Shiri

I remember watching the climactic scene of the film, where JongWon shoots Banghee, as a seven year old and being extremely overwhelmed by the fact that two people who love each other had to kill the other due to the political division of the country. Watching the film twelve years after as a nineteen year old adult did not alter my overwhelming reaction to the film, as the melodramatic element seemed to once again serve as a tearjerker.   

Not only is the film Shiri is very similar to Hollywood action movies but also the frame where women are often depicted as deceptive beings who can put on a mysterious mask in their strategies of survival is also alike. As well, Kim addresses the “monstrous”,“dangerous femme fatale”(Kim, 261) where these two dangerous identity merge into one woman who is quite vulnerable indeed, which “reclaims the masculine power through the destruction of the North Korean Other that is embodied in the female”(Kim, 266). Although I somewhat agree on her point in Lee BangHee being “monstrous”, I think this “monstrous” being is similar to the beauty and the beast monster, where one character becomes evil due to the circumstances, rather than the character itself being innately evil.  

Kim’s point where she talks about the “weight of history crushes any hope for romance, and erases her fetus that crucially embodies the reconciliatory spirit between the North and the South” appropriately explains the ending as well as demonstrates the situation of the South Korean and North Korea’s reconciliation. Despite certain people’s efforts to reconcile with one another, there are always these hindrances, such as political and economic reasons that change people to be hopeful, then hopeless.    

The auspicious timing and place where Hollywood films became more expensive after the local currency lost half of its value, Chaebol’s withdrawal of capital allowed the venture capital companies to fill the void in the Korean film industry, and protective measures for domestic products increased, allowed for Korean cinema’s commercial renaissance(Kim, (Kim, 271), and Shiri was released at this perfect timing. I wonder if the movie would still have been a blockbuster if it was released at a different time period than 1999.  Thus, although very similar to the Hollywood action movie pattern, Shiri was a blockbuster, and provided the outside countries to get a sense of what and how the people (at least) in South Korea feel about the division between the two countries. This division that always seems to stay divided despite all endeavors to reconcile.