"Castaway on the Moon"

One of the movies I watched from Siff was "Castaway on the Moon." It is a Korean movie and its main characters are a middle-age (around late 30's to early 40's) male named Kim, who has no jobs, lost his girlfriend, and is in a lot of debts, and a young woman (around her 20's) who has been staying in the same room for 3 years and never left the room. The movie began with the Kim jumping off the bridge into the Han River attempting to kill himself. "Unfortunately," Kim didn't end up dying, instead, he was brought to this "island" located at the Han River by the waves. I really liked one of the lines being said by Kim when he found out that he was still alive, which was "When you are useless, you don't even have the ability to kill yourself." At first, Kim was still trying to escape from the island, he wrote "HELP" along the side of the island. He even attempted to kill himself once again by hanging himself. Finally, he realized that was no point to leave the island or to kill himself because that won't change anything in his life. Therefore, he started to settle down on the island; he built a little house for himself using an abandoned duck boat and started to make food by catching fishes and birds. Life was pretty good until one day he found this instant noodles wrapper on the ground. The wrapper struck him and reminded him how much he missed having the noodles. Inside the wrapper was a sealed sauce. The sauce not only gave him the motivation to make his own noodles so that he could eat it with the sauce, but it also gave him a goal, a new goal for his life. He started to enjoy his life, and he changed the word "HELP" to "HELLO."

Meanwhile, the young woman was staying in her room, living her life with the exact same routines everyday. She spent the majority amount of time on viewing other girls' blogs, and she would copy down the pictures of shoes or clothes from the other blogs and put them on her own blog. She often imagined herself as a young, beautiful lady with nice clothes and nicely done make-ups. She liked to take pictures of the moon and just random things on the streets using a professional camera through her window. One day, she spoted the word "HELP" written by Kim, she interpretated it as a signal delivered by the aliens, and she thought Kim was the alien. She was really excited about her discovery of Kim and she decided to make contacts with Kim, which was the reason that brought her out of her room for the first time in 3 years. Kim and the young woman later on built a unique relationship with each other. They communicated through writting along the sides of the island and through the letters put in the wine bottles. After a few months, Kim was found and was forced to leave the island, where he now considered his real home. The movie ended with union of Kim and the young woman on the bus.

I really enjoyed watching this movie. It was presented in a humorous way and the plot was interesting and easy to follow. Some of the course concepts addressed by this movie would be the stereotypes for men and women. For example, Kim from the movie was expected to have a decent, well-paied job by his girlfriend, and be successful on the society by his girlfriend. He didn't meet the expectations and was therefore dumped by his girlfriend. However, one needs to realize that these are not only the expectations of Kim's girlfriend, they are also what are being expected from every male in our society. Furthermore, the young woman from the movie was hoping to be younger, to have a nicer body, and to dress up nicely. She wanted to act elegantly and be more "womanly." These wishes of the young woman are also the wishes/standard of and for the females in the society. Movie is a form of media, and this movie is used to teach its audiences that men ought to be successful and have a good job, and that women should be young, pretty, and well-dressed so that they can attract other people's attentations (especially men's).

picture site: blog- Korean Movies, Best of Life

video site: youtube- Castaway on the Moon Trailer