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[HanCinema's Film Review] "Way Back Home"

Husband Jong-Bae (played by Go Soo), wife Jeong-Yeon (played by Jeon Do-yeon), and daughter Hye-Rin (played by Kang Ji-woo) are for the most part a normal family with typical modest ambitions. They're thrust into a rather awful situation when a good deed for a friend is swiftly unexpectedly punished. Left with no other apparent way to preserve the family, Jeong-Yeon decides to steal a piece of bread.

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Not literally, of course. But that's very much the tone "Way Back Home" sets, as the punishment the family receives first for a good deed, then a bad one, is horribly disproportionate to the provoking action. On many levels the ensuing nightmare for Jeon-Yeon is just plain nonsensical. The punishment she receives was obviously intended for the criminal ne'er-do-wels who instead get off largely unmolested, as they belong to an organization that knows how to bend the rules. From the perspective of a common person, the only apparent moral to take from that part of the proceeding is that it's better to be a career criminal than to have faith in the justice of the system not to torture well-intentioned people for no reason.

And as for the system? Well, it just doesn't care. "Way Back Home" is filled with elaborate laws, legalities, and logical structures deliberately designed to do...something. Jeong-Yeon is constantly reassured that everything is working out fine because it's being done according to a system. When this is explained to her in French the notion sounds idiotic. When it's explained to her in Korean the despair has so overwhelmingly been drilled into her psyche it's not even laughable.

By and large the movie's just depressing. Seeing the misery of Jeong-Yeon's daily life it starts to get pretty clear that even a career criminal doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. The prison she ultimately ends up assigned to is a torturous miserable place where no one seems to be afforded any human dignity, and it's not even clear why they bothered to send her there in the first place. But again, because everything is being done according to the system that makes it OK.

Granted, the system isn't perfect. Inevitably, there will be people, the ones wearing the fancy uniforms, the ones who run everything, who mess up. Make little errors like terrorizing a woman for years because somebody forgot to send the right paperwork somewhere, or maybe just because they're sadists. What happens to these villains? Surprisingly little, I'm afraid. "The Way Back Home" is so depressing in part because it doesn't sugar-coat the situation and pretend that we get a just happy ending simply because it's in the script. In real life, the system is still there. That same system which nearly crushes all the hope out of Jeong-Yeon grants rather absurd mercy to her indifferent tormentors. Why? Well, because they wrote the rules and they're not idiots.

But for Jeong-Yeon, none of that really matters. She does, indeed, finally find her way homeward. Jeong-Yeon is able to put the horrible experience behind her- though the memories will no doubt always remain, in her head as in the viewers'. "Way Back Home" is a call to civic duty, a call to empathy, demanding that its viewers engage in ethical responsibility holding bureaucratic leaders responsible for their mistakes. In terms of artistic merit, this is a quality movie filled with solid performances, worth watching on that basis alone. The messaging, however, is the real important takeaway here. Don't assume that anyone caught up in the system will help just because it's their job.

Review by William Schwartz

"Way Back Home" is directed by Pang Eun-jin and features Jeon Do-yeon, Go Soo and Kang Ji-woo.

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