Up, Down and All Around

Il Mare

Watched Il Mare on DVD today -- the original Korean movie that was the basis for the film The Lake House.

Maybe it's because I knew more or less what to expect out of the story, but I found the original film to be much better than the Hollywood adaptation. Some might find the pacing in the original film slow and therefore consider the film boring, but I found it touching.

There's very little dialogue in the Korean version, therefore so much of the story was visual. Which is a good thing, because I only had Mandarin and Cantonese as my audio language choices! Thank goodness for English subtitles! haha!

I think that the deliberately slow pacing of the story is a reflection of the experience of the lead characters. We may feel that time is going by so slowly for us as viewers, but time is passing by even more slowly for the characters. We are merely getting a small taste of their experience.

You get a real sense that time is the enemy in this film, and you can't help but understand how the characters must feel since you too, as a viewer, are waiting with baited breath to see where all this will lead.

I also felt that the Korean version has a much cleaner ending (in terms of temporal paradoxes) than the Hollywood version. There were a lot less loose ends to clean-up in the way the two lead characters finally met in the original film.

Bottomline, the original was superior to the remake, and I'm glad I took the time to watch it.

Tags: Movies

Posted by CF at 5:20 PM