2009 Lost Memories?

[Mark Nornes]

For those who haven't seen this yet, this is a time travel narrative 
that imagines what would have happened if Ito Hirobumi had not been 
assassinated in Korea. It's complicated, and it's been a long time, but 
if memory serves the basic idea is thus: Ito's killing was the main 
pretext Japan used to annex the peninsula and is the "birth" of the 
Korean nationalist resistance that results in independence followed by 
war and the north/south separation.

A crafty Japanese politico uses an ancient device to travel back in 
time to stop the assassination in the nick of time; Ito survives, Korea 
still ends up colonized, but Japan ends up an ally of the US and 
Germany ends up the target of atomic warfare. Japan thus retains its 
Great Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and Korea is a colony.

The main character of the film discovers his nascent "Korean-ness" and 
travels back in time to ensure Ito gets bagged and in this way restores 
Korea's _true_ and _natural_ history as a unified and sovereign nation 
state.

I immediate gave this thing to our Korean historian Henry Em, and we 
had a great time talking it up. The film would be rich material for 
teaching nationalism and history. It's also very fun to see Koreans 
imagine what Seoul would be like under a 21st century colonial 
condition. A must see film!

Markus





On Jul 26, 2004, at 10:07 PM, zaki jaihutan wrote:

> I see this film more on the point that it was a 'very
> audacious' movie for an Asian movie....the opening
> action sequence in the museum is quite on the same
> level with Hollywood standard, though the movement
> still look very 'directed'. As for the movie it self,
> the last half of the movie, like many Korean movies,
> are overly dramatic. However, i see this movie as an
> important effort to put Asian movie in a respectable
> level with other countries' movies, especially
> Hollywood movies, and with their own flavour of course.
> Korean, Japan and even Thailand, are definitely going
> somewhere with their movies.
>
> On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 21:37:02 -0400, Cathleen Keyser
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I finally got a chance to see "2009 Lost Memories" and
>> was curious to
>> see what were everyone's thoughts on it.  I don't
>> recall seeing this
>> so far on the list.  Although this is a Korean film, I
>> thought it
>> might be interesting to discuss this film since the
>> picture of Japan
>> it portrayed was very interesting.  Thoughts/Comments
>> in general on
>> the film?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>> Regards,
>> Cathleen Keyser
>
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