2009 Lost Memories?

[JP Meyer]

As I'm hoping to study the Hollywood-izing of Korean cinema since
_Shiri_, I figured that I'd chime in here.

First off, similar to what Tim said regarding Western film grammar
colonizing the screen, it might be interesting to look at how this
movie is affected by the fact that a lot of the dialogue is spoken in
Japanese (read: the language of the colonizer/oppressor.)  I should
also note that in the Korean release of the movie that I have, it has
the option for subtitles in Japanese in addition to the usual Korean
(either for all the dialogue or just the Japanese) and English.

In terms of national representations, I personally felt that a lot of
it seemed heavy-handed.  The opening sequence in the museum sets this
up pretty well.  Prior to the terrorist attack, it sets up the
standard view of colonialist societies of how they are "cultured" and
whatnot.  The scene takes place in a museum, there's an orchestra,
everyone is in gowns or tuxedos (and I think some yamato nedeshikos?)
and so on.  Then, after the terrorists take over and the Japanese
commandos are sent in, it changes the tone to very anti-colonialist. 
The Korean terrorists are capable of killings tons of the commandos
who seem pretty inept (they all continue to get gunned down entering
the main room, for instance.)

Furthermore, after the one terrorist runs out of ammunition, there's a
low angle shot below and behind him showing him getting shot by the
commandos which allows the frame to show how basically the entire
museum now is filled with Japanese commandos.  This really underscores
the brutality of the colonial power as the terrorist must've been shot
hundreds of times by all those soldiers.  Right after this, when the
leader comes out with the hostage, it's also interesting to note that
it's JANG Dong-Gun's character (the Korean agent) that shoots the
leader and frees the hostage (one of his superior officers, I think),
rather than Tohru NAKAMURA's character (the Japanese agent.)  The
Korean ends up being the only one that's capable of saving the day. 
There's also probably some interesting subtext here regarding the fact
that the colonized rescued the colonizer here.

Lastly, one thing that I thought about that might've been interesting
was if instead of the neat and tidy epilogue where they say that Korea
becomes unified in 2008, JANG's character had to wrestle with the
knowledge that even if he frees Korea by going back in time to fix
everything, that it still becomes divided by the Cold War.  The ended
seemed a little too cut and dry for me seeing how NAKAMURA's character
was given the opportunity to think about the situation (where he finds
out that in the "real" past that his wife's grandfather dies during
the atomic bombing and thus she is never born.)

-JP Meyer