When looking to pinpoint the beginning of the renaissance of Korean cinema, we often look to blockbusters like Swiri (1999) and Joint Security Area /JSA (2000) or genre works like The Quiet Family (1998) and Whispering Corridors (1998), but just as important were a series of quiet yet impactful dramas that ushered in a new era of melodrama. Arguably the most enduring among these has been HUR Jin-ho’s sensational debut Christmas in August (1998), with HAN Suk-kyu and SHIM Eun-ha.
HAN plays Jung-won, a congenial young man who runs a modest photo studio in a mid-sized town and lives with his widowed father. Jung-won welcomes all sorts of clients to his store, from bickering elementary students to an elderly woman looking for a suitable funeral portrait shop. Yet underneath his warm smile and positive demeanor, this young man is harboring a secret - he is being treated for an incurable disease and his clock is quickly running out. Jung-won’s life is suddenly shaken up one day when parking enforcer Darim (SHIM Eun-ha) races into his store, urgently needing some photos developed. She becomes a regular customer and a friendship with a hint of something more begins to develop between them. They steadily grow closer over ice cream in summer and a promise of a drink together as fall approaches, but as Jung-won’s condition deteriorates and as he goes around bidding his final farewells to friends and family, his store isn’t always open, which leaves a confused Darim pacing outside its windows waiting for him to return.
By the time Christmas in August (1998) arrived in the late 1990s, the terminal illness melodrama was already a mainstay in Korea, yet with his very first film, HUR elevated the genre with a film that was evocative, heart-rending and filled with powerful images subtly contained within each frame. Director HUR has mentioned that his desire was to approach the subject of death with warm tones, which he achieves through a pair of bright protagonists, winsomely performed by HAN and SHIM, and a story that avoids explicitly stating Jung-won’s desperate situation. HUR trusts viewers to figure it out for themselves, which gives them a sense of connection with the story, as they emphasize more strongly with the characters.
Without being spoon-fed the drama, spectators also become more attentive to what they’re being shown on screen. This includes the central motif of photography, and the themes of memory and legacy that it evokes. Jung-won’s job is to capture moments in time and as he reckons with his mortality, he tasks himself with leaving something behind, both to be remembered but also to help others to continue on without him. In one of the film’s most famous scenes, Jung-won becomes frustrated with his father when he tries to teach him how to use the TV remote.
Christmas in August (1998) is also elevated by its beautiful cinematography, which captures the characters within their environments in flat, unmoving mid-to-long shot compositions which evoke still photography and thus again reinforce the film’s themes of memory and legacy. The film was the last work completed by celebrated director of photography YOU Young-gil, who was known for working on several Korean New Wave masterworks by PARK Kwang-su (Chil-Su and Man-Su, 1988) and JANG Sun-woo (The Age of Success, 1988). The Cho-won Sa-jin-kwan (Meadow Photo Studio) seen in the film still stands on its tree-lined street in Gunsan, in North Jeolla Province.
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