Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned

Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned

Directed by: Um Tae-hwa

Distributor: Showbox

Starring: Kang Dong-won, Shin Eun-soo, Kim Hee-won, Kwon Hae-hyo, et al.


There were five to seven people in the auditorium today. Two of them were couples. They came late, left early. While watching the movie, these two lovers kept chattering in low frequency and that was a typical fate(?) of an unpopular non-Western film. But after finishing the movie, I came to understand the couple.

That is because this film is specifically for Koreans who remember the sinking of MV Sewol. It means they are ready to be trapped by the disastrous trauma. It is manifested by numerous allegories, such as the detonations for tunneling and the death of kids without being noticed by adults, that are posited by the filmmakers. I hate this kind of explanation the most because it is the easiest and superficial. But this time, I could not find a better one. As Isamail Xavier explained, allegory is used to reconcile the "fixed truth" of the past with the viewpoint of the present, while overcoming the temporal rupture between the two times ("Historical Allegory" 341). This is because the temporal gap gives a room for spatial and temporal conditions to interrupt the past teller's intention when it is interpreted by the present reader (338). For this reason, unlike symbolism which is universal, deciphering of allegory requires the reader's preliminary knowledge as a code as Xavier insisted:

"Here the reader and his or her cultural bias - that is to say, the pole of interpretation - become the major instance responsible for the allegory." (340)


So it is not surprising the couple (and another guy who came alone) left the theater in the midst of the film. The real question is; was the allegory effective to Korean audiences? My answer is no. The central sentiment in this film is the different passages of time between the survivor and the victim. As I remember, such a sentiment was represented either by quotes ("You should wear uniforms and enjoy school life. Don't abandon them for me.") or by the actors' cryings.

More to blame is the typical temporal order of the narrative. Although the narrative contains aspects of thriller, it was too bad that everything was revealed to the spectator too easily. I think a simple shuffling of scene could have accrued tension, but the story was shown so linearly as possible. So for me, the film became just a boring fantasization of the marine disaster.

Cited work:
Xavier, Ismail. "Historical Allegory." A Companion to Film Theory, edited by Toby Miller and Robert Stam, Blackwell Publishing, 1999, pp. 333-361.