Review of the film “Survivors” by Um Tae-Hwa. Concrete utopia”

Um Tae-Hwa’s film “Survivors” is in theaters. Concrete Utopia” (Konkeuriteu yutopia), nominated for an Oscar from South Korea. Mikhail Trofimenkov I was surprised by the director’s masochistic attitude towards his native nation as catastrophically spoiled by the housing problem.

When, after watching the film, you remember its title, you feel an involuntary respect with a hint of horror towards the Korean mentality. Brothers Koreans, if what Um Tae-Hwa filmed is a utopia, then what in your understanding would be a dystopia?

However, we have already seen something similar somewhere, and quite recently. A year ago, Frenchman Guillaume Nicloux’s film “The Mist,” originally called “The Tower,” was released in domestic distribution. There, alone in the whole wide world, were the inhabitants of a Parisian suburban high-rise building. At the fateful hour, mobile communications and television were cut off, and a continuous darkness fell outside the window. And any attempt to lean over the threshold resulted in an immediate mystical amputation of the head, arm or leg.

In “Survivors,” the same unfortunate lucky ones turn out to be the inhabitants of the “Imperial Palace Apartments” residential complex somewhere in the rapidly growing new buildings of Seoul.

What happened, none of the privileged inhabitants of the apartments can understand, just as the Parisian gopniks could not understand. Either an earthquake, or a meteor shower, or heavenly punishment. Simply put, everything around collapsed very spectacularly in smoke and flames. Maybe only in Seoul, maybe throughout the Korean Peninsula, maybe all over the world – who cares. And only the apartments proudly stick out among the hot ruins, and in the background something flares up and explodes again and again from time to time.

It is more correct to see this apocalypse not as fear of natural disasters: Korea is generally an earthquake-resistant place. It is rather a projection onto the modern well-being of South Korea of ​​the genetic memory of the monstrous civil war of 1950–1953 and the equally genetic fear of its repetition.

Then Seoul, Pyongyang, and all other large populated areas were literally wiped off the face of the earth. Now the fear of a possible nuclear exchange between North and South is regularly supported by the media. And the search for survivors among the ruins in the film by Um Tae-Hwa certainly refers to the screen mythology of war cinema, and not some kind of “Wars of the Worlds.”

Well, okay, it collapsed like that. Survivors, first hoping for help from the army, the Ministry of Emergency Situations or doctors, and then losing their illusions, are forced to organize themselves. In the French version, in Niklu, it is based on racial principles. Whites are drawn to whites, Arabs to Arabs, Afro-French to Afro-French. And, of course, inevitably one ethnic mafia cuts to pieces with another, and having dispatched the antagonists, proceeds to self-destruction.

Korea is a completely different calico. Ethnic unity. Therefore, the “strangers” for the residents of the apartments are not the hypothetical Chinese or Malays, of whom there simply are not enough numbers in Seoul, but those who “come in large numbers” from the neighboring buildings. Survivors like themselves, but deprived of shelter and food. Brothers, it seems, through misfortune, become their worst enemies. Let me spend the night? Yeah, and then they’ll ask you for some more water to drink? Maybe they should also cook some soup and fry the dog? Well, no, we don’t have enough ourselves.

In a situation of such a humanitarian crisis, the unorganized masses need a leader. He becomes the modest Kim Yong-Tak (Lee Byung-Hun), chosen by a completely democratic vote of residents. He is also the President.

A funny parallel between “The Mist” and “Concrete Utopia”. In both Paris and Seoul, survivors will incur suspicions of cannibalism. If they were cannibals, it wouldn’t be so bad. Things are much worse. The inhabitants of Seoul apartments are completely corrupted by the housing issue. And the terrible secret of the Delegate, which will be revealed in the finale, is determined by this notorious question.

The fatal question: what did Uhm Tae-Hwa want to say with “Concrete Utopia.” That a person, to put it mildly, is not kind, but what is it, simply a beast? That civilization is a superficial varnish of the beast, washed away by the first nuclear rain? That in extreme circumstances the human community will inevitably organize itself along fascist principles? That a clever sociopath will inevitably become President? That the strong will devour the weak?

Thank you, but we have heard and seen all this a million times since at least the immortal “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. And since then, the denunciation of social Darwinism more and more often, as in “Concrete Utopia,” seems to be propaganda of its organic nature.