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27 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
Not one to watch if you want cheering up..., 26 April 2002
8/10
Author: Simon Booth from UK

Call me strange, but Kim Ki-Duk's THE ISLE is one of my favourite Korean movies. Not just the beautiful imagery, not just those scenes that had people fainting in the theatres, but because I empathised a lot with the characters, and the symbolism of their environment and their actions was very much in tune with my sensibilities. OK, so I'm strange .

Much as I enjoyed watching it, I won't try and argue that watching THE ISLE is a 'pleasant' experience - not one to leave you with a smile, so I was prepared for something a little bit serious and grim with ADDRESS UNKNOWN.

It is not a little bit serious and grim at all... it is *completely* serious and amazingly grim.

Kim Ki-Duk is less interested in exploring the somewhat global issues of human feelings here, but instead wants to explore the feelings of a nation - Korea, still living in the shadow of the Korean war. The characters here come across as a little apersonal (it's ok, I just invented it) because they are embodiments of the country's experience... the division, the loss of autonomy, the dehumanisation that people feel, caught up in the conflicts between North and South and between Capitalism and Communism. Obviously to suggest that this was a universal Korean experience would be unreasonable, though Kim Ki-Duk is not interested in exploring balancing factors in this particular movie. People suffer. And suffer. And suffer. And then they suffer for a while. He is relentless in his examination of the pain that he clearly feels, for himself and for his country.

It must be said that I know almost nothing about Korean history (though I am learning a lot as I type!), or of contemporary Korean society, so I don't know how common the feelings that Kim Ki Duk expresses here are, or how realistic his assessment of Korea's post war condition is. It all feels very believable, very convincing... but certainly none of the Korean people I have met are quite as utterly miserable as they must be if ADDRESS UNKNOWN were an accurate depiction of their lives.

I think there is no doubt that for at least some people, and some communities, the feelings that Kim Ki Duk brings to the fore in the movie represent real feelings and real situations. But I think that it must be assumed that it is not an even-handed assessment of the situation, that he was quite certain what he wanted to say and permitted no deviation from it. In a way this is the movie's undoing... it is so relentless in its pursuit that it becomes too easy to get detached from it, to treat it as political allegory rather than a tale of human hardship. A little more warmth, a little bit of humour, maybe just one or two moments where at least one character was *slightly* happy... and I would have been much more able to bond with them, and their tragedies and miseries would have been that much more poignant as a result.

A fairly small matter, and to a degree this observation may simply be an observation that I am not Korean. The movie is a very personal look at the feelings and circumstances of a nation, and having had no comparable experience myself, it is obvious that I'm going to struggle to fully relate.

If I couldn't empathise with the characters though, I could at least sympathise with them. The characters themselves were good characters, and the performances were mostly very good. Notable exceptions are the American soldiers in the movie, whose English dialogue and delivery is really quite embarrassingly bad The movie is very light on dialogue - little that is important is expressed through words, because it doesn't need to be. Always a good thing in a movie.

It is the younger characters of the movie that are centre stage, those who were born years after the Korean war ended, but are still suffering its consequences. It's always refreshing to see young actors deliver mature performances, and this is one such example.

THE ISLE probably impacted me mostly because of the visuals - the beautifully photographed and haunting environment in which the movie took place. ADDRESS UNKNOWN is not nearly as pretty, which can partly be based on location, but also the fact that the style is a lot more realistic, gritty even, as opposed to THE ISLE's abstractness. It is still well filmed though.

I wrote of THE ISLE after seeing it:

"if you want to take away the beauty of his film, you have to be willing to pay the price of the horror"

ADDRESS UNKNOWN is a less successful movie for me because once you get past it's horror, instead of beauty you find there's just a bit more horror . OK, it's not as bad as that... but the tone is quite unremittingly bleak. I don't know whether to recommend the movie or not. I liked it, but I'm not sure how many others will. Definitely not a movie to put on to take your mind off a troublesome day anyway!

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15 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
A jewel of solid led, 24 January 2002
9/10
Author: jallie from Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Wow. I never felt so scarred after leaving the cinema and seeing a good film. Doom is making it's appearance and it will not go away even after the very end. The whole setting of the film is marvelous. Desolate, hopeless and there's no way out of the barren landscape. All persons are victim of this place, knowing they cannot escape, with all consequences. The fact that those who should have gotten it don't, makes it a very bitter ride. I watched every second, hopeless but fixed to the screen. Only minor is the somewhat overacting of some of the featured American soldiers, but okay still a perfect 9 out of 10. Highly recommended, another fine piece of Korean cinema.

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14 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
A Trivial Film For a Serious Audience, 31 December 2003
Author: Michael Cumming from Ottawa, Canada

Not unlike the Oscar Wilde play from which my "One Line Summary" for this comment is co-opted the director of `Address Unknown' requires his audience to think.

