Castaway on the Moon

I've been thinking all these depressing thoughts about the world and the nature of man for so long I thought I'd write about something fun for a change, something I've enjoyed.

So I'll write my first movie review ever. Isn't that cool or what?

However, preamble comes first, that's important.

Years and years ago, I didn't know anything whatsoever about South Korea except that they've engaged in these brutal conflicts with pretty much everyone nearby. The evil Japanese attacked and then the evil communists came and ruined all their shit. But the U.S. be so kind as to save their ass. The end result: the South is corrupt, while the North is corrupt, starving, and riddled with gross human-rights violations. So I guess that's like a depraved man's win-win situation. Geopolitics and all that.

But lately, I've been way too much into South Korean pop culture, and it's really something interesting. A lot of the things I like about it are sort of similar to what I like about the Japanese, but not quite. The overall tone is different.

I like how there's a pronounced focus on social issues, as that makes for a much more engaging drama. You almost get riled up about it all, with smoke coming out your ears. A standard, recurring theme besides romance is injustice.

I think I've watched every single Korean show on Netflix over the last few years, and sort of become a fan of the likes of Roh Yoon-seo, Lim Yoon-a, and Lee Jae-wook. Lee Jae-wook was great in Alchemy of Souls, but they definitely should have had that badass, Jung So-min, come back to reprise her role in season 2. Not that Go Youn-jung was bad, no, it's just that sequels absolutely require the cast to remain the same. That's like a hard rule. They should've kissed So-min's ass harder to make her come back for that second season.

Anyway, the worst you could say about these mini-series they produce down there is that they're highly formulaic, very cliché. But the payoff is that you get to watch pretty people play romance, speaking an exotic language you don't know. And that's actually way more valuable of a business asset than some people realize. To the Asians it's familiar, but to a guy like me it's a way to change things around and maybe learn something new. Maybe help see pop culture in a completely different light.

It's also worth studying why they might've come up with the formulas they've got, so you actually have a chance to learn about general human psychology a bit, assuming those formulas work. You know, kinda like bootstrapping on other people's experiences. After all, there's no reason why you shouldn't become a master marketer capitalist yourself.

A lot of those shows vaguely remind me of European telenovelas and soaps, as well. But that means they suffer from the same structural problems: either the show drags on forever, like the European ones do, or the ending either falls flat or comes out of nowhere. The latter could be because of the hook economy: all the creative energy goes into the premise and the initial hook, and although the middle gets some development, the ending doesn't arrive naturally.

However, having said all that, a thing that always confuses me is how harsh the criticism for some of them Asian shows as well as actors can be. I'm thinking it must be either a marketing stunt in and of itself – which would mean stuff like that still works over there – or that it's a cultural thing, and being a professional actor never really took the route of "intentionally bad and therefore admirable" in South Korea.

So in other words, nobody's a rebel. Not really.

If the latter is true, then I have mixed feelings about that, because then you have real professionalism without the overt cynicism; but on the other hand, you lack some of that flexibility in casting, which normally leads up to the ultimate typecasting machine. I'm not telling you explicitly which ones I find net positives.

Thinking about it now, there's even a third option, which is that the shows I've seen so far have been pruned and hand-picked so I'm missing some relevant feature of the K-drama gye. I'm just learning.

Still, the Korean movie industry is a different beast altogether. I think I've seen seven Korean movies that I can recall, and three out of seven were genius-level masterpieces; Bom Yeoreum Gaeul Gyeoul Geurigo Bom; Gisaengchung; Salinui Chueok; Oldeuboi; Humint; Mudosilmugwan; and this one, Kimssi Pyoryugi. Oh, and I just recalled, I also saw the one with the frizzy hair, Gobaekeui Yeoksa. I think I might be forgetting some other ones, but I've seen so many that it's become difficult to remember which ones were series and which ones were movies, to be honest.

Kimssi Pyoryugi, Castaway on the Moon, is one of those genius-level masterpieces. Watching a movie like that gives me hope, because it shows other people must actually be sentient beings after all, despite the insanity all around us; watching it serves as evidence that there are living people that have noticed some of the same things as me, and have made beautiful art out of it; a meager straw you can attempt to grasp while you're in the middle of drowning at sea.

One of the things that strikes me is how the critique of capitalism, and possibly some other things related to human behavior, just doesn't really seem to land anymore; because it's only gotten worse since this film came out, no matter how poignant it is. But at least it's there so you can gasp at how "advanced" everyone was in their thinking already at that time.

A lot of movies experience precisely that same fate. Citizen Kane comes to mind immediately, although I feel it's in a different category of film. It's a Hollywood classic.

According to legend, there was this guy at the time, William Randolph Hearst, whose campaign to suppress Citizen Kane is to this day one of the most insane censorship battles in Hollywood history. When the media tycoon discovered that Orson Welles's debut film was a thinly veiled, deeply unflattering critique of his life, wealth, and ego, he used his massive media empire to launch an all-out war to destroy it.

Hearst immediately banned all of his newspapers across the United States from ever mentioning the movie. This meant no advertisements, no reviews, and zero publicity.

He took the censorship a step further by ordering his papers to completely ban any mention of Orson Welles himself, effectively trying to erase the filmmaker from public consciousness. Hearst's journalists were even ordered to dig up or manufacture personal scandals to smear Welles's reputation.

All of which is completely ridiculous now, of course. Because we live in the advanced, hyper-intelligent age of the 2020s, when surely nothing like that could ever happen again.

But, I digress, another interesting thing about the props in Castaway on the Moon in particular is how literally nothing has changed in ~17 years. The experience of being an unemployed, social recluse of a 20-year-old is likely to be exactly the same. Only the Windows version on your computer is different: now you've got version 11 that somehow manages to be even more plain-looking, more dumbed down and minimalistic than its predecessors ever had the right to be.

Watching the movie, I always get hungry for instant noodles. I'm imagining it now: the delicious, processed taste, the spice packet, the sticky black bean sauce. It's a really important plot point in the movie, too.

Thinking about all the lonely freaks I've seen go insane over the years, I'd rather steer clear of them. But it's interesting how the movie renders human curiosity: it echoes this classic movie fantasy of actually encountering other people, which never really happens.

People don't voluntarily encounter each other, and even when they do, it's always uncomfortable. The near-implicit comparison between the small island and the Moon in the film is indeed apt; I've had that same thought many times, about how it might as well be the same to live on the Moon, or Mars, as it is to exist solely in your own bubble here on Earth. It's seductive to think that, until you realize Mars is even more inhospitable and troublesome to live on. A real dump, most likely, and not at all like Matt Damon would have you believe.

Another really cool detail is the social media the female protagonist is addicted to. I had never actually heard of it before, but looking it up, it is revealed to be Cyworld. In fact, out of curiosity and being a bona fide IT professional myself, I tried visiting Cyworld, but I can't seem to access it. http://cyworld.com/ doesn't connect, and even their Instagram page, https://www.instagram.com/cyworld_official/, fails to load for me. I'm not sure why and I'm too lazy to find out. Some other Korean web pages load just fine, despite the servers being located thousands of kilometers away.

Anyway, all in all, I loved the humor, and the candor of the storytelling felt real to me. Watching the film delivered a true sense of nostalgia, whisking me away into that cynical year of our Lord, 2009. You should definitely watch it too, at least once before you die.

At least you can enjoy some noodles from time to time, you know? So maybe there is hope. Chin up, and don't kill yourself.

A brilliant masterpiece of a film: 10/10 and a gold star.