decades separated from its birth, we are currently living in the aftermath of that first wave Korean pop cultural renaissance. It had a good 15 year or so run. And now, we are left to wander thedesolate dried out lakebed which was once filled with the waters of the renaissance. You see this in many areas but it is more evident with Korean movies at the moment.
So, now Korean movies are rummaging through its old bag of tricks to find a new direction, a new well of inspiration. Some try to recreate 70s and 80s Hollywood movies. Some focus on nostalgia. Some see Korean traditional culture as an untapped source of inspiration. Others… dip back into the well of getting “inspired” by Japanese pop culture.
All interesting attempts!
“The Silenced / 경성학교: 사라진 소녀들” (2015) basically does all of these at the same time… although primarily focused on copying off Japanese pop culture.
“Copying”!
Wink. Wink…
The Plot!
The title of “The Silenced “(2015) is a rather generic English movie title that has almost no descriptive properties. The Korean title is “경성학교: 사라진 소녀들” which, roughly translated, is “Kyungsung School: The Missing girls.”
While not really creative, it is at least more descriptive!
The movie starts with a now very “textBOOK ” aerial tracking shot of an old fashion car driving down a long winding road in the midst of a thick forest. The car is carrying a mysterious girl with amysterious disease to a mysterious school for girls located in a mysterious place in the middlemysterious nowhere.
You should get used to the concept of “mysterious” when watching this movie!
Really!
Really get used to it!
Once at the boarding school, the girl is dropped off and she has to try to find friends, to deal with the teachers, and be a protagonist in a “Gothic” movie. And weird stuff happens!
You see where the movie is going?
The Silenced (2015) spans over 3 different subgenres of the “Gothic” movie genre. More accurately, I mean the Japanese “Gothic” movie genre.
What is the difference?
I do not want to get into this difference as this review is already getting long and I have not even gotten into the meat of the review. Just know that the Japanese pioneered the “Gothic” movie genre in these parts of the globe.
The Silenced (2015) is primarily a Japanese “prepubescent lesbian boarding school romance” gothic movie with a decent dose of Japanese Gothic Horror and Japanese Gothic science fiction set in around the late 1920s or early 30s.
Interested?
While this mixing of Gothic movie sub-genres could be very interesting, it could also get messy. Andsadly “The Silenced” (2015) is more of the latter.
Writing can get messy!
“The Silenced” (2015), in its present form, was never going to be a great movie as there is too much of aniche genre vibe to it. It could have been an interesting B- genre cult movie though. I mean it is not without interesting elements. However, the movie lacks a firm grasp on any kind of emotional core.
What do I mean?
Considering that the biggest portion of the movie surrounds a lesbian boarding school romance, the emotional core could be the emerging female sexuality and the resulting isolation or something like that. While “The Silenced” (2015) does display hints of these and other elements, it never commits to any of them.
This is a serious problem especially for a gothic movie.
However, it is pretty common for a Korean movie to be toothless.
This is not helped by the movie spreading itself over 3 gothic subgenres. The movie starts out as a subtle gothic love story between prepubescent girls at a boarding school.
Since it is not fully developed, it is more like a strong inter-dependence but you get the idea.
During the 2nd act, there are some Japanese Gothic Horror scenes introduced. In the final act, the movie veers over to Japanese Gothic science fiction and things get very crazy.
But not F***ing crazy enough to be interesting in itself.
However, at its core, the movie is a gothic lesbian girl romance. While this is all fine and good, this does cause problems. For one, the lesbian girl romance doesn’t really work which I mentioned already. The other problem is that this underdeveloped romance ends up using too much of the screen time to really support the Gothic science fiction 3rd act. Even the horror elements of the movie end up being more of a distraction than adding to the final act of the movie.
An example of this is how the movie uses its villains. They get barely any screen time before the 3rd act when things go off the rails and the villains are thrust to the forefront chew up scenery as they go. So, all the “crazy” in the 3rd act ends up feeling as if they were coming out of nowhere. In addition, the protagonist does not really have a relationship with the villains going into the 3rd act. So, the final confrontation and the villains’ motivations end up feeling rather hollow.
While these problems are serious, the movie could have still been a decent enough genre cult movie even with its problems. What prevents it from reaching “flawed but interesting” status is the fact that the director seems to confuse being mysterious with not being detailed.
The Difficulties of being Gothic!
In many ways, the Gothic movie genre, whether it is standard or Japanese, requires more of the director than you would think. It is a genre of “saying” much without actually saying much!
You have to create a self-contained world where the “crazy” is plausible without the heavy dependence on dialogue to provide exposition like other genres such as science fiction.
Why?
If we just explained everything, it would not be a Gothic movie!
Mystery and mood is key!
This means that what one can do just on the pages of a script is limited. A huge portion of the information the audience require needs to be delivered in other ways. It is the tone of the movie. It is the cinematography. It is editing. It is the production design. It is the sound designs. The director of a gothic movie needs to able to handle all of this in a cohesive manner. In the case of “The Silenced” (2015), it is evident that the director/writer, Lee Hae-yeong, was not up to the task.
Mysterious… the Problem!
The striking fact about the movie is that I knew so few details regarding the movie while and even after watching the movie. And I do not mean in regards to the plot since I could basically guess almost every plot turn about 20 minutes in.
The plot is rather cliché if you know the Japanese gothic genre.
Even if you are familiar with only standard gothic genre, you will get where the movie is going.
I am talking about the details of the characters and the world of the movie. The female protagonist is basically a total mystery as a character and not in a good way. The movie gives very few details about her backstory and motivations. In addition, her personality shifts according to the convenience of the plot.
This is the same for the other supporting girl characters attending the same boarding school as the protagonist. While supporting characters do not need to have detailed personalities, they at least need defining traits as a character. The director of this movie does a very poor job at establishing who these characters are. In fact, I did not even recall what they look like at any time during the movie. Thus, I was left thinking “who is that character?” Why is she behaving so awkwardly and abruptly?
Other than the protagonist who basically looks like an anime character, none of the other supporting girl characters are visually memorable. And they needed to be visually recognizable since they had utterly no personality. If you think about it, it is funny that Korean drama or movie actors and actresses look more like anime characters than even their Japanese counterparts.
The lack of information is also reflected in the world built up in this movie. The setting of the movie is a boarding house for girls. However, it is never clear how many girls are in the school. From what we see, there are only about a dozen girls there.
Is that right?
In addition, the school feels like a boarding school for wealthy young girls. But most of the girls seemed to be poor since everyone is obsessed with winning an athletic scholarship to go to Tokyo, Japan.
Want to go to the Island anyone?
And what kind of school is this? The school does not seem to teach anything other than the long jump during gym class and needle point the rest of the time.