Original Films ‘The Vegetarian’ and ‘Scar’ are being screened in commemoration of Han Kang’s winning of 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature
By Jang Geon-seop
Seoul
The screening of two films, based on Nobel-Prize Winner Korean author Han Kang’s novels, ‘The Vegetarian’ and ‘Scar’ starts today, (Thursday 17th October 2024) in Korean Theaters to commemorate her 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature.
‘The Vegetarian’ is a film adaptation of Han Kang’s 2005 Yi Sang Literature Prize-winning work ‘Mongolian Spots’, directed by Im Woo-sung and released in 2010. It is based on Han Kang’s novel of the same name.
The story unfolds as a woman who was living an ordinary life suddenly refuses to eat meat and declares herself a vegetarian. It contains the story of video artist Minho, who becomes interested in his sister-in-law’s body after hearing from his wife that she still has a Mongolian spot on her buttocks, even though she is a fully grown adult. Chae Min-seo of ‘Wig’ and ‘Don’t Tell Papa’ plays the role of the vegetarian sister-in-law, Yeong-hye.
It was invited to the Busan International Film Festival’s ‘Korean Cinema Today – Panorama’ section and the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Drama Competition section.
Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’ is a series of three loosely connected stories: ‘The Vegetarian’, ‘Mongolian Spot’, and ‘Tree Flame’.
As the title suggests, this series follows the strange transformation of a woman who refuses to eat meat and chooses to become a vegetarian. The main character of the three stories is ‘Yeong-hye’. Each novel captures Yeong-hye’s rapid transformation from the perspectives of three different narrators: Yeong-hye’s husband, brother-in-law, and older sister (In-hye).
It depicts how Yeong-hye, who was ‘the most ordinary woman in the world’, changes from a vegetarian to a delinquent who broke the taboo of incest, and then to a psychopath who imagines herself as a ‘tree’.
Yeong-hye is the main character of the novel, but she cannot speak about her own mental and physical changes. She is deprived of a mouth to speak. She is portrayed only as a being seen and talked about through the eyes of others.
So what happens? Yeong-hye’s dehumanization project, which leads to ‘vegetarian-vegetable body-tree’, becomes an incomprehensible mystery and code in itself.
Read: ‘I would like to live in peace quietly,’ Han Kang
The film ‘Scar’ is a 2011 work based on ‘Baby Buddha’ included in Han Kang’s short story collection ‘The Fruit of My Woman’. It shows the lonely and precarious married life of a woman who grew up strictly and is emotionally dry and a man who is obsessed with perfectionism due to an indelible wound.
It is a sentimental drama depicting the secret wounds and love of these two couples: an emotionally dry wife and a husband with an indelible wound. The solid drama based on the original novel and the sensual images drawn by director Im Woo-sung have the power to lead the audience to empathize with the actual characters.
It is not a light melodrama that simply emphasizes the emotion of love, but rather deeply deals with the relationships between people, and the fundamental loneliness and wounds of humans. It gives the feeling of absorbing a novel by unfolding everyday emotions that everyone feels at least once in a sensual story.
The films are being screened at 45 theaters nationwide, including CGV Yongsan I-Park Mall.
On October 14, CGV Content Programming Team Leader Jeon Jeong-hyeon said, “We prepared this screening to congratulate author Han Kang on winning the Nobel Prize in Literature and to respond to the audience’s passionate interest in films based on his novels,” adding, “I hope you will enjoy two literature-based films in theaters this October, as autumn deepens.”
Read: South Korean author Han Kang wins Nobel Prize for literature
_________________
Courtesy: MAEIL BUSINESS NEWSPAPER and other Korean media
