South Korea is currently one of Asia's most exciting film-producing territories. Whereas many Korean art offerings concentrate on recent history or contemporary social problems, Yoonho Yang's Yuri takes a more spiritual approach; the film tells the story of a Zen Buddhist monk's successful journey towards enlightenment.
Buddhist films have been a staple of Korean cinema down the years, but Yang says that his film differs because it follows the philosophy in both form and content. "Many Buddhist films have shown this religious practice as an episode in a story," says the first-time director, "but I have not seen a Korean film which takes a meditative approach to showing the spiritual world. My film follows in the tradition of Korean Buddhism, not Korean Buddhist films."
"It is sometimes easier to examine the real world by creating a mythical one," explains Yang of his choice of subject matter. "There are infinite possibilties for the imagination in the Buddhist world I sometimes feel that Buddhism and its mythical world are much closer to the essence of human life than scientific research."
Yuri is both the name of the central character and a place. The character's task is, in the fashion of Buddhist philisophy, to unify a pair of opposites. The movie explores two parallel universes; there is the deserted land of Yuri - an imaginary, conceptual and ideal space, and the village itself which the monk visits in the real world. The land of Yuri seems dead, but is really full of life; the village seems alive, but is in fact dead. Yuri has to unify these two separate worlds, after which he can really meet with the "soul" of life.
The film has its roots in a 500-page tome called A Study Of Death. "I simplified and reconstructed the story," says Yang. "The movie I made is quite different from the book, but its concepts were the source of my inspiration."
"I chose some unknown actors and actress that I knew very well for the cast which meant I could work with peple who understand my aims," ends Yang, a film and theatre graduate of Dong Kuk University who began work as an assistant director in 1992. "I needed fresh faces because I was creating a new world."
Richard James Havis
Prod Co: Ha Myung-Joong
Films Prod: Myung Joong Hah, Kyung Ae Park
Dir/Scr: Yoonho Yang
Ph: Chunghoon Chung
Prod Des: Seongyong Kang
Cos: Meeree Choo
Mus: Dongchang Lim
Ed: Kyungja Lee
Cast: Shinyang Park, Eunjung Lee, Youngdong Moon, Songmi Chang
Running time: 113mins
Int Sales: David Lamping Company
