[K-Movie]: Movie "Romang" - taking tears from the audience

Aug 1, 2019

The movie "Romang" revolves around the old couple Nam Bong (Lee Soon Jae) and Lee Mae Ja (Jung Young Sook) who have been together for 45 years. Living with them also has the family of his son Jin Soo (Jo Han Chul) and his wife Jung Hee (Bae Hae Sun) and daughter Eun Ji (Lee Ye Won). Although he is older, Nam Bong still drives a taxi every day to serve as a breadwinner for his son, but is unemployed. Trouble suