(aka "Suchwiin bulmyeong" )

directed by Ki-duk Kim
South Korea 2001

Overlooked by many, as the attention for many years has been towards the films of Kim released widely in the west, and also because it is a low-budget film, Address Unknown is the first of three films about male identity, followed by Bad Guy and The Coast Guard, and is as brutal and savage as the rest of Kim’s films, despite that it may lack the polished look of other films.

Kim attacks how the presence of American soldiers corrupts the Korean soul. Children of Korean women and American soldiers are bastards without nationality nor identity, and the only contributions to the community that the US Army has given is poverty, drugs, violence, discrimination, alcoholism and impotence. The new friendship with America even changed the official perception of the past, thus once war time heroes now traitors.

Composing his mise-en-scene as an arid wasteland inhabited by estranged Koreans opposite an army base and city, which is portrayed as a Sodom and Gomorra, which corrupts the Korean soul with everything what’s ugly about America. An especially telling composition of Kim is showing a mixed couple – she Korean, him army – being painted in front of airbrushed paintings of Jesus and a confederate soldier.
 

Henrik Sylow

Theatrical Release: June 2, 2001

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DVD Review: Tartan - Region 0 - PAL

Big thanks to Henrik Sylow for the Review!

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