In all of the Kim Ki-duk films I have seen (The Isle, Address Unknown, Bad Guy) what lies on the surface differs greatly from what lies beneath it. He is working in a language of metaphor and allegory with characters that range from caricature to archetype to fodder. By fodder I mean they are impenetrable and near impossible to empathize/sympathize with for the sole reason that emotional attachment is not the director's intention. He is creating a fictional world made to comment on the world we live in.

By exploring the eclectic residents of an isolated South Korean village in close proximity to an American military base Ki-duk is dealing with a number of issues such as globalization (the base, the bullies who moved to America), language (the theme of English, the comic interlude of the Playboy translation), gender (obvious), race (obvious), history (that family whose father turned out to be a traitor, the constant references to the past from the veterans), tradition (the archery), relationships (Korean girl and U.S. solider), war (obvious) and violence (obvious). The bleak, violent, at times repulsive world the film takes place in is so over-the-top that the audience can't help but think that it is just a means to an end.

In films like `The Isle' and `The Bad Guy' the black humour and sarcasm are more evident. `Address Unknown' is a tad more subtle but there are more than enough hints to indicate the film should not be taken at face value. An excellent example is the constant, almost laughable violence.

Kim Ki-duk is one of a handful of directors striving to create intelligent cinema that is accessible as well. The East is bursting at the seams with talent and I really hope it starts to get the recognition it deserves.

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12 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
It all falls down, 9 April 2005
Author: Atavisten from Tellus

This is gritty and bleak realism at its best. We are in a countryside village on the border to North-Korea were poverty and war (both the Korean war and the continuation of the cold war) takes its toll on the villagers. Prospects are none, but some think of America as one and therefore learns English. This also provides some of the small pieces of comedy in the movie, for example when some youngsters try to translate from a hustler magazine or when two bullies are tough with speaking English with strong Korean accent; Koreans have trouble pronouncing f for instance.. Some other comedy is the US army battalion running and crawling everywhere and the war veteran crazy for medals always bragging about killing 3 commies.

Anyway this very grim and bleak realism is obviously made as a political commentary. I don't blame any of them, they are victims of their circumstances. I sympathize with every one of them. Kim Ki-Duk don't blame anyone either, the Americans are portrayed as human, not as heroes nor devils, but the theme of globalization and colonization still lies implied in the movie. Actually its full of commentary. I wont get into it here.

I know there's a big difference between countryside Korea and big city Korea, but even though I cant say if its real or not, I believe this to be quite realistic. The utter consequences the movie depicts of course is fiction and made to emphasize the horror and drama, this is a movie after all.

This was not very well received in Korea and understandably so, it takes up problems that are very actual today and brings up a painful past. To get rid of these problems it is very important however, that someone like Kim Ki-Duk makes these kind of movies and for people to see them. So go see it!! But its not a pleasant watch.

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8 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Amazing Movie!!!!, 3 January 2006
10/10
Author: Bobhand from United States

One of the reasons I enjoyed this film as much as I did is because it is one of those rare films that sticks with you! After I finished watching it, I felt compelled to stay up way later then I should have because I just could not stop talking about it! There was just so much going on! It was so powerful...dark, emotional, complex, intense. However, unlike most reviews that I have read, I noticed a few comedic elements as well. It was kind of a sad funny, but they were scenes that literally gave you a moment to catch your breath and laugh before being thrown back into the darkness... which I felt really made the film that much more powerful! The director is just so talented it's sick! No pun intended!

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14 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
This movie made me experience physical pain, 31 January 2002
7/10
Author: sippan (sippan@sippan.se) from Stockholm, Sweden

I love this movie! OK, it's horrible, it's disgusting, watching it made

me sick...and saying that I experienced physical pain is not a lie.

There is no happiness in this film. Everyone is depressed and

everyone has difficult problems to deal with, and those problems

don't get solved, but rather get worse during the film. But this is

why I love it! A film that can give you such strong feelings, even if

the strong feelings are depression and pain, is a GOOD film!

Might be good to see this if you think YOU have problems. =)

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Find your way to this Address Unknown, 21 August 2006
7/10
Author: FilmFlaneur from London

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Kim Ki-duk's film has been a while making its appearance, at least in the UK and after viewing it, in some ways one can see why. As unflinching and as memorable as the other works which have made him out as perhaps Korea's finest filmmaker - The Isle, Bad Guy (2001), 3-Iron (2004) included - Address Unknown (aka: Suchwiin bulmyeong) is as uncompromising in its view of humanity as any of them, and with many of the director's characteristically disturbing moments intact.

