Watched Castaway on the Moon
Nov. 6th, 2015 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynet_iiIn the city of Seoul, Kim Seung-geun has an enormous financial debt and jumps off of a bridge into the Han River, intending to commit suicide. Instead, he washes up on a deserted island in the middle of the river, a small place used as a support for a nearby bridge, but otherwise separated from the mainland. (This island is an actual place called Bamseom, though its name isn't mentioned in the movie.)
Seung-geun soon discovers he cannot leave the island at all and finds himself living in a bizarre Robinson Crusoe-esque situation despite civilization being clearly visible on all sides of the island. He's at first pretty unhappy about this, but soon discovers that he can survive off of the local flora and fauna and make use of the trash that washes up on the island, and while he's there he at least no longer needs to worry about his debts. Reflecting this, the "HELP" message he wrote on the sand earlier is changed to "HELLO."
Meanwhile, in an apartment building overlooking the Han River, there lives a woman named Kim Jung-yeon. Jung-yeon is agoraphobic and lives with her parents, only ever leaving her room in order to go to the bathroom. She spends her days pretending to be different people online and at night, she uses her high quality camera to take pictures of the moon.
She only ever takes photos of the city during the day twice a year, when the local civil guard ushers the citizens off of the street and the city winds up looking like a ghost town. (Iiii do not know why this happens? I think it's like an evacuation drill or something.) As she's looking around the city with her camera she winds up spotting Seung-geun and grows fascinated by him, watching him with her camera until eventually she musters up the courage to sneak out of her apartment building and to the bridge built over his island, where she tosses off a bottled message for him to find. An odd correspondence starts between the two, with Seung-geun writing messages to her on his beach and Jung-yeon tossing bottles off of the bridge.
Officially this is a romantic comedy, but I admit I wasn't huuuugely feeling the ~romance~ even though I liked the leads and was otherwise invested in their relationship? But the correspondence between them is pretty clipped and both characters have such huge mental issues that when they finally meet in-person at the end of the movie, my feeling was less "THEY'RE IN LOVE, EVERYTHING'S FINE" and more "Oh god, how in the hell is this even supposed to work out, you barely know her, she's got some horrible social phobia issues, you're homeless."
Basically it ends on a vague enough note that I am kind of pessimistic about how things'll turn out even though I don't want to be since I actually liked the protagonists and want them to be happy and spent a great deal of time wishing I could hug them.
I also personally didn't find it as funny as, say, The Martian- I did some mental comparisons because they're both stories involving survival in a hostile environment- but I think this is mostly because my personal concern over the character's mental issues kind of overshadowed some of the humor.
Don't get me wrong though, I did enjoy the film- watching Seung-geun establish a life on the island was interesting and I did enjoy seeing Jung-yeon and Seung-geun slowly forming a connection. It's just that this is a romcom that I wound up watching as if it was a drama.
Seung-geun soon discovers he cannot leave the island at all and finds himself living in a bizarre Robinson Crusoe-esque situation despite civilization being clearly visible on all sides of the island. He's at first pretty unhappy about this, but soon discovers that he can survive off of the local flora and fauna and make use of the trash that washes up on the island, and while he's there he at least no longer needs to worry about his debts. Reflecting this, the "HELP" message he wrote on the sand earlier is changed to "HELLO."
Meanwhile, in an apartment building overlooking the Han River, there lives a woman named Kim Jung-yeon. Jung-yeon is agoraphobic and lives with her parents, only ever leaving her room in order to go to the bathroom. She spends her days pretending to be different people online and at night, she uses her high quality camera to take pictures of the moon.
She only ever takes photos of the city during the day twice a year, when the local civil guard ushers the citizens off of the street and the city winds up looking like a ghost town. (Iiii do not know why this happens? I think it's like an evacuation drill or something.) As she's looking around the city with her camera she winds up spotting Seung-geun and grows fascinated by him, watching him with her camera until eventually she musters up the courage to sneak out of her apartment building and to the bridge built over his island, where she tosses off a bottled message for him to find. An odd correspondence starts between the two, with Seung-geun writing messages to her on his beach and Jung-yeon tossing bottles off of the bridge.
Officially this is a romantic comedy, but I admit I wasn't huuuugely feeling the ~romance~ even though I liked the leads and was otherwise invested in their relationship? But the correspondence between them is pretty clipped and both characters have such huge mental issues that when they finally meet in-person at the end of the movie, my feeling was less "THEY'RE IN LOVE, EVERYTHING'S FINE" and more "Oh god, how in the hell is this even supposed to work out, you barely know her, she's got some horrible social phobia issues, you're homeless."
Basically it ends on a vague enough note that I am kind of pessimistic about how things'll turn out even though I don't want to be since I actually liked the protagonists and want them to be happy and spent a great deal of time wishing I could hug them.
I also personally didn't find it as funny as, say, The Martian- I did some mental comparisons because they're both stories involving survival in a hostile environment- but I think this is mostly because my personal concern over the character's mental issues kind of overshadowed some of the humor.
Don't get me wrong though, I did enjoy the film- watching Seung-geun establish a life on the island was interesting and I did enjoy seeing Jung-yeon and Seung-geun slowly forming a connection. It's just that this is a romcom that I wound up watching as if it was a drama.
