Castaway on the Moon (SIFF film)

Castaway on the Moon
First of all, this movie, Castaway on the Moon, (Directed by Lee Hey-jun, 2009 Korea) is very simple. Recently, movies are becoming more multifarious and spectacular, but this movie is definitely a low budget movie. The good thing is that simplicity and low budget do not mean a low quality movie. I was absorbed and touched in this movie while I was watching it and I was proud of the effort of the filmmakers of this movie.

Castaway on the Moon’s original title is Castaway of Kims: two of Kims, male Kim and female Kim, a story about castouts from their society; the basic theme of this movie is communication between humans.

First, there is male Kim who tries to attempt suicide by falling down into the Han River because he lost his job by restructuring and has a huge amount of debt. He is a nice and good, hard working man but his society abandons him, thus he becomes a loser or failure and is considered as an incompetent man. Although he lost his job not by his fault but by his company’s downsizing, his society does not care. Nobody considers that he is a decent man. Everybody in his society thinks he is just a useless man. He has few choices but disappears by killing himself. He shows the audience a model of “Institutionalized Oppression.”

A sad and ironical thing is that he fails even suicide. As a result, he becomes a castaway in the Bam Island in the middle of the Han River. The Han River is passing through Seoul, the capital city of South Korea, and the Bam Island is a conservation area which means nobody is allowed to approach or stay there, so he is totally isolated from a mega city which has 20 million in population.

Second, there is female Kim, who lives just in her small room refusing to go out. She seems that she has agoraphobia. She even refuses to communicate with her family. She totally isolates herself from her society and she barely communicates with her mom by text messaging. The movie does not show the exact reason, but I can assume why. She has a red scar on her forehead. It is not so bad and nowadays’ medical technology is amazing so I find it hard to understand why she does not have surgery but maybe it is just her choice, or the movie’s choice. She crouches and hides herself in her small room and tries to avoid contact with the society with all her effort.

Her everyday life is just clicking the computer mouse and pretending as if she is somebody else who looks pretty, so she lives in cyber space not in the real world. Her only hobby is taking pictures of the moon through her room window. She can overcome her trauma by erasing her scar on her forehead but the movie does not show her trying, she just thinks that she is ugly thus she segregates herself. She shows the model of “Internalized Oppression.”

Two failures or the victims of our society meet in a unique way. By the way, this movie is a unique love story. One day, female Kim tries to take a picture and she sees the outside of her room through her camera lens and she finds male Kim on the Bam Island.

Little by little, she tries to contact, or communicate with him while male Kim tries to keep the hope in his life. Two isolated male and female realize that there is somebody else just like themselves and open their minds to each other. This process is very touching because it is not only love between male and female but the beautiful course of the cure for their wounded hearts.

Finally, they meet at the end and female Kim says to male Kim that, “My name is Kim- Jung Yeon. Who are you?” Then the film ends. The question “Who are you?” is male Kim’s asking to female Kim. I believe that “Who are you?” is a very meaningful question between humans, because it is not a simple question. The question asks not only the person’s name or identity but the person’s everything: heart, opinion, perspective, point of view, taste, hobby, hope, value, meaning of life, etc.

Castaway on the Moon limits all the excessive cinematic ornamentation. The director chooses the direct way to the theme of the movie. The movie does not even explain or show the main character’s family or friends. The story line just follows two main characters journey. The simple mise-en-scene, or the concise cinematography helps the audience to engage in the main character’s loneliness, frustration, isolation and hopelessness. The director’s choice is very smart because it is efficient.

However, I believe that the director might want to take more long shots because if there are more long shots the movie would be more beautiful. I guess it is because of the limited budget. The movie does not have enough long shots, so the camera technique uses only medium shots and close shots, as a results, some sequences in the movie looks like a comic cartoon.

Instead of using magnificent cinematography, the director uses metaphors and satires. For example, the black bean noodle is one of a symbol of hope for the main male character. The black bean noodle is not a Korean traditional food, but it is one of the very common foods among average Koreans. The montage shows the audience about the main male character’s past. In the past, he refuses several times the black bean noodle. On the isolate deserted Island, he desperately wants to eat the black bean noodle and he regrets his past when he refused the black bean noodle. In this sequence, the director might try to show us the thankfulness of our everyday’s ordinary life. When we lose something, which looks not so important but actually is precious to us, we regret our forgetting of appreciation. The main male character decides to make the black bean noodle by himself. He starts to believe that making the black bean noodle by himself on the Island would be his final hope.

As the female character observes him through the camera lens every day, she knows he misses the black bean noodle, thus she makes someone to deliver the black bean noodles to him. But he refuses the black bean noodle. The female main character asks the delivery boy the reason why he refused it, the boy says to her that the male main character says the black bean noodle is his hope. Thus, he wants to make success of his hope by himself not by the other’s help. She understands it easily because she is from the same background.

There are several more things I like about this movie. First, it does not represent male’s masculinity or female’s femininity and also does not express a female as a sexual object. Moreover, the movie does not show their communication in a sexual way. The movie shows female and male as human versus human. The movie does not divide into different genders or sexes. They are just humans who have warm hearts. Beyond masculinity or femininity, there is humanity: love and hope. I believe that the humanity, love and hope, is all we need. As a human being, just like the characters in this movie, we all want to be loved, to be understood by the people around us and want to live with hope.

While I was watching this movie in the theater, I heard people’s laughing at intervals, which means the humor and satires in this movie are understood by the American audience. The basic human conditions and human emotions are the same regardless of Eastern or Western cultures.

In addition, the male character’s acting is very good, and the main female character’s acting is also good. I liked her acting but I did not realize that she was a sincere actress because she usually acted as a rich girl in the broadcasting system in Korea. In this movie, she does not wear any makeup at all, and it helps the reality of this movie. Also, she is a native Australian, so I know her English is fluent as a native Australian, but in this movie, she speaks clumsy English just like an average Korean and I think the clumsy English is also used as a satire of the difficult communication between people in our world. Over all, I like this movie a lot and I would recommend others to watch it who did not have a chance to see it. It would be worthy to watch.