Set in and around a US air force base in Korea 17 years after the end of the Korean conflict, and mainly focusing on the travails and tribulations of the residents of a nearby village Address Unknown was, the director says, a way to explore and represent the dehumanising effect of war. It's also, as others have noticed, about other things too: language, family relationships, the debasement of tradition, and violence amongst them. There is no real central point to the film, although arguably the relationship between the American flyer and Eun-OK (Min-jang Ban) gives it its main drama. Korean cinema frequently has at its heart the pain caused by the 1950s' war and the painful division of the country into two halves thereafter, Here the psychic trauma created is symbolised by the base, and the pain resulting is acted out in varying degrees by those who live and work in its shadow.

In Kim's unnamed village the principal business appears to be the butchering of dogs for food - a particularly brutal affair, though the film does claim no animals were mistreated during the filming - by one Dog Eye (Jae-hyung Jo, also notable in Bad Guy and The Isle). Dog Eye despises teenaged Chang-Guk (Don-kun Yang) the son of an absent American soldier, for being of mixed descent. Letters to his missing father, sent from his mother, are being returned 'address unknown'. For his part, Chang-Guk makes his solitary friend in Ji-Hum (Young-min Kim, also in the same director's much more contemplative Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, 2003). He's a sensitive, withdrawn artist, bullied by his war veteran father. Meanwhile Ji-Hum has a crush on Eun-OK. With her eye damaged by a childhood accident, she in turn has a relationship with an unstable, drug dealing American flyer, (Mitch Malum), who promises her a corrective operation on the promises of becoming his girl...

The bleakness of the film, one both of landscape and the heart, reminded this viewer of the Chinese film Blind Shaft (aka: Man Jing) made the same year. But the latter is more about the degradation wrought by political economics, whereas the malaise at the centre of Kim's work is more pathological. It is also more relentlessly grim and less cynical than that tale of couple of serial killers at work in Chinese coal mines to such an extent that the viewer at times wonders if anyone will be left alive by the end. This narrative ruthlessness, as critics have noticed, ultimately undermines some of the impact the film might otherwise have had.

Another flaw is the performance of the main American actor; Malum's acting has been for some a distraction, although I found it weak, if passable. Korean directors sometimes make unfortunate casting decisions for their English speaking parts, one thinks of the problems which attend the otherwise excellent J.S.A. No doubt the home audience would not care about or notice such shortcomings, so it seems pointless to chide Kim too much over this weakness, especially as elsewhere the cast are generally excellent.

Ultimately, what makes Address Unknown so striking is Kim's imagery and the choice of actions by his characters, so spiritually and emotionally rootless. Seen in this light, the writer-director's title is especially apt, both referring literally to the official stamp on front of envelopes returning to the mother, as well as to the anonymous village of his stories. Like Bad Guy and The Isle, the current film also contains individuals who exist on the edge of human relations, although here it is not just persecuted lovers. To a certain extent all of his characters have lost their way, either represented living rootlessly in an old army bus, being casually inhumane to animals or each other, or simply by valuing preferment - suggested by army medals, relics and pensions, even just good looks, over genuine human connection. And when times are so out of joint, some striking images are the result: the death of a major character head buried in a frozen paddy field; a man hung by dogs; the cut-out paper eye (an especially treasureable, Dali-esquire moment) on the face of Eun-OK, the killing of the dogs over a dirty puddle, and so on. In fact there's a touch of surreality about the film that continues right until the end, with the soldiers crawling in the field. Kim's achievement is in unifying so convincingly, and without any monotony, a multi-charactered narrative that includes such extreme concerns as disfigurement, minor bestiality, and murder. If you fancy such a strong and austere cinematic brew, then you won't be disappointed.

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1 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Brutal, 7 February 2008
9/10
Author: sitenoise from http://sitenoise-atthemovies.blogspot.com/

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Address Unknown is about the occupants of a small town situated next to an American military base in the Korean countryside. Writer/Director Kim goes beyond a mere indictment of American presence. He displays brother against brother (North vs. South) and calls into question the responses to it.

This one is probably for Kim Ki-Duk completists only. It is a remarkable film in its relentless presentation of pain. Every single scene in this 2 hour film involves pain, emotional or physical.

An American soldier pays for the surgery so a young Korean girl can regain the sight in her impotent, freaky-looking right eye and then wants her to be his sweetheart in return, wink-wink. When she shows a little interest in the Korean boy who liked her just the way she was before the surgery, the American becomes incredulous and tries to hurt her, but before he can she pokes her own eye out to erase her debt to the soldier. Meanwhile, the Korean boy who liked her just the way she was schemes to kill the two Korean boys who have been stealing his money and beating him up. When the girl looks freaky again and goes to express her love to the Korean boy, she finds him in jail for shooting the American soldier in the genitals with a bow and arrow.

