[HanCinema's Film Review] Hanji

Published on 2011/05/21

The veteran Korean filmmaker Im Kwon-taek's 101^st film "Hanji" (also know as "Scooping Up the Moonlight") blurs the line between narrative fiction and documentary filmmaking. It's educational and delicate, but is it at times a victim of its own intentions?

When the film was screened at JIFF 2011 the reaction to the film was rather split. The majority of Koreans I spoke to found it to be riddled with long-winded descriptions and saturated visuals. The foreign audience didn't total disagree but appreciated the film's informative approach to Korea's paper tradition as well as its emotive yet grounded characters.

Pi-Yong (Park Joong-hoon) is a low ranking public official trying to move up the ranks in a very bureaucratic and fickle industry. He lives in Joenju, home to the hanji papermaking tradition, with his wife Hyo-kyung (Ye Ji-won). His wife was struck by cerebral infarction (a stroke that hinders blood flow to the brain) three years earlier due to the shocking news of her husband's infidelity. Pi-Yong, burdened with guilt from his affair years earlier, takes up a position tasked with restoring the classical annals form the Joseon Dynasty. In doing so he hopes not only to advance his career but also to reconnect himself to his wife, who's family was once famous for being masters of the hanji art.

Pi-Yong's knowledge on hanji is limited and he takes great lengths to quickly educate himself about this proud Korean tradition. As a project manager of sorts, Pi-Yong gets out of the office and makes personal connections to the people needed to make the project a success. These people range from road blocking government officials in Seoul, local Hanji masters, and the problematic documentary filmmaker Ji-Won (Kang Soo-yeon). Pi-Yong has been instructed by his superior to support Ji-Won's efforts as she travels around interviewing influential craftsmen and hanji specialists for her documentary.

The relationship between Pi-Yong and Ji-Won is particularly central to the film in that they both act as symbolic representations of the film's dichotomy between fact and fiction. Pi-Yong is our protagonist, the one with whom we identify. He knows little of the art of hanji and has to, like the audience, become educated in the topic. Pi-yong is also very personable and, despite his martial history and the devastating effect it had on his wife, his quest for knowledge and personal redemption is honourable. And because the film is primarily a piece of fiction, it is through him that we identify as he journeys to build new bridges through knowledge.

Ji-Won encapsulates the film's attempt to educate, enlighten, and instil a greater appreciation for past Korean traditions. Her character is fictionalised in order to merge the two narrative styles (fictional narrative and the documentary aesthetic) seamlessly into the story. In this way her inclusion in the film functions as the narrative counter to Pi-Yong as well as suture that allows the film to impose it's documentary style on the film. She is both the knife that cuts and the stitch that heals the fractured spectacle as it meshes the entertaining with the educational.

The film's final scene is a microcosm for where Im Kwon-taek wanted to land the film. It's the search for the middle ground between the old and the new, past and future, fiction and non-fiction. Our main characters cluster around a fresh water stream under the moonlight in the hopes they will create hanji that will last a thousand years. Here our characters have moved into a new space, created by the existence and influence of each other. The final scene heavily mythologises the hanji making process and creates a strong spiritual sense of purity, rebirth and transcendence.

Initially I found this film to cater more towards a foreign audience, especially considering the film's English title as opposed to the Korean. But upon writing this review I came reconsidered that notion and arrived at a more inclusion endpoint. Korean and foreign audiences will no doubt have different perspectives on the film and where their appreciation for it lies. "Hanji" succeeds in all that it sets out to achieve, whether it's the insightful and informative presentation of hanji as a traditional art or the film's experimentation in narrative structure and synergy. It's a fascinating piece of cinema that stakes its claim to the future while still retaining all that is magical about the past, the perfect piece of cinema for the Korean film father's 101^st film.

-Christopher J. Wheeler