Race In Time

Kwak Kyung-Taek’s Friend is a film about the friendship between four boys and their journey into manhood. The scene that stuck out to me due to it’s aesthetic nature was the scene where the four of them are racing to the movies. It used interesting editing techniques and the shaky camera made it so realistic. The scene starts out with a quick tempo 80s song (Bad Case of Loving You by Robert Palmer) as they all run out of the high school gates, followed by medium shot of a market, the camera shakes as the boys race by. 

Then suddenly a freeze frame of one of them as he runs by to focus our attention on his physical reaction. 

Was this focus meant to emphasize the excitement of being young and free or was it to make the viewing experience more amusing for the audience? 

Then as the runners go around a corner the film slows down and focuses on Joon Suk and another freeze frame. 

The non-diegetic sound of Robert Palmer’s Bad Case of Loving You has a high tempo which increases the excitement of the viewer’s experience while watching this scene, although the lyrics have nothing to do with the actual scene.

There is an interesting juxtaposition of the characters where the camera focuses on two of them at a time as being placed in the same category. There is Dong Su and Joon Suk who both end up with bad ends; dead and in jail with a life sentence where as Sang Taek and Jung Ho who end up taking better paths in life. 

This scene demonstrates the freedom of being young but the seperations that crime, violence and anger can put on a friendship. The scene is an illusion of friendship because since it is a race there is only ever one winner.