Any movie that begins with a scene showing the protagonist arriving at an unfamiliar place usually ends up with the place itself, town or city, big or small, getting heavily intertwined with his/her life. And so, the apprehension is already underway when we see Shin-ae (Do-yeon) arriving at the small town of Miryang (translated as Secret Sunshine in Chinese) with her son, having decided to come and live in her husband’s birthplace after he dies in a car accident, leaving behind a successful music career in Seoul, evidently out of mental depression, and having effectively renounced any faith in God. Her appearance is perpetually bleached and harried; almost ready to burst into a dam of tears at any given moment, yet she is composed and stoic when it comes to being social. Somehow, she finds a foothold here pretty quickly, stimulating the interest of the local mechanic (Ho-Song), whom she befriends quickly. Starting with piano-tutoring, she quickly manages to secure a deal to buy a new piece of land and start a music school. Life seems to open up a consoling, encouraging vista as she rapidly comes out of her depression, until tragedy strikes and takes away her little son. Shattered and uncertain with her future, she finally accepts God into her life, seeking emotional solace. Little does she know that the very faith that brings her peace holds a different kind of surprise, one that is both cruel and demeaning to her, pulling her deep into an abyss of confusion, grief and madness. The cumulative effect of all her pent-up anger against the world results in her taking a totally destructive, enraged path of action in order to satiate it, one that could only be described as a prelude to Charlotte Gainsbourgh’s character in Antichrist.
Right from the beginning, the town itself seems to hide a lot within the psyche of its residents. An evangelic, born-again pharmacist who seems too involved in other’s affairs, a shopkeeper who takes offence upon Shin-ae’s recommendation to re-decorate, an amorous mechanic suddenly turning into a man of faith, an adolescent girl who loves her abusive boyfriend, the girl’s father who maintains a blatant disgust for her and a creepy interest in Shin-ae, her perpetually mute son suddenly giving a beautiful speech in school, the very same women who seem openly affectionate towards her while all the time indulging in crass gossip behind her back…we just don’t seem to find answers to what lies behind all these social anomalies. The director lays out all of them on a platter at face value, from the point-of-view of Shin-ae, and proceeds with the narrative from there.
The lives of all the people mentioned above shall come to change, as Shin-ae’s life takes cruel and horrible twists and turns, through the realms of retribution and repentance, culminating into a shattering effect towards the end. We see all the aforesaid characters considerably changed, for better.. The shopkeeper looks happier after business improves, as a result of following up with Shin-ae’s recommendation, the pharmacist’s household ends up riddled with guilt, the young adolescent girl finally decides to take a stand on her life, taking up a hair-dressing job, and the mechanic finds himself evolved into a refined and supportive man with no illicit feelings towards our protagonist… At the same time, we find that as Shin-ae’s life takes a toll into intense grief, she inadvertently has an effect on everyone else in the town, directly or indirectly. Her suffering tips the emotional scale of the entire town in turn, while affecting others, rendering her simply as an object of total pity.
Though Milyang might seem like an experiment in grief, it is very obviously and conspicuously scripted in such a way so as to make the film more appealing as a thesis on the society in general, unwritten norms that distance you from others if you refuse to comply: an over-enthusiastic mother gets looked down when she wildly applauds her son’s speech in school, a hysterical, grieving grandmother reviles the mother for not following suit and remaining distanced during her son’s funeral, the almost child-like, unconventional chemistry between mother and child, while in private, the juvenile approach she takes to a threat of ransom in return for her child, the stark difference between others’ release of emotions in a prayer hall, and the mother’s livid grief, Shin-ae looking upwards dramatically changing in meaning, before and after she renounces God, a relatively gentle man turning into a monster of rage against someone who stood him up on a formal date. There’s even a heavy criticism (even mockery) of the delusional, evangelical methods of Catholicism which, when considered along with Shin-ae’s state of mind, could be entirely pardonable. Chang-dong Lee has always been a critic of the general culture in Korea, ever since his first film, Green Fish (also starring Ho-Song). In fact, he even found it bittersweet to have been appointed after his tremendous success as a filmmaker, as Minister for Culture and Tourism by the Korean republic, having originally started out as an acclaimed novelist. He resigned after a year, to return to making films.
The stark, simple, sunlit cinematography far away from the chaos of the cities acts as a source of comfort and an aid for consolation. There is a perpetual, documentary feel throughout the film, with long tracking shots mostly behind the protagonist, very unorthodox camera angles and also extended shots of her while she’s grieving alone, even the whole narrative is solely based from Shin-ae’s POV. In fact, I am led to recall watching Kim Ki-Duk’s Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring, thinking of the woman who comes to find peace, as a post-Milyang Shin-ae with acute mental depression.
Yes, there have been several referrals to the movies of Von Trier, and aptly so too with the perpetually traumatized woman being a vacuum pump for your tear-glands and no possible hope in sight. But what Chang-dong Lee actually tries here is to establish a (biblical?) connection between one individual’s suffering and the happiness of some half-a-dozen others while putting forward the question of whether it is really worth it. And if I’m correct in interpreting the abrupt ending (Chang-dong Lee opens his movie with a shot of the sky and closes it with a visual of an ugly patch of earth) as her emotions coming to a full circle, I guess she’ll cope with it on her own terms, unable to ever forget what’s happened, well who can?
By Fazil (at PassionForCinema.com)
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GOOD REVIEW,WELL WRITTEN!
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