Peppermint Candy
Encyclopedia
Peppermint Candy is a 1999 film, the second film from South Korea
n director Lee Chang-dong
. The movie starts with the suicide
of the protagonist and uses reverse chronology
to depict some of the key events of the past 20 years of his life that led to his death.
The film was received well, especially in film festivals. Spurred by the success of Lee Chang-dong's directorial debut, Green Fish
, Peppermint Candy was chosen as the opening film for the Pusan International Film Festival
in its first showing in 1999. It won multiple awards at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
and won the South Korean film industry's Grand Bell Award
for best film of 2000.
The first flashback takes place only a few days before Yong-ho's death. At this point he is already clearly suicidal, confronting his former boss and ex-wife Hong-ja before the husband of his teenage crush Sun-im pays him a surprise visit. Yong-ho is taken to visit a coma
tose Sun-im in a hospital.
The next flashback shows Yong-ho's life five years earlier. At first glance, he seems to be a rather successful businessman, but the problems in his life become clear when he confronts his wife, who is having an affair
with her driving instructor. Yong-ho is unable to claim moral high ground
, since he is also shown having an affair, with an assistant from his workplace. Finally, Yong-ho is shown along with his wife at their new house, having dinner with his colleagues, where it becomes apparent that the marriage isn't working.
On the third flashback, Yong-ho is shown as a police officer in the year 1987. At the beginning, he is shown along with his pregnant wife at a mundane scene. After this, he is shown apprehending a witness and brutally torturing
him for information about another man's whereabouts. This leads Yong-ho to Kunsan where he along with his fellow police officers capture the wanted man. While in Kunsan, Yong-ho is distracted from his work by fruitlessly trying to search for Sun-im and instead ends up on a one night stand with another woman.
The following flashback shows Yong-ho when he is just starting his career as a policeman and is pressured by his peers to torture a crime suspect, presumably a student demonstrator. Shortly afterward, he is visited by Sun-im. Yong-ho coldly and cruelly dismisses her by feigning interest in another woman, his future wife Hong-ja. At the final scene of this sequence, Yong-ho is shown sleeping with Hong-ja, whom it is shown he never truly cared about.
During the next flashback, it's May 1980 and Yong-ho is performing his mandatory military service. While Sun-im is trying to visit him, his company is taken to quell the Gwangju Democratization Movement. Yong-ho gets shot in the leg and is told to stay behind. This leads to a scene where he confronts a harmless and presumably innocent student, whom he accidentally shoots and kills.
The last flashback shows Yong-ho as a part of the student group that reunited at the beginning of the movie. This is also where he meets Sun-im for the first time. The scene poignantly shows the innocence that Yong-ho had, before his country molded him into the violent and jaded man he is at the start of the film by pitting him against his friends.
is shown as Yong-ho becoming traumatized in the shooting incident. The tightening grip on the country by the military government during the 1980s is mirrored by Yong-ho losing his innocence and becoming more and more cynical during his stint as a brutal policeman. Similarly, Yong-ho losing his job during the late 1990s mirrors the Asian financial crisis.
Yong-ho's life depicted the struggle between historiography
and psychoanalysis
. Despite his desperate desire to move on from his past, mnemic traces overpowered the psychoanalytical aspects of his life. These mnemic traces include the train, camera, and peppermint candy as well as Sun-im and her various surrogates throughout the different vignettes, which led the psychoanalysis of his life to triumph over historiography. The relationship between historiography and psychoanalysis can be seen in historicism and progressivism where Yong-ho chooses to look back on his past instead of looking solely on his future to move forward. The major and traumatic events that were historically imposed on him were so embedded in his life that he could not just simply move on. However, finally reflecting back on his past allowed him to accept what happened and finally advance into the future. Unfortunately, this was just moments before he committed suicide when he turned to face the train. The train was the symbol that guided the film in reverse chronology and his cry to return to the past signifies his tragically late recognition of the past's significance on his life.
