Peppermint Candy (Bakha satang)

Dancing as a man dies. So concludes the first scene in Peppermint Candy, a film told backwards that covers moments that defined a man's life. Often these scenes seem tangential, as very little explicitly ties in at first, but with each passing sequence more and more tiny…

Darren Carver-Balsiger

Action! - Lee Chang-dong: The Frictions In The Serenity Lee Chang-dong’s second film sticks to a lot of what would become his trademark style, especially when it comes to making these ferocious and emotionally draining moments more effective all in the midst of silence,…

Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine

han : a unique Korean cultural trait which has resulted from Korea's more frequent exposure to invasions by overwhelming foreign powers. Described as a "feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the overwhelming odds…

lisa renee

The backward trail from corruption to innocence is a simple visual metaphor that opens up a forensic investigation into a man’s suicide. By starting at the end and moving backwards in time, we expect to find a trigger event with key information of why someone would feel…

BrandonHabes

In the years we don’t see, South Korea’s economy crashed, sparking mass poverty and suicide. Capitalist modernization built on death and destruction? The chickens had to come home to roost. It’s a phenomenon we know all too well in the United States, a nation whose own…

Brandon Streussnig

i like trains and not enough peppermint candy

meyi

"Life is beautiful. Isn't it?" What if we were to reevaluate the representative and narrative logic of Peppermint Candy and interpret the opening sequence in reverse? If we were to revisit this in light of our later knowledge that the film manipulates the train…

SupremeLemon (지존레몬)

was not about peppermint candy

megan

A novelistic portrait of not just the tormented, suicidal man at its center but of an entire nation that feels traumatized and corrupted and futureless. Tracing the events that shaped him into the depressed, screaming mess (standing in front of a train waiting for it to hit…

Josh Lewis