Invitation

     Starting from the bizarre anti-social meltdown, and arriving back to the genuinely sensitive picnic scene, the movie ‘Peppermint Candy’ by Lee Chang-Dong opens up the life journey of Young-ho. The analysis of Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park in the essay ‘PEPPERMINT CANDY: THE WILL NOT TO FORGET’ is an ethos of not forgetting, and the relationship of psychoanalysis and historiography connected to how memory is processed by examining the film’s structure of the reversed chronological order. Even though Magnan-Park is insightful in pointing out deeper meanings of objects and helping to gain understanding by linking the life of Young-ho and late 20st century Korea through an intellectual interpretation, my approach to the story is slightly different. I believe the key concept of ‘Peppermint Candy’ is passive immersion; and by that I mean entering into another person’s shoe by just allowing and accepting the story as it is told.

     When Young-ho is on the train tracks crying out “I want to go back again”, I believe it wasn’t a plea to erase all memory as mentioned in the essay, but simply a communication of multiple emotions such as frustration, anger, abandonment, despair, regret, agony, and sorrow mixed with a desire to reboot life. Even though this is just a slight difference in perspective, and my opinion might be an obvious statement, it is a different way of viewing the movie. It becomes the difference between active involvement in the films dialog to just openly embracing the story and understanding its people and the country’s state of being. Active participation of the audience might be to ponder alternative scenarios or attach grandiose meaning that changes the tracks of thought from the movie to a different topic. But accepting a passive invitation to personal life is partaking in the communication of emotion and gaining understanding of a state of being by becoming one with the storyline. The point is, for me, ‘Peppermint Candy’ is not a movie of asking why Young-ho chose what he chose or why he acted the way he acted. It is about understanding Young-ho and people like him by accepting their story, and in a way, gaining an understanding of Korea and the people who occupy its history by allowing their stories to be told.