The High Life

Throughout the movie "Aimless Bullet", there are few subtle mentions of living the high life, the life of kings and queens, or rather, the wish of having such a life. As the title of the movie suggests, the family we follow is aimless, in other words, hopeless. There is no happy ending, only constant descent into darker situations. Basically, life was mch better during times of war. Oh the stories the war veterans remind themselves, the glory days, the good life when (and I quote) "in those days, guns solved everything". Even Sol-Hee reminisces about the easier wartime life she had. Sol-Hee who lives on the topmost floor of a building, which seems to suggests that even if she isn't happy, she lives in an illusionary "high" type of life. As for Yong-Ho, the war veteran and brother of Chol-Ho, he finds an escape from his (low) life by meeting with Sol-Hee. During their encounter, Sol-Hee takes on the role of the "femme fatale from film noir" (Cho, 108), by handling a gun and smoking a cigarette with Chol-Ho. She becomes everyone's escape, Chol-Ho is briefly happy whenever he sees her and the audience escapes the dramatic and depressing theme of the film by finally seeing two beings sharing a moment of compassion and love.

At the same time, Sol-Hee represents the erotic spectacle (Mulvey, 837) by going against the development of storyline (she and Yong-Ho are happy together) and as mentioned earlier, is like an escape, a pause or a break from all the chaos. She is a sight for sore eyes whenever she is on screen. And so.. is bound to die.

Which she does!
And I want to talk about the matter of her death more.

The poet. He is a detestable character as soon as he appears on screen, Yong-ho and Sol-hee are racing up the stairs and he stands there glaring at them while they stare back. We obviously feel tension between the poet and Yong-ho, as both males seem attracted to Sol-hee. The poet does not speak. Later on, when Yong-ho and Sol-hee are getting intimate in her appartment, the poet opens the door (because it was unlocked?) and again does not say anything but stares at them and looks quite shocked and sad by seeing them together. The next day we learn that Sol-hee is dead because apparently the poet couldn't live with the idea of her being with another man so not only did he kill himself, he killed her as well. A poet is the cliche "artist", and so by having him appear as a character we hate and dissappear as a character we despise even more, made me realize how the movie took a free shot towards "artists" in general. Not only is the poet emotional and overall quite useless, he is also represented as a danger by bringing other people down with him.

And so Yong-ho's "escape" is gone, he seeks out the other one, Mi-ri, the actress and convinces her to help him, though that plan fired back when he was caught by police. He saught the high life by robbing a bank, only to end up to the lowest of them all.