To the heart... Aimless Bullet (1961), London Korean Film Festival

“Maybe we can change our fate.”

“The wall of fate divides us and we cannot bring it down with a gun.”

“Why not? Why not!”

Yu Hyun-mok’s dark tale of a family’s struggles eight years after the Korean War is regarded as one of the best films of the period and in all Korean cinema. It’s a rough ride but it does not disappoint and has an intensity that is still startling.

At one point, on the run from the police after committing a bank robbery, Yeongho (Choi Moo-ryong) is chased through underground sewers, only stopped, momentarily, by the body of a mother hanging dead from the ceiling, her child strapped, still alive to her back. It’s almost ludicrous and yet it hits you hard as a symbol of a desperate country still overrun with the American soldiers and with so many living in poverty with no future.

There are a number of deaths in the film and most happen off screen, casual carnage among an aimless people lacking hope and direction with the exception of the odd lucky movie star, hardworking streetwalkers and dentists. A beautiful woman is pushed to her death by an obsessed young poet who dives after her, if he can’t have her there’s no point in life, a women dies in childbirth and yet her husband, all too defeated to properly process her passing, leaves the morgue and jumps in a cab to, well, nowhere…

Cheolho trudges home

The story is centred on the family of an underpaid accountant Cheolho (Kim Jin-kyu) whose bed-ridden mother (Noh Jae-sin), is still living with traumatic stress post-war and keeps on shouting out: "Let's get out of here!". But, of course, the family cannot, eking out a living in a shanty town with Cheolho's Wife (Jung-suk Moon) barely able to provide for their children and his sister, Myeongsuk (Seo Ae-ja) forced into prostitution, earning money from the American soldiers still serving in Seoul – there were some 57,000 in 1961 when this film was released.

Cheolho spends the film nursing toothache, unable to afford getting his wisdom teeth sorted out and putting his family first with his meagre wage not even allowing him the bus fare to get to work. He trudges from home to the city every day, hopeless… without purpose, just clinging on.

The veterans, Yoon Il-bong centre

Cheolho’s brother Yeongho seems to have more spirit, a war veteran who still dresses well and spends his time drinking with his former soldiers some of whom carry the marks of the war, one has a metal hook for a hand, another can only walk with crutches (Yoon Il-bong, who is ridiculously handsome).

Yeongho also has a good-looking girlfriend, Miri (Kim Hye-jeong) who is an actress and tries to get him a part in the film she is making. The director interviews Yeongho and tells him he’s looking for a veteran with the exact same wounds as his – shrapnel entry and exit wounds on the torso. Yeongho is disgusted and refuses to sell his wounds for entertainment.

“Change the story. Change it so that he has no eyes, no nose and no legs. That way it will sell more. So, what you need is not me but my rotten scars, and you want me to sell them? I didn’t get shot at for fun!”

Yeongho runs into Seol-hui

Yeongho has already been evolving a Plan B after meeting the beautiful former nurse Seol-hui, (Mun Hye-ran) who shows him her top floor “apartment” atop an industrial building and, as the two drift together there’s hope in love. But this is Korea in 1960…

Seol-hui shows Yeongho a service revolver and wants him to have the gun. He has had enough of respecting the rules and decides to be more “daring” … setting up a bank robbery with his former comrades in support; what options are left in a destructed world of shame and poverty?

Yu Hyun-mok directs with rawness and economy giving the two brothers adequate focus and allowing the supporting actors their chance to establish rich characters. It is a highly accomplished film and rightly lauded in the canon of Korean film.

Impossible choices for Myeongsuk

This sparkling restoration is a highlight of the London Korean Film Festival, it’s a film I would recommend very highly so tell your taxi driver to take you directly to the Picturehouse Central on Wednesday 13th at 6.30pm!

It's also being screened at:

Edinburgh 18th November

Belfast on 19th November

Manchester 23rd November