hankyoreh

Master film director Im Kwon-taek's 100th film "Beyond the Years'' is going to disappear from the movie scene just three weeks after its release. The film began showing in 201 cinemas across the nation on April 12, but it is now on show only in 40 movie houses. Now it will close on May 3, after attracting only 130,000 moviegoers.

"Beyond the Years" is a love story between a female traditional Korean pansori singer and a male drummer who are not actually blood-related but have been brought up as sibling. The story uses Korean scenery for its background. The movie was also produced by Im, who became the country's "All-Korean director" after his "Sopyonje," which overwhelmed the critics. Nevertheless, his latest work has not been a success. "Sopyonje," which was the first of the series, drew more than 1 million audiences at the theater Danseongsa, in Seoul in 1993, setting a box-office record in the history of Korean film.

The story of "Beyond the Years" picks up where "Sopyonje" left off, though it was not specifically marketed as a sequel. So why did it fail?

A film distribution company official who asked his name not to be used stressed that the film's subject matter and actors failed to connect with moviegoers in their 20s and women, the film industry's main "consumers."

One person leaving a showing said, "Experts have praised the film, but I couldn't understand it. I want someone to explain it to me."

"When 'Sopyonje' came out, foreign films were 'public enemy number one. People were interested in pansori, and middle and high school students saw it in groups. But now, the entire atmosphere has changed,'' said an executive of a movie investment company.

In foreign countries, movies like "Beyond the Years" would be shown for long periods in theaters specializing in art movies. Korea does not have any, and so the film lost out to a release system built for commercial film," said one industry official. "Sopyonje" was shown at Danseongsan, one of the many theaters that ran it, for a long period of time, well before the "wide release" system of distribution, in which films are promoted nationally, and at a large number of theaters.

Critics are being criticized for failing to predict what the moviegoing public's reaction to "Beyond the Years" would be. One critic said he was wrong to think it would do well just because he thought it was interesting. He speculated the movie failed because "audiences and distributors don't like movies that aren't fun from the beginning."

"Unlike the 1990s when 'Sopyongje' was shown, recently the movie industry has entirely turned to Hollywood style," said one pop culture commentator. "Audiences have changed, but critics still look at movies with bygone standards. They shouldn't blame the audiences when artistic films fail."

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]