hankyoreh

Back with his 17th film, director Bae Chang-ho can't hide his excitement, although that kind of reaction is usually common among rookie directors. He watches his film with a theater audience then checks out the Internet to see how many stars the viewers gave him.

Not that he is expecting another box office record. The local legend of the 1980s who dominated the era with blockbusters like "Whale Hunting" and "Deep Blue Night" has returned with a low-budget movie that is playing in only three theaters across South Korea. A top prize winner of last year's Philadelphia Film Festival, "The Road" made its low-key local debut Thursday after two years of being without a distributor.

So, what is the story he waited so long to tell and is so eager to share? "Being in my 50s, I came to think that maybe I know life a little now," Bae said in an interview at Cinecore, the only theater in Seoul showing his film.

"The Road" tells the story of an old blacksmith whose life is shattered by his best friend and his wife. The director wrote the story and played the lead, looking back on life in rural Korea in the 1950s and 1970s.

"It seemed, after all, that our hurt and betrayal come from those who are close to us. The problem is that we can't live without getting that hurt, big or small. How we can put down the yoke of hurt -- that was the subject of this film," he said.

"The Road" marks a quiet but glorious return for the director who suffered harsh criticism for his previous film “Last Witness.” The big-budget opener of the 2001 Pusan International Film Festival that looked back on the Korean War drew a mixed response, with critics saying that he was stuck in an 1980s style of filmmaking.

Fresh from the bitter memories, he received rave reviews at home and abroad with the new independent film. It won the Jury Award for Best Feature in Philadelphia and was also screened in other festivals including the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy.

The reflective study of human choices and regrets follows the daily life of Tae-seok, the blacksmith. He travels from village to village carrying a heavy package of iron instruments on his back. Despite the hard labor, he is content with his life with a lovely wife and son at home and his best friend Deoksu, for whom he can offer everything he has.

As it often is with reality, however, his life changes in a moment. Tae-seok lets his friend use his house as collateral for a loan to set up a business. But Deok-su gambles away the money, and Tae-seok commits a crime while trying to get it back from the professional gambler who took his house.

The sudden twists in life have been a recurring theme in Bae's films. In "My Heart," a 1999 small-budget film hailed by some as his best, the heroine's husband changes his mind to have some drinks on his way home and afterward dies from the bad habit.

"That's what I felt from life. Life is very strict. You have to keep up your mind. Life's not a place where you can stay laid back.

Tae-seok wouldn't have had to wander for 20 years if he had been wiser and contained his anger. But he is human."

Life is twisted in a moment, but it needs a long time to recover. After returning home from jail only to find his wife and Deok-su together, Tae-seok starts his nomadic life that continues for two decades until he comes across a young woman.

Like Tae-seok, the director has had ups and downs in his career over the past two decades. After making a celebrated debut with "Kobang Neighborhood" (also known as Slum People) in 1982, he enjoyed success through the 1980s, churning out a series of blockbusters praised by both critics and audiences, until he enountered the slippery side of success.

"Whale Hunting 2," a 1985 sequel to the mega hit of the same title released a year earlier, was considered a flop, and the failure made him rethink his cause as a director. His films that followed, like period dramas "Hwang Chini" (1986) and "Dream" (1990), marked his turn toward esthetics and humanity rather than popular taste.

He raised many eyebrows when he cast his wife and himself to play the leads for "Love Story," a 1996 autobiographical film. His wife, Kim Yoo-mi, an interior designer whom Bae married at the age of 43, also played the heroine in "My Heart," the winner of the First Prize and the Audience Award of France's Benodet Film Festival and the Audience Award of Udine Far East Festival.

"'Love Story' tells the story of love and marriage that I experienced myself. It was very difficult to decide that my wife and I would act in it. I was prepared to face prejudice and harsh objection and expected that its box office result wouldn't be good.

The only reason I decided on the cast was that, in that way, I could deliver the sincerity of the story," he recounted in his 2003 essay, "Changho, Wake Up, Wake Up."

Bae now places himself apart from the mainstream. The stories he wants to tell -- Korea's pristine scenes and uncompromising craftsmanship that are slow in speed and involve little eye-catching extreme images -- don't attract investors. Barber shops, village inns, traditional markets and the narrow rural roads, which have disappeared over the course of Korea's modernization, are among the scenes he wants to convey to future generations.

"The Road" was made for 500 million won, or half a million dollars, about one ninth of the average budget for Korean movies screened in theaters.

"In my 20s and 30s, I felt very different from older directors who made movies about Korean subjects, but naturally the desire matured in me to do the things that I know well, that are intimate with me, the sentiment that we had. Also, it was kind of my counteraction to the industrializing movie environment that someone has to do that. And I wanted to do that," he said.

With his career spanning three decades, Bae finds the ongoing renaissance of the Korean film industry challenging to directors.

"Audiences in the 1980s forgave mistakes. Movies were made with small budgets at that time. They had generosity. But 20 years later, they don't miss small things. If I didn't change, I would stay as an 1980s director. "Talent is not the only thing you need to have as a director who lasts long," he said, "To be a director for a long time, we should develop our view for humanity and life."

Seoul, Nov. 5 (Yonhap News)