Alive

In the provocative second film by the maker of the imposing The Journals of Musan, Park’s fury is again tangible as he examines the fate of those at the bottom of South Korea’s social ladder. Jeong-Cheol, a building labourer in the mountainous province of Gangwon, takes care of his niece and his mentally unstable sister. He sets to work at a failing farm where soya-bean curd is made, but the bitter winter starts to take its toll and a fungus hits the fermented soya. From here on in, it’s a downward spiral.
Director and scriptwriter Park himself plays the lead in this hypnotic descent into desolation, in which a man tries to survive while maintaining his humanity. Despair is juxtaposed with moments of well-chosen surrealism, captured in beautifully choreographed shots. And somewhere, the possibility of a friendly gesture lurks. Alive is a dark film, but not cynical.

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