After replaying some of the movie scenes, I realized how little dialogue there were in the movie compared to previous movies we have watched, and most of the dialogues only fills us in on certain information about the characters but none that advance the plot significantly. For example, when we are first introduced to Chilsu and, later, his encounters with Ji-na, there were so little exchanges of words between the characters. Instead, they turn their heads or only exchange glances.
Yet, even when the characters speak to each other, they don't understand each other. One scene that particularly struck me was the distorted shouts of Chilsu to Mansu while he was painting the walls of a tall building. It doesn't occur to neither of them that they can't hear each other, even if they know that they can't hear the other person. They just continued shouting to each other. As the viewer, we find this ridiculous but if we were at the perspective of one of the characters, we would probably do the same and try to have the other person hear us by shouting louder and louder. The same thing happens later, when both of them were suspected to be labor-law protestors on top of a billboard and were exchanging shouts with the government officials, their boss and the public below.
So not only miscommunication exists between individuals, but also at a larger level, between the individual and society, government and the general public. This communication is repressed by staying silent (Mansu), foreign language (Mansu uses dialects and Chilsu uses English) or by lies (Chilsu lies about his immigration and studies abroad).
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