Spirits’ Homecoming was released only earlier this year, which is why unlike pretty much every other film covered by this blog, it has yet to be honored with any awards. It’s a sure thing though that by this time next year it will earn plenty of awards if only because of public sympathy for its subject matter. I’m less certain that it deserves such honor based on its merits alone as it’s just not that good a film but I will agree that it’s worth watching anyway for its historical significance.
In 1943, 14-year old Jung-min is the only daughter of her parents who live in a rural part of Korea. The country is under Japanese occupation and the villagers whisper about soldiers abducting residents in the night who are then never seen again. The soldiers however come for Jung-min in broad daylight and trundle her along with numerous other girls on a train to a camp in north-eastern China. They wonder if they are being conscripted for labor, with one asking if they’re being sent to a shoe factory but of course they’re forced to become sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. A parallel thread takes place in the present about an old lady who survived being one of these “comfort women”. She encounters a young girl who, after experiencing a tragic event in her own life, appears to gain the supernatural ability to perceive spirits. As you might guess from the title of this film, this helps the old lady find some closure for war-time experiences.
The photography is excellent and the performers are competent if far from perfect. Unfortunately the story itself is formulaic and therefore wholly predictable. Jung-min meets another girl, Young-hee whose mother has passed away, and they bond over a good luck charm that Jung-min’s mother made for her. The Japanese soldiers are all sadists who seem to take as much pleasure in inflicting pain on the under-aged girls as in having sex with them, except for that one token soldier who is kind because Jung-min reminds him of his own sister. The climactic confrontation with the cruel camp commander verges on being comical due to how perfectly it conforms to the standard tropes. Everything is tuned to stir up patriotic passions and emotional upswells fall well into schmaltzy territory. The choice to tell a separate story set in the present is distracting and feels pointless until you realize at the end that it’s being used to set up a feel-good ending despite the horrors that transpire in the film.
That said, the film does have some decent moments. The scene in which the girls are let out to have a day in the sun and bathe in a small pool is excellent. One girl confides in the others that one of the soldiers claims he loves and will bring her home with him once the war is over. The others chide her and warn that she should never let down her guard against the monsters who have enslaved them. It’s one of the rare moments of originality in the film. Overall, director Cho Jung-rae also does an admirable job in ensuring that the film captures the full scale of the horror that is perpetrated against the poor girls while avoiding any hint of exploitation.
Even though the film isn’t that good, in many ways it should also be considered as being good enough. It’s impossible to overstate how important this film is to Koreans and how cathartic it must be to finally confront this issue head on. Apparently mainstream producers and distributors were wary of the controversial and perhaps shameful nature of the subject matter and so the director had to turn to crowdfunding to get enough money to complete the film. That it was a massive success upon its release is a strong testament that the South Korean public does feel that the time is ripe to talk about this in the open. That’s also why playing the familiar Arirang folk song while showing shots of the Korean countryside or having dozens of poorly animated CGI butterflies flitting over the corpses of the girls who are summarily executed might be cheap cinematic tricks but they do work in wringing out your tears.
Perhaps years down the road we might get a film about this issue that is good on its own merits. For now, Spirits’ Homecoming is all that we have and flawed as it is, it’s still well worth watching.