Han Suk-kyu plays Mak-dong, a discharged soldier who returns home to find things have changed: his family has issues, work is difficult to find and the nearby city has grown. He meets a woman who takes a liking to him and she helps him get a job as part of a small gang, so he can earn money for his struggling family to live happily.
Lee Chang-dong, with his debut feature, opts to tell this story with a moody, understated style to make it all the more real and evocative. While there are fragments of successful, emotional moments, the vast remainder of the film leaves us out in the cold as observers, instead of anything closer and more intimate. Characters are rarely sympathetic, and in the rare cases that they are, it is usually a result of their expository circumstances rather than anything we witness.
The main trouble rests in the writing, which is simply too raw and underdeveloped to be crafted into anything meaningful. While the film’s pacing and structure is fine, never leaving us terribly bored from slow or overlong scenes, it is not anything special either.
The film’s most memorable moments come from the occasional bursts of emotion from the actors and a few strong scenes that elicit a very precise atmosphere, whether it be the dreary scenary, disorienting action or the Taxi Driver-esque soundtrack. In the end though, while Green Fish was an important film for Korea’s emerging industry and a nice stepping stone for Lee to get to his stronger sophomore film, Peppermint Candy, there are plenty of other films that handle the story and themes here, but better.
Reviewed by Tarun
