Breath + Time (DVD) (Special Edition) (Limited Edition) (Korea Version) DVD Region 3
Chang Chen (Actor)
| Kim Ki Duk
| Sung Hyun Ah
| Ha Jung Woo
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Customer Review of "Breath + Time (DVD) (Special Edition) (Limited Edition) (Korea Version)"
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numinair
See all my reviews
March 17, 2008
See all my reviews
March 17, 2008
2 people found the following helpful
Yeon's Four Seasons
Yeon's Four Seasons
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The relation to the title of "Breath", concerns the first words that housewife Yeon describes to death row prisoner Jang Jin, when she first meets him, and of how as a child she had nearly drowned in a childhood prank, and having to hold her breath for 5 minutes, before being rescued to safety. But in that 5 minutes, Yeon had also felt an inner sensation of elated freedom. This is Yeon's way of wanting to empathize with Jang Jin, that she understands his own blocked emotions of prison life, by this incident in her past, alongside her present 'prison' type circumstances of being within a fractured and claustrophobic marriage situation - as her own husband is having an affair with another woman. As Yeon had constantly watched Jang Jin on the daily TV news broadcasts, and hearing of him trying to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the throat, and alongside this stifling atmosphere of her husband's affair, Yeon decides one day to take a taxi to the prison Jang Jin is kept in. Eventually, getting through prison protocol, (as an unseen prison manager constantly watches Yeon from CCTV and affirms her visits) she manages to eventually visit him. This relation to breath, is then shown as an allegorical essay, of how a woman's life courses through the tides of life's seasons and of her attempt to free her desperate and paralyzing situation, regarding her husband's lack of love, and the need for the breath of life and happiness of emotional air to return to her. Although you get a somewhat empathetical feeling for her, you soon realize that Yeon concedes compassion on a similarly projected mirrored circumstance with Jang Jin's imprisonment. Even the house Yeon lives in with her husband, looks like a metal enclosure (like one of those futuristic metal bases in a video game), reflecting her lowered feelings. Its her own needs that are going on here. Likewise, Jang Jin is locked away in a cell for the murder of his wife and children (which you can surmise could be related to his own wife's adultery. It never mentions it, though), and shares his confinement with three other inmates. One young man gets close to him in love and need, but this is an annoyance to Jang Jin. His need for love and the guilt he suffers at his own fate, produces his own need for a sense of submerged expression from his surroundings, and to let in the breath, cuts into his own throat for air (amidst a mad scurry of silliness), by snatching a toothbrush off a wall artist prisoner, who also needs to scratch nude women onto them. Jang Jin gets 'air', by being taken to the hospital to have his throat injury attended - and is freed momentarily from the inertia of his prison cell. The main key to this film is the nature of 'imprisonment', 'stifling', 'lack of air', with the literal confinement of Jang Jin and Yeon's entrapment in her marriage and husband's infidelity, and related feelings of her drowning experience as a child. Yeon's own brittle married life is likened to 'holding her breath and needing to come up for air', to feel free and alive again, and finds an expression and mirror of love, when seeing Jang Jin on the TV broadcasts. He needs breath as she does, as he had stabbed himself in the throat to get it. So, Yeon, seeing this, makes a radical assertion, by visiting him in prison. She then testifies herself to Jang Jin, likening it to the cyclical four seasons of renewal and change, of the four main seasonal stages of the year. Yeon relates a projected aspect of each season, by taking large photographic wallpaper posters of fields and sky, and then pasting them onto the walls of Jang Jin's prison interview cell, to make a window into that specific season, and then singing a related song about her life and the season to him. Okay that seems a bit nutty, but that's what her stifled life had done to her. As Yeon is also a sculpture artist, too, this is her artistic means of contending her own blocked emotions, as well as trying to free Jang Jin's own tormented soul. She also relates her own female life cycle, from innocent child to a sexualized woman, by giving Jang Jin photos of herself at each stage of the relevant four seasons. A child picture in spring, a young woman in summer, etc. Jang Jin is immediately touched by what she does, as if Yeon is expressing the nature of change, that his stifling period of prison life is nothing more than a cycle of change in life itself. He also feels he is being loved from a woman, like he had never been before. The nature of expression if also shown when Yeon returns home at one point, and spots her daughter dancing in front of the television to music. But as soon as she sees her mother, immediately stops her outward expressive dancing. Although Yeon didn't wish for her daughter to do this, this was a sentiment that Yeon could feel in herself. Expression is certainly something she does by singing to Jang Jin in prison, in her seasonal themed visits - to try to avoid the pathologic, this curbing of life humanity by not being able to emotively express. This also relates to circumstances of when people feel disjointed and lack being able to openly show enjoyment in communication. The 'locked breath' of loneliness in a confinement of isolation, by lack of expression, metaphoric here by Jang Jin's imprisonment and Yeon's obedience and unfair marriage situation. Although this can seem heavy, there is lighter air to this film. It amused me to an extent, that by the time Yeon gets to her winter visit with Jang Jin, their embrace got the most hottest. There is also some humor with the 4 prisoners as a whole, and the routine grabbing of Jang Jin's seasonal photos he obtains from Yeon, and the jealousy of the one young prisoner smitten with Jang Jin. So a jealous prisoner, and even the artistic nude wall scratcher, grab and use JJ's photos to either hide, eat or use as an artist's impression. I wondered, too, that maybe there were 4 prisoners in the cell, because they were also reflecting the 4 seasons in some way. Certainly, like Kim Ki Duk's "Time" this is also symbolic, if not most, by what you see in this. Like "Time", though, this is also quite and easy Kim Ki Duk movie to watch, and by the sprinkling of ironic humor here and there, makes it less of a heavy and somber film. In certain ways, it is related to KKD's earlier movie "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring again", considering Yeon's seasonal prison visits. And actress Ji Ah Park as Yeon, also appeared in that film. I imagine there to be a fair bit of multi threaded stuff in this relating to a person's life going through symbolic reflected season's, too. Need more time to think about that, though. Mainly, "Breath" can showcase the mistakes and pitfalls we can all make, that maybe could be avoided. Jang Jin goes to prison surely over a passionate and emotional circumstance, that he could have been able to control. Yeon's husband finds another woman in a relationship he needs, instead of the woman he married and committed to. Like in Pink Floyd's song "Breathe", about digging a hole by forgetting the sun, and digging another hole afterwards, relates to a repeated and maybe cyclic pattern of emotion and pitfalls. A person's actions become the hole they fall into, which they can raise themselves up again from, but if the sun is blocked and the lesson isn't learned, only fall into the same hole again. Forgetting the sun is like forgetting the rational, the logic and the inner emotional warnings. The film concludes in a befitting way, though, even if these two characters could be viewed as a complete mirror of one person all the way through. Acting is excellent, no doubt, and even though Chang Chen says absolutely nothing in this film, his acting here is top stuff. Likewise, Ji Ah Park is certainly another excellent Koean actress, in her part as Yeon. This box set is certainly worth getting to find out what this is all about, and as you do get "Time" and "Breath" together here, its a well worth purchase and food for thought. |
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