To me this movie really highlights an aspect of a man’s life that is full of awesomeness. We hear a lot about things like bromance nowadays which to me, kind of ridicules what is means to be a man and have a strong friendships with other men. A lot of times we can relate this feeling to being a part of some kind of brotherhood but not a gang, there is a huge difference between a brotherhood of friends and well, a gangster’s gang. Oftentimes these “packs” of men consists of three to five, maybe six guys, most of them have known each other for years, even decades, having grown together and experienced life changing events together. I can see why this can easily be made fun of but the truth of the matter is these bonds are very much real, and when men who can identify themselves to these brotherhoods, will watch a film like Friend and reminisce about the past; the good ol’ days when you would just kick it with your friends after school and do a bunch of stupid things.
During my 5 years in Secondary school, I met three guys who
became my “pack”. Today, even if I don’t see them very often, I can still call
them up randomly and we’d go grab a beer and talk about everything and nothing.
It’s the difference between texting your friend “Yeah, aight” or “Busy, sorry”
in response to them texting “Yo let’s chill”. To those who you say “busy, sorry”
are not on that level of friendship discussed here. Key word? Sorry. Friend’s ongoing line of “friends do not
have to apologize to one another” rings true.
I have to somewhat disagree with Choi’s claims that male
bonding rarely survives and that Jun-seok and Dong-su lack moral agency. Yes it
is true Dong-su died though I don’t believe intangible bonds are broken by
death. Yes Jun-seok ordered his friend killed but did he do it for him, or for
something bigger than himself? The answer here should be obvious which is that
he felt compelled to do so because of the gangs’ heated relations, and so,
Jun-seok’s lack of narrative agency took over his actions. And to dabble into
the agency question, the moral one, I don’t see why Choi says Dong-su and
(especially) Jun-seok, lack moral agency when it was shown multiple times
during the film, how gray these characters actually were. Main characters in
the film Friend are in no way black
or white and that alone shows moral agency. No one is truly evil and no one is
truly good, everyone’s got a bit of both.
When Jun-seok admits he ordered the murder of Dong-su in
court, I felt that he did so out of respect for his lost friend (the fact that
he admitted it). Jun-seok had to be at peace with his actions no matter how
dramatic they were, and his friend’s soul had to be at peace as well. If he was
to deny Dong-su’s murder, it would only spark more questions, more anger from
Dong-su’s father, not peace. His answer of “he’s my friend” shows (to me) that
he always held Dong-su as a friend more than a rival.
Also, I relate Jun-seok and Dong-su’s shared opinion about
the turtle winning the race to their inevitable “showdown”. They both thought
the same way and acted the same way and so for them to be on opposite sides at
the end could only end one way, one of them had to bite the dust, and both of
them knew it.
There’s so much more to be said about this fantastic movie
but I’ll stop here.
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