a Movie Watcher™ in the making!

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now listening: Bonafide by Emotional Oranges (feat. Chiiild) 

My terrible addiction of watching movie recaps on YouTube as a snack time ritual and essentially spoiling every good movie for myself in a matter of minutes has incurably ruined my chances of becoming a chronic, true Movie Watcher™. Fortunately enough, though, I was able to stop myself from finishing the movie recap for a particular fantasy film, Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned, which I went on to watch in its entirety and found quite interesting in its use of perspective. 

A quick synopsis: The story begins as Soo-rin narrates to her psychiatrist what has happened to her: 13-year-old Soo-rin has just moved to a remote island where she forms an inseparable bond with a quiet orphan boy, Sung-min, who shares her fervor for supernatural things. One day, however, the two find a mysterious glowing egg hidden within a cave. Curious, Sung-min breaks the egg which causes time to keep moving for him while the rest of the world literally freezes in place. Once time unfreezes, Sung-min has aged almost two decades and is now unrecognizable to still 13-year-old Soo-rin, and the two must work together to convince the ruthless world of their story.

 

This film greatly reminds me of our class discussion of how POV impacts the degree of intimacy we have with the characters, and it does this with almost opposing visual techniques for Soo-rin and Sung-min.

With Soo-rin, the film practically forces intimacy. While she retells their supernatural story to the psychiatrist, the camera sits uncomfortably close to her face, her tired eyes, the quiver of her mouth, the tiny pauses in her voice. Even when her new classmates tease her for believing in the supernatural, the shots stay glued to her anxious eyes. By keeping us inside her physical bubble, the film nudges us to trust her, to almost embody her emotional and fantastical isolation even when what she’s describing feels unbelievable. 

Meanwhile with Sung-min, it’s essentially the opposite. While he is isolated in time, the camera often physically backs away from him—sometimes comically far enough for him to be not much more than a speck amidst his vast, unmoving landscape. Yet in the same way the camera essentially avoids him, it makes us feel that same, unreachable, suspended time he's trapped in, the utter isolation and disorientation he feels in a frozen world lacking human connection. In this sense, distance, too, becomes a form of intimacy and understanding of the character’s emotions. 

 

Consequently, since finishing this movie, I've convinced myself that Soo-rin truly has reunited with an older version of Sung-min and left it at that. This is made so convincing from the perspectives we're given, their desperation in the face of unforgiving authority, the hues of yellow and blue that evoke both loyalty and helplessness. After our talk in class though, I can't help but wonder if perhaps Soo-rin's narration of the story is unreliable. Was older Sung-min really the same person as younger Sung-min? Or was he just a manifestation of Soo-rin's obsession, Soo-rin's youthful desire to finally share with someone her otherwise "abnormal" curiosities?

Well, for my own desire of a happy ending, as I'm sure most of us would want, I will stick to my original interpretation. Thank you very much.

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