Landscapes in Sopyonje

What struck me most about Sopyonje is its beautiful representation of the Korean countryside. The film’s use of long shots immortalizes landscapes of mountains, rivers and fields and people are often situated to the side and appear small. This creates an image in which man, who appears small, helpless and insignificant in relation to the landscapes surrounding him, is no match for the grandeur of nature and Korea’s natural beauty. 

Nature, as represented by Im Kwon-Taek’s excessive use of long shots, symbolizes the Korean people’s yearning for the traditional in a time of post colonialism and the spread of American mass culture into small countryside villages. Chungmoo Choi, in “The Politics of Gender, Aestheticism, and Cultural Nationalism in Sopyonje and The Genealogy”, also mentions that Sopyonje’s representation of nature acts as one of the nostalgic devices the film uses in order to show everyday events from the recent past which serve to “confer validity on the sense of preindustrial community”, meaning that they offer a shared space for Koreans to collectively project their nostalgia towards the traditional precolonial Korea (115). The people’s han, or the unexpressed feelings of oppression and sorrow resulting from Korea’s colonial past, is also placed in this collective sphere of nostalgia that is partly formed by the Korean countryside landscape. In Sopyonje nature, therefore, has a paradoxical dual symbolic representation of an empowered being (where beauty holds power) that stands far above any insignificant human being (as positioned in specific frames of the film) and, also, of a hopeless and helpless being whose traditional roots (pansori and natural landscapes) are slowly disappearing and being replaced or filled by modern technology, music and industrialization. The first symbolic representation of nature instills in the viewer with some hope and pride for preserving traditional Korean cultural symbols; the second depiction of nature stirs up feelings of nostalgia for the precolonial Korea and the beauty and simplicity of its countryside. Im’s use of long shots to frame natural landscapes created for me a mixed feeling of hope and nostalgia which stood out from the sorrowful and devastating life led by Songhwa.