by Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Film Poster
This is a No Man is an Island film review written in collaboration with Cinema Escapist. Keep an eye out for more!
SET IN A near-future South Korea on the cusp of conflict, “Before the Call” offers a personal story of a man adrift between worlds.
Despite its one-hour runtime, which is rather short for a feature film, Before the Call is an excellent take on identity, alienation, and longing.
The movie follows the story of Jinwoo, a Korean American who returns to South Korea and enlists in the military to serve his draft. Seemingly set sometime in the near future, Before the Call depicts Korea and the world as on the verge of crisis, with troops set to deploy to a conflict area.
Though Jinwoo could avoid South Korea’s mandatory military service regime by staying outside of the country, he decides to enlist anyway. Jinwoo feels disconnected from Korean society, and seemingly views enlisting as a way to reassert himself as a stakeholder in that society.
While Jinwoo’s alienation as an individual adrift from both South Korea and the US is a major theme of the film, Before the Call also explores the desolation of South Korean society itself. This primarily surfaces through how Jinwoo navigates relationships with his estranged father, his ex, Minij, and his former friends in Korea.
Besides themes and plot, Before the Call is remarkable enough on its technical merits. Newcomer Andy Koh gives a strong performance as Jinwoo, naturalistically capturing his unease. The film choicefully depicts Seoul’s landscapes in warm, lo-fi tones, drawing out an aura of alienation through the ironic juxtaposition of this visual style against an otherwise desolate narrative.
Likewise, a framing mechanism involving Jinwoo’s letters to Minji, atop an effective, highly nuanced script, aptly captures narrative dynamics without ever resorting to melodrama. Beyond that framing though, most of Before the Call consists simply of a series of one-on-one dialogues between Jinwoo and other characters. Yet this manages to be interesting in spite of the rather limited action that results, thanks to appropriately paired settings and well-written dialog. And though Before the Call never fully explains the near-future world that its characters exist within, it manages to capture turbulent social dynamics well enough through a personal lens.