That's only one of the subplots. I've seen a lot of films about pain and despair but none that have been so oppressively constant in their execution. This is a great film by one of the great contemorary directors. But you need to be ready for it or you may be repulsed. It's not slasher film gross at all. The really dirty stuff, like hanging dogs from a tree and beating them to death with a baseball bat, is done off camera. Thank God.

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3 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Focuses on negative American stereotypes., 8 October 2006
6/10
Author: fetboy from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

A very well made movie, and beautifully acted, but an American viewer will definitely take offense to it (especially if they are, or have been, a US serviceman). I have been searching for a good Korean movie or TV show that would give insights as to how the South Koreans feel about the American presence in their country, but surprisingly that topic is almost never brought up in Korean made entertainment. I read the cover of "Address Unknown" in the video store, and thought this would be a good movie about the Americans in South Korea. It is a good movie, but I was offended. The movie focused of several stereotypes that I found appalling (I will try to write this review without giving away too much movie in details, but be aware there are spoilers in this review).

The movie's main characters are a horribly poor, mentally disturbed, Korean woman and her mixed racial son that was the issue of an African American airman. In the viewer's first introduction to this couple, we the viewer see the son attempt to brutalize his mother. The message was obvious; The Korean mothers of children of American servicemen live desperate lives, and their mixed racial children resent them.

Having spent 6 years in Japan in the US navy, and being the father of 2 Japanese American Children you can probably understand why I would be offended by this notion.

Matters may have been different in the 60s and 70s, but I can say from personal experience that every child of an Asian mother and American serviceman that I know has benefited greatly from being truly bi-lingual, and have lived well in their respective countries (I have been searching for information on the actor/rap singer Dong-kun Yang to see if he actually is half African American, but if he's not, he still spoke English beautifully in the movie). The relationship between the mother and her bi-racial son takes a terrible turn, when the son slicing off his mother's breast tattoo that depicts her former, American serviceman, lover's name. The mother throughout the movie takes pride in her son and her past love with the American serviceman, and to me these were the only touching aspects of the movie. To see the son attack his mother in this way really made my heart sink and I could not understand what point the director was trying to make, other to characterize bi-racial children negatively.

The breast tattoo topic comes up again when an AWOL American soldier attempt to carve his name into the breast of his Korean lover, so that she will never forget him after he is gone. I have been searching on the web, and I cannot find any account of such an occurrence happening, in the long US-Korean relations, involving a serviceman carving his name into a Korean woman (or girl) against her will. Where that stereotype of an American wanting to tattoo a Korean woman came from, I have no idea, though it does sound a lot like what KKK members are reported to have done in the States. In any case I thought it was a very unfair portrayal or Americans, and it reminded me a lot of the myth of Vietnamese women who hid razor blades in their vaginas (might have happened, but I highly doubt it, and there is no report of it actually having happening).

Early in the film we see this same serviceman offer that same Korean girl a chance at eye surgery in trade for her becoming his sweetheart. Anyone who knows anything about the US military knows that such an exchange is absurd, because a serviceman could only get surgery for a Korean woman if she was his wife. The message that that exchange attempts to give, which becomes more clear later, is that Korean women (and Koreans in general) are forced to yield to everything Americans demand (no matter how demeaning), because Americans feel that the Koreans owe them so much after all the Americans have done for them. Later the girl blinds her surgically repaired eye, giving the message that her deranged American lover's gift was not welcomed after all.

I hope that Koreans who have watched (or plan to watch) "Address Unknown" will not assume that all American servicemen are deranged, because were not, or that we intend to make outrageous demands of them after all of the "gifts that we have given them," because we do not.

The tone of "Address Unknown" borders on anti-American propaganda, which is really a shame because this movie is very well made.

I hope someday there will be a less grim movie made about the post war Korean-American experience, because I know from personal experience that most interpersonal Korean-American relationships are not all bad (though in the 60s and 70s, relationships between Koreans and Americans were probably a lot more strained).

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5 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
can you say "bleak", 8 June 2005
5/10
Author: dmuel from downtown, Michigan

The movie centers on the lives of rundown rural community of South Koreans who happen to live proximate to a U.S. military base. The lives and stories of several citizens intertwine in this bleak and gritty flick. There is a Korean woman and her half-black son, the product of a relationship with a G.I. Another local makes a living collecting and killing dogs he sells for food. A young girl lives a detached life but develops a friendship with an introverted friend who dotes on her, when he's not being beaten and bullied by local toughs. There are more characters in this tale, but most all of them have somehow been adversely affected by the omnipresent US soldiers who drift, comically at times, in and out of their existence. And, the movie overflows with brutality, mostly of Koreans against each other. At some point, most assuredly near the end of the film, the tragedy is so overwhelming it becomes lugubrious. How many bad things can happen to a small community? In this movie there is no end to it, and one wonders what is the point.

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