Cinema September 3: Secret Sunshine

Korean Christians, Truth and Perspective

When you decide to watch the most well-known or well-regarded films of a certain country, genre, time period or creator, you often realise quite quickly that the endeavour will not be filled with giggles. Given that I’m completely selecting these Korean films to watch based on the technique of ‘sniffing around a few reviews and lists until something catches my eye’, this is perhaps unsurprising. I could literally just pick something funny. Why don’t I just do that? But alas, this time, once again, I did not. I wanted to delve further into the work of Lee Chang-dong, another director pretty high on the list of Korean auteurs after the big two of Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. I’ve only seen one of his films so far, an almost accidental trip to see the phenomenal Burning, and I wanted to know more. So, I picked Secret Sunshine (밀양), his 2007 drama starring Jeon Do-yeon and the ever-present Song Kang-ho (seriously this man has an absolutely crazy contribution to cinema, get him a statue already).

The hilarious, light-hearted plot? A widow moves from Seoul to her dead husband’s hometown with her son to start a new life, whereby the son (a young child) is subsequently abducted and murdered. You can’t say I don’t know how to pick ‘em. The film follows this woman (Lee Shin-ae, played by Jeon) as she processes her grief through various means, including Christianity, attempted revenge and even madness. Song Kang-ho plays Kim Jong-chan, a self-proclaimed ‘good Samaritan’ who seems determined to be a supportive force in Shin-ae’s life, whether she asks for it or not. It’s a tender, quiet and generally understated film, which in itself is fairly impressive given the subject matter. Far from melodrama, this film is a calm, neutral exploration of truth, meaning and forgiveness.

In their video essay on the film, A Booktube Channel highlights the symbolism of the ‘sunshine’ of the title. As Shin-ae explains in the film’s opening scene, this ‘secret sunshine’ is the original Chinese name of the town (Miryang in Korean) that she is moving to. This video essay notes that this sunshine serves a kind of double function, providing warmth and comfort, whilst also shedding a bright light on absolutely everything, the good and the bad included. They also highlight the multitude of perspectives that make up this film, raising the question of who, if anyone, is really casting this light at all. Is it the light of God? The light that comes from objective knowledge?

Being a Lee Chang-dong film, the answers remain deliberately ambiguous. In fact, throughout this film, there is a distinct resistance to anything final or clear-cut, which is at times a particularly brave move. In the formal sense, this is most striking in the decision not to show the body of Shin-ae’s son on screen when she is brought to identify it. The scene is filmed as a wide shot, encompassing the entire riverbank where the body has been discovered and all the officers who have been called to the scene. There is no zoom in when Shin-ae finally sees the body, no cut or music at all, and not even any dialogue: it’s a moment that we don’t get to see play out, with emotions that we don’t get to see.

There is a similar ambiguity around the decisions that Shin-ae makes, and the communities surrounding them. As I mentioned above, Shin-ae turns to Christianity after the death of her son. And not just any Christianity: full-on, Korean-style, born-again, singing the Lord’s praises at the station and having regular Bible study kinda Christianity. I won’t pretend that I know a lot about Christianity here in Korea, but it is distinct enough a beast that one can tell quite a lot about it quite quickly. It can be evangelical, it’s often extremely conservative, and it ain’t for me. The film does a better job than I ever would at holding back full judgement of these Christians within the narrative: rather than falling into any kind of crude caricature, the church-goers of the film are as nuanced and unreadable as anyone else. This seems to be Lee’s style: a calm, more objective approach to storytelling that lets your own interpretations and ideas slip into the spaces he creates.

The Christianity that Shin-ae wholeheartedly embraces does initially seem to help her: she speaks of feeling great happiness, and is even moved to visit the killer of her son in order to forgive him. In the pivotal scene of the film, it is this meeting that changes everything, though again, through subtle degrees. When Shin-ae sits down with her son’s murderer, a man who formerly taught him, her revelation to him that she has found God prompts his response that he has too.

His talk of the peace and forgiveness he has found in God is exactly what you don’t expect to get out of this scene, and neither does Shin-ae. Jeon’s performance in this scene, the complete antithesis of those ‘great acting’ compilations on TikTok, is one of a silent, internal cracking. Almost entirely through her eyes we can see the destruction of a woman who cannot comprehend that the man who ruined her life has found his own forgiveness, and that she has no power over him. It’s the moment that begins her spiral away from the church and into total psychological breakdown, via sabotage (in a fantastic scene where she plays a pop track titled “Lies” over a local preacher’s sermon), revenge (in her attempts to seduce the husband of the woman who introduced her to Christianity) and eventually delusion and self-harm.

Again, it’s the masterstroke of this film that none of this plays out as melodrama. Whilst there are scenes of wailing, desperate confusion and suffering, these are measured out well throughout the narrative, and filmed with a kind of detachment that resists a tip into sentimentality. Just as the Christians in the film aren’t presented as deceitful or raging firebrands, so too is Shin-ae herself presented at a distance at many of her lowest points. Another key scene in the film is when Shin-ae, accompanied by Jong-chan, first enters a church during their prayer service.

The scene mainly consists of two long shots, the first from the back of the church, looking out at the rows of pews and worshippers as the preacher gives his sermon. After a moment we start to hear retching and then wailing, but the camera does not move. Only after a minute or so do we cut to the source of this sound, Shin-ae desperately breaking down for the first time since her son’s death. Again, the camera holds on her for a long time: there is no zoom in, no swell of music, just the woman and the emotion. Through techniques like this, the film is able to simply present huge emotions and ideas, allowing the viewer again to move into the space where they can find the answers.

Of course, there’s an irony to this ambiguous style of film-making in a story where the source of truth is so up for debate. As A Booktube Channel said, multiple approaches to truth are shown throughout, but none of them really win out, unless you as the viewer interpret them as doing so. In itself this forms a critique of the more narrow-minded elements of Christian extremism, though once again it’s worth remembering that this is done subtly and not from a place of viciousness or malice.

Really, it all comes together beautifully through the metaphor of the title. In a scene in the middle of the film, a freshly grieved Shin-ae returns to the pharmacy where she first met the woman who tried to introduce God to her. As the woman, the pharmacist, tries to persuade her that God’s love is everywhere, “even in that beam of sunlight”, Shin-ae walks over to the sunlit area, puts out her hands and claims that “it’s just sunlight”. Such a literally clear thing as light can be so multitudinous in its meanings, and so to can the search for God and the process of grief. That is what comes through masterfully in this film, and what makes it all the more affecting. Given that this and Burning were both so impressive, I’m excited to see what else Lee Chang-dong has to offer for Korean cinema.