Lee Chang-dong has been one of South Korea’s top directors for decades now, although he only just received mainstream attention with the release of his 2018 movie Burning, starring Yoo Ah-in and Steven Yeun. Although Burning was, per GQ, the first Korean movie to land the Oscar shortlist, cementing Lee’s influence globally, he has sustained an impressive career that started in 1997. Even outside his work as a filmmaker, he was also a novelist and writer and served in the South Korean government as the Minister of Culture for a year. It was this, and his upbringing in a left-wing family in the conservative city of Daegu in South Korea, that became the formula for his unique storytelling style. This also landed him on the government blacklist with several of his fellow directors and actors.

When Lee began his film career in the late 1990s, South Korean cinema entered an entirely new era. Many of the filmmakers known today from the country — Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, Kim Ki-duk — were also making their start in Korean cinema. However, South Korea, too, had just become a new democracy, and with that came a unique set of challenges that left certain groups of people falling between the cracks, whether it was those impacted by the trauma of dictatorship, or the elderly poverty that came with rapid modernization. Lee, indeed, began tackling these subjects and brought them to mainstream attention with deep care and sensitivity, offering the world thought-provoking cinema about Korean society.

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Seeking Out Representation

Woman sits in nature with a notebook and pen.
Pine House Film

Lee’s 1999 movie Peppermint Candy tells the story of one man, Kim Yong-ho, in reverse. At the film's beginning, he commits suicide by jumping in front of a train, screaming, “I want to go back again.” And so the story does, albeit slowly. It is gradually revealed that Yong-ho was a victim of the Asian Financial Crisis in the 90s, having lost his job during that time. He was involved with the Gwangju Massacre, which started as a democracy movement, and had a series of failed relationships throughout his life. It does not end with Peppermint Candy, though, as his next film, Oasis, depicts the lives of two individuals affected by disability.

Then, in his 2010 film Poetry, his protagonist is Mi-ja. Because she is an elderly woman raising a grandson alone, Mi-ja is depicted by the people around her as someone strange, almost abnormal in the eyes of society. There are several twists established in Mi-ja’s story early on: she is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, forcing her to forget everyday words and things, and her grandson becomes involved with a horrific act against a woman classmate. It is through characters like Mi-ja that Lee subverts the typical expectations his films are set in, creating deeply complex stories that are painful, and full of tragedy, but show the beauty in the silver linings.

Yet, at the same time, the majority of Lee’s characters are everyday people living outside the central hub of Seoul, the city often depicted in Korean dramas. Burning is set in Paju, right along the North Korean border, while his other films are scattered throughout the country. This adds a deeper sense of isolation to the characters, as these rural and suburban communities they live within tend to be both close-knit and physically more distanced, allowing people to fall between the cracks and be dubbed an outsider even to their families. This is seen in Oasis, as one character is left behind and abandoned by a family member, and in Secret Sunshine, when the protagonist’s son disappears after they move to a new community.

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A Novelistic Approach to Filmmaking

Man stands in front of burning greenhouse.

Pinehouse Film

Before turning to filmmaking in his 40s, Lee was a novelist and writer. Knowing this, it is no surprise that he relentlessly pursues the meaning of life in his movies and his stylistic approach. Everyday objects and the most mundane things can easily become a symbol in a Lee Chang-dong movie, finding meaning in something simple. This becomes even more apparent in Poetry when Mi-ja forgets common vocabulary and holds up an apple, struggling to find the proper word to describe it. That apple becomes a symbol of grief, something taken for granted.

A core characteristic of Lee’s films can boil down to one word: trauma. Whether it is a childhood friend going missing in the psychological thriller Burning, or a husband, then son, dying in Secret Sunshine, each of his characters has gone through something unimaginable. When looking at the overarching plot of his films, they are pretty straightforward about the characters, their motives, and what will happen next. However, Lee complicates it with contemporary issues and historical contexts, creating deeply complex stories that reveal something bigger about humanity as a whole.

Like his contemporaries, Lee Chang-dong’s body of work simmers with a particular brand of rage and sadness, a by-product of war, rapid modernization, and brutal dictatorships that plague contemporary South Korean history. Still, at the same time, he proves capable of finding beauty in tragedy, whether it is an apple or a brief reprieve from the loneliness of life. They may not stay long on the screen, but they make an impact and an irreplaceable hole once they disappear. What is gone is never truly forgotten, like the protagonists and characters he creates in his stories.