Issues of masculinity in the South Korean culture also arise in the film. Yong-Ho's masculinity is broken during the Gwangju Massacre scene in which the militarized masculinity enforced by the Korean government; a required 26 month duty in the military, an order to kill innocent civilians, and a need to conform to the standards of the other soldiers around him; ultimately forces Yong-Ho to compensate later in life through interrogating the student protesters who inevitably were the reason he was put in that situation. This continues on with the way he treats women later on in his life, objectifying and mistreating his wife Hong-ja and ultimately losing his one link back to his innocence, Sun-im. What results in the beginning of the film, what would be the end of Yong-Ho's life, is an ultimate humiliation and lamentation for a lost innocence where personal history is connected with the history of South Korea.
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
n director Lee Chang-dong
Lee Chang-dong
Lee Chang-dong is a South Korean film director, screenwriter and novelist. He won the 2008 Special Director's Prize at the Asian Film Awards and has been nominated for the Golden Lion and Palme d'Or. Lee served as South Korea's Minister of Culture and Tourism from 2003 to 2004.-Life and career:Lee...
. The movie starts with the suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
of the protagonist and uses reverse chronology
Reverse chronology
Reverse chronology is a method of story-telling whereby the plot is revealed in reverse order.In a story employing this technique, the first scene shown is actually the conclusion to the plot...
to depict some of the key events of the past 20 years of his life that led to his death.
The film was received well, especially in film festivals. Spurred by the success of Lee Chang-dong's directorial debut, Green Fish
Green Fish
Green Fish is a South Korean film. It was the first feature-length film directed by Lee Chang-dong, who also wrote the screenplay. Lee had previously been known as a novelist and high school teacher. The film stars Han Suk-kyu in one of his first major film roles...
, Peppermint Candy was chosen as the opening film for the Pusan International Film Festival
Pusan International Film Festival
Busan International Film Festival , held annually in Haeundae-gu, Busan , South Korea, is one of the most significant film festivals in Asia...
in its first showing in 1999. It won multiple awards at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is a film festival held annually in July in Karlovy Vary , Czech Republic. The Karlovy Vary Festival gained worldwide recognition over the past years and has become one of Europe's major film events....
and won the South Korean film industry's Grand Bell Award
Grand Bell Awards
The Grand Bell Awards is an awards ceremony presented annually by The Motion Pictures Association of Korea for excellence in film in South Korea....
for best film of 2000.
Plot
At the beginning of the film, in the year 1999, the main character Yong-ho wanders to a reunion of his old student group. After causing some general mayhem with his deranged antics, he leaves and climbs atop a nearby train track. Facing an oncoming train, he exclaims "I want to go back again!". What follows is a series of prior events in the main character's life that show how he became the suicidal man portrayed in this scene.The first flashback takes place only a few days before Yong-ho's death. At this point he is already clearly suicidal, confronting his former boss and ex-wife Hong-ja before the husband of his teenage crush Sun-im pays him a surprise visit. Yong-ho is taken to visit a coma
Coma
In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
tose Sun-im in a hospital.
The next flashback shows Yong-ho's life five years earlier. At first glance, he seems to be a rather successful businessman, but the problems in his life become clear when he confronts his wife, who is having an affair
Affair
Affair may refer to professional, personal, or public business matters or to a particular business or private activity of a temporary duration, as in family affair, a private affair, or a romantic affair.-Political affair:...
with her driving instructor. Yong-ho is unable to claim moral high ground
Moral high ground
The moral high ground, in ethical or political parlance, refers to the status of being respected for remaining moral, and adhering to and upholding a universally recognized standard of justice or goodness...
, since he is also shown having an affair, with an assistant from his workplace. Finally, Yong-ho is shown along with his wife at their new house, having dinner with his colleagues, where it becomes apparent that the marriage isn't working.
On the third flashback, Yong-ho is shown as a police officer in the year 1987. At the beginning, he is shown along with his pregnant wife at a mundane scene. After this, he is shown apprehending a witness and brutally torturing
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
him for information about another man's whereabouts. This leads Yong-ho to Kunsan where he along with his fellow police officers capture the wanted man. While in Kunsan, Yong-ho is distracted from his work by fruitlessly trying to search for Sun-im and instead ends up on a one night stand with another woman.
The following flashback shows Yong-ho when he is just starting his career as a policeman and is pressured by his peers to torture a crime suspect, presumably a student demonstrator. Shortly afterward, he is visited by Sun-im. Yong-ho coldly and cruelly dismisses her by feigning interest in another woman, his future wife Hong-ja. At the final scene of this sequence, Yong-ho is shown sleeping with Hong-ja, whom it is shown he never truly cared about.
During the next flashback, it's May 1980 and Yong-ho is performing his mandatory military service. While Sun-im is trying to visit him, his company is taken to quell the Gwangju Democratization Movement. Yong-ho gets shot in the leg and is told to stay behind. This leads to a scene where he confronts a harmless and presumably innocent student, whom he accidentally shoots and kills.
The last flashback shows Yong-ho as a part of the student group that reunited at the beginning of the movie. This is also where he meets Sun-im for the first time. The scene poignantly shows the innocence that Yong-ho had, before his country molded him into the violent and jaded man he is at the start of the film by pitting him against his friends.
Analysis
The events of Yong-ho's life shown in the movie can be seen as representing some of the major events of Korea's recent history. The student demonstrations of the early 1980s leading to the Gwangju massacreGwangju massacre
The Gwangju Democratization Movement refers to a popular uprising in the city of Gwangju, South Korea from May 18 to May 27, 1980. During this period, citizens rose up against Chun Doo-hwan's military dictatorship and took control of the city...
is shown as Yong-ho becoming traumatized in the shooting incident. The tightening grip on the country by the military government during the 1980s is mirrored by Yong-ho losing his innocence and becoming more and more cynical during his stint as a brutal policeman. Similarly, Yong-ho losing his job during the late 1990s mirrors the Asian financial crisis.
Yong-ho's life depicted the struggle between historiography
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
and psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
. Despite his desperate desire to move on from his past, mnemic traces overpowered the psychoanalytical aspects of his life. These mnemic traces include the train, camera, and peppermint candy as well as Sun-im and her various surrogates throughout the different vignettes, which led the psychoanalysis of his life to triumph over historiography. The relationship between historiography and psychoanalysis can be seen in historicism and progressivism where Yong-ho chooses to look back on his past instead of looking solely on his future to move forward. The major and traumatic events that were historically imposed on him were so embedded in his life that he could not just simply move on. However, finally reflecting back on his past allowed him to accept what happened and finally advance into the future. Unfortunately, this was just moments before he committed suicide when he turned to face the train. The train was the symbol that guided the film in reverse chronology and his cry to return to the past signifies his tragically late recognition of the past's significance on his life.
Issues of masculinity in the South Korean culture also arise in the film. Yong-Ho's masculinity is broken during the Gwangju Massacre scene in which the militarized masculinity enforced by the Korean government; a required 26 month duty in the military, an order to kill innocent civilians, and a need to conform to the standards of the other soldiers around him; ultimately forces Yong-Ho to compensate later in life through interrogating the student protesters who inevitably were the reason he was put in that situation. This continues on with the way he treats women later on in his life, objectifying and mistreating his wife Hong-ja and ultimately losing his one link back to his innocence, Sun-im. What results in the beginning of the film, what would be the end of Yong-Ho's life, is an ultimate humiliation and lamentation for a lost innocence where personal history is connected with the history of South Korea.
Main cast
- Sol Kyung-guSol Kyung-guSol Kyung-gu is a Grand Bell Award, Golden Space Needle Award, and Bratislava International Film Festival Best Actor winning South Korean actor. He studied film and theater at Hanyang University and upon graduation took part in mostly theatrical productions...
- Kim Yong-ho - Moon So-riMoon So-ri- Career :Moon So-ri appeared in plays and short films such as Black Cut and To the Spring Mountain before finding fame as a leading actress. Her first film role was in Lee Chang-dong's acclaimed Peppermint Candy, however her acting skills were not really showcased until she appeared in her second...
- Yun Sun-im - Kim Yeo-jinKim Yeo-jin- Political Activities :She had been active as a spokesperson of Park Won-soon during the October 2011 South Korean By-election.- Filmography :* Can You Hear My Heart * Yi San * Dae Jang Geum * A Good Lawyer's Wife...
- Hong-ja