Green Fish

It takes a poet anc true artist to film a moving beautiful love story between a mentally retarded man and a woman afflicted by cerebral palsy...no sentimentalism....no happy ending. INCREDIBLE ACTING. South Korean cinema is truly MAGNIFICENT!!

Sad story of man discharged from military who naively gets involved with a gangster. Story slowly unfolds then poor editing abruptly ends it. Simply, gangster boss orders him to kill rival then next frame boss knifes and kills him. Film ends.

"Green Fish" ("Chorok Mulgogi") is a highly-influential and popular Korean film from 1997. It is the first feature film directed by influential novelist and playwright Lee Chang-dong ( Oasis ), who would later hold the Presidential cabinet position of Minister of Culture for Korea and would be awarded the Chevalier order of the Legion d'Honneur by the French government for his contributions to promoting cultural diversity.The story begins with Makdong being recently discharged from the army and attempting to re-enter civilian life. His family, once proud farmers with acres of land, has been reduced to selling eggs in a traveling truck and doing cleaning in order to survive. The only member of his family who approaches respectability is an older brother who is a coward and a cuckold. Their farmland has been paved over and covered with concrete apartment buildings, and little of Makdong's remember home remains.Disillusioned and desperate to provide a better life for his family, Makdong meets Miae one evening on a train, a woman who will lead him down a dark and desperate path. While attempting to help Miae, Makdong is brutally beaten but manages to impress the gang boss Bae Taegon. Bae Taegon claims that Miae is his girlfriend, but has no qualms pimping her out when it suits his purposes. Slowly, Makdong is drawn into this criminal underworld, at first with the pure intentions of providing for his family but in time he will be forced to see exactly what he has become in the process."Green Fish" is a gritty, psychological gang thriller. Director Lee intended the film as a harsh critique of Korea's industrializing and urbanizing drive at the time that was rapidly destroying traditional ways but replacing them only with vice and violence. Makdong represents the corrupted innocence of the country people, and what adaptations are necessary in order to survive. Yet even in the whirlwind of blood and betrayal Makdong finds himself in, his heart is still pure enough to pity and find affection for Miae, who has become little more than a hallow tool for Bae Taegon.As Lee's first feature film, "Green Fish" does have an amateur and raw feel. It is not as slick and well-produced as later films. However there are some beautiful images here, and some scenes that have become classics in Korean cinema.

do not waste your money on this US edition of Lee Chang-dong's debut. it's a fine movie and worth seeing, but Pathfinder's DVD is one of the worst I've seen. it's pan-scanned (the film was shot in the widescreen 16x9 ratio) and what's more, the print is riddled with dirt and looks cruddy. if you have a region-free dvd player, Metrodome in the UK has issued a version of the film in the proper aspect ratio, and their print of the film is also in reasonably good condition. this Pathfinder dvd is an utter embarrassment and would make me think twice before ever purchasing ANYTHING the company releases.

Green Fish is not a real gangster movie, but more an illustration of the battle between good and evil, between innocence and depravity, between the righteous one and those who only believe in the law of the strongest, between the city (and all its poisons) and the countryside (with its green fish).The law of the strongest is not only a matter of physical forces (strength, number), but also of mental ones (deception, manipulation, ambush, cynicism of the individual).The film has also a socio-economic dimension: the protagonist of the movie is a young man who has been released from the army. He has no job, but is hired by the immoral leader of a gang who appreciates his courage, his sincerity and his 'morality' (his sense of justice).And the women in all that? They have no other choice but to follow the strongest, if, and only if, they are young and beautiful. As for the unborn child, there is more than serious doubt about the real father...The first film by Lee Chang-dong contains already many ingredients of his later movies: a train, spasticity, gratuitous violence or exploitation of innocence. It says a lot about the director's vision of the way of the world.