Lets face it, Korean cinema has been far from impressive of late. Especially when we put things in contrast to earlier this very same decade that saw an emerging new generation that inventively crafted genre films capable of drawing huge international markets. Whether it was Park Chan Wook, Bong Joon Ho, or Kim Ki Duk, it was obvious that there was a shifting paradigm away from the more classical mentalities of old blood like Im Kwon-taek or even the monotonous flood of mainstream romance comedies or period films on the other side of the spectrum.
Overall, films that were both commercially viable and critically successful on a global scale were becoming increasingly more likely. This was in direct contrast and often times in conflict with a parallel trend that was heavily aimed at drawing in domestic tween markets, with embarrassingly sappy melodramatic fare that was often times both formulaic and utterly mindless. Unsurprisingly, this latter trend won out and the emergence of this domestic innovation seemed to disappear altogether. Park Chan Wook and his contemporaries were still pumping out yearly works for the festival circuit, but it didn’t appear that anyone new was entering the limelight.
Its quite a sad affair and one that has honestly decreased my personal attentions to Korean film making on the whole. Thus I watch less films as years pass and pay increasingly less attention to industry developments. This isn’t to say I’ve completely given up on them but merely that my attentions are focused elsewhere on the globe. I still catch the new Kim Ki Duk or Park film when the opportunity presents itself. And on some rare occasions, still catch that oddball film that may have peaked my interest via a blog post or blind rental. Castaway on the Moon is such a film and one that I viewed wholly by accident.
