Tuesday 29 June 2010

Thumbs Up for The Three Brothers (Korean Film)

The new trend here seems to be the Korean film. Youngsters are crazy about the young Korean artists, while the older generation are more interested in their television soap opera. My mother said the Korean films are more real than the Indonesian soap opera. This time I agree with her (think of how we usually disagree on many things...)

Now I'm not attached to television as I used to be several years before. Having children made my choice of the program mostly to their desire. I felt the need to accompany them watching their choice of films, and I don't have enough spare time to do it on my own. So I'm not really a special fan of soap operas.

I watched The Three Brothers because my parents were watching it. I came to like it, as I've written in my previous post. And it made me came every weekend to my parents' home. So, we've got several things done altogether. My sons and my parents enjoyed their time together, I visited them and keep developing our communication (mending old wounds hopefully, not making new one...), and off course a bit freedom for me (including on watching the Three Brothers hehehe...)

For those who have not seen this film, this is the synopsis:
Sun-kyeong is a retired police officer and father of three sons.
He had high hopes for his eldest son Gun-gang, but he has fallen short of expectations almost every time. He has made wrong decisions many times in life, ending up being divorced and going bankrupt. Sun-kyeong was not happy with Gun-gang's decision to remarry Chung-nan, but after finding out Chung-nan's secret, he keeps it unknown and wishes the couple's happiness.

His second son Hyun-chal is the envy of the town and pride of his father. Compared to his older brother, he was not favored as much by his parents as a child, but now he runs a number of businesses which are quite successful. Sun-kyeong always feels indebted to Hyun-chal's wife, Wu-mi who has long sacrificed her happiness for the benefit of the Kim family.

Sun-kyeong feels proud of his last son Yi-sang as he follows in his father's footsteps by becoming a police officer. However, due to the generation gap, oftentimes the father and the son clash each other.
As opposed to Sun-kyeong's expectation, Yi-sang married Eo-yeong, the daughter of his deadly foe, an ex-convict Sun-kyeong traced and eventually arrested a long time ago.

The unique three sons and three daughters-in-law!
"Three brother" revolves around their relations full of conflicts and love.
(source: http://www.hancinema.net/korean_drama_Three_Brothers.php#synopsis)

There was an episode where Eo-yeong was forced to help her mother in-law at home. She then questioned about her valuable time that she would waste at home instead of giving something to her country and to herself. That is the same struggle in the heart of women who are between the need to stay at home and to go out working.

I love that Wu-mi opened a restaurant. And (not as narcissistic as I would be) she did it together with her mother and her husband. So they were all shared the same portion of hard work. It helped us see how she gained back her husband, and how a misery put them closer together.

Another interesting facts of life is how the old couple Sun-kyeong and his wife faced his retirement, and how their three sons backed them up.

Yet, there is one thing which make me write this one down. It was the episode where Chung-nan and her mother-in-law went to the ATM booth ready to transfer the content of Chung-nan's deposit to a number that would be given by an "authority of the bank" who will help her to save that account as someone else is trying to take it out. We then saw Gun-gang running as fast as he could to stop them from doing any silly action that would empty their deposit. Even though it turned out that Chung-nan didn't have money in the deposit, but it is some message that was already transferred to the audiences. It was so real and it wasn't preaching. I like it.

Recently, we also have those kind of hoax. Not only the one from the phone, or worst through hypnotizing people, but this one is using the social media. That crook were using other YM to chat with friends of the owner of that YM and then asked them to transfer some money saying that she was in trouble and couldn't retrieve money from her account. She needed her friend to transfer it through a friend's account. And then it turned out to be a deceiving action to get money.

If things like this shared through film like in this Three Brothers film, it would help a lot of low educated people (yet those who were deceived were not low educated) who was probably not really listening to talk shows, or do not really understand the real process by just listening to the infotainment. Film is a way to reach people. It is so sad that Indonesian soap operas these days seem so unreal...Thumbs up for The Three Brothers, hopefully we are learning from this film too.

2 comments:

Barkha Dhar said...

You have such a nice blog. I loved reading some of your posts. Would like to hear more and more from you.
Barkha Dhar
http://dharbarkha.blogspot.com/

Retty Hakim (a.k.a. Maria Margaretta Vivijanti) said...

Thank you. I've blogwalking to your blog and enjoy reading it too. It's nice to have another cyber neighbour to visit.