Castaway on the Moon

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Castaway on the Moon

Sep 25, 2017

Writer by Pierce Conran
View983

2009｜116 MIN | Comedy, Drama

DIRECTOR LEE Hae-jun

CAST JUNG Jae-young, JUNG Ryeo-won, KOO Kyo-hwan, JANG So-yeon

RELEASE DATE May 14, 2009

CONTACT CJ Entertainment

Tel +82-2-371-5500

Fax +82-2-371-6340

Email filmsales@cj.net

Saddled with insurmountable debt, a man caves in to his despair and throws himself off a bridge to end his troubles. But when he opens his eyes, rather than in heaven, he finds himself washed up on a deserted island. What’s special about this island is that it’s right smack in the middle of Seoul and for a man who can’t swim, utterly inescapable.

After years of writing scripts and then co-directing the coming-of-age wrestling drama Like A Virgin (2006) with LEE Hae-young, LEE Hae-jun embarked on his first solo effort with the singular Castaway on the Moon, a quirky, high-concept idea positively bursting with imagination and heart. Leading the film is JUNG Jae-young, who plays a Robinson Crusoe to reflect the woes of contemporary life in Korea: a person utterly smack dab in the middle of a city of ten million people yet utterly disconnected from his peers and preyed upon by the vultures circling the country’s explosive consumer growth.

This man’s despair turns to wretched resignation in his unlikely new home but when he realizes that he is now free from the shackles of society, not to mention his crushing debt, his sadness turns to relief, and when his desire reawakens, his newfound clarity uncaps a well of passion and resourcefulness. His missions are twofold, grow the necessary crops to make noodles to go with the dried powder pack of a lone sack of black bean noodles, and get in touch with a mysterious shut-in who lives by the side of the river and drops him messages in a bottle in the dead of night.

LEE uses effortless humor to tell his story, which is interwoven with manifold layers of societal anxiety and historical trauma that are made to resonate through the memorable images and metaphors that litter the film’s concise and perspicacious design.

Castaway on the Moon was released to little fanfare in the spring of 2009, but it’s perhaps no wonder that it slipped through the cracks when it debuted the same week that both PARK Chan-wook’s Thirst and BONG Joon-ho’s Mother premiered at the Cannes Film Festival (the former would go on to win that year’s Jury Prize). Thankfully, time has been kind to the film, turning it into a beloved cult classic, especially among Korean film fans overseas. Meanwhile, LEE experienced commercial disappointment again with his family dramedy My Dictator in 2014.

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