Thoughts on the Stray Bullet

To be honest, after having watched the first twenty minutes of the film, I was still confused and couldn’t make a sense of what the film was trying to tell us. At the very beginning, I mistook Kyongsik, the poor veteran who lost his leg in the War, as the protagonist and thought that the plots would develop around his relationship with his ex-fiancée Myongsuk. And the film title “Stray Bullet” can somehow be related to his war experience and lost love. Borne onupon this sort of romantic Korean Drama mindset, I was surprised by the unexpected developing plots and started to realize that In order to get access to the leitmotif, I must adapt to a broader perspective that takes historical, political and psychosocial aspects into account altogether.

The scene of Cheolho walking back home slowly with one hand supporting his aching teeth was brilliant in a way that it was non-verbal, but offer an articulate social background of the film. Cheolho was rendered in long-shot with depth of view, which depicted the crudeness and dirtiness of the neighborhood he and his troublesome family had lived in. The shantytown was named of “Liberation”, which gave a hint of the refugee status of these people. Therefore, it was understandable why this movie was initially banned when it first came out. Not only because its touch on sensitive North Korea issue, but also the fact the depiction of the livelihoods of these “liberated” people reflected the hopeless reality and future of South Korea, which the authorities had figured out but refused to face.

The dysfunctional society was well depicted in the following plots through the post-war unemployment, military prostitute, bank robbing and so on.  What really interested me a lot was the constant use of English phrases throughout the film. I’m not sure if this was culturally a fashion back in the 60’s, or this was director’s personal preference to imitate western style, or this was meant to be ironic in a sense that those phrases were spoken by the people who were indeed controlled and exploited by the Americans without consciousness. Adding on that, the chasing scene and shoot-out scenario reminded me a lot of Hollywood action movie, and it was quite interesting to see how Korean director intended to comprise Hollywood elements in a national film. Would it be a necessity for the development of national cinema in the heating competition with the flourish Hollywood films? Besides, It was also worthy to discuss the purposes of adding such scenes. To me, the motion-driven plot distracted me from viewing this film as purely a drama, and made me felt that it can also be categorized under action genre.

Jingwen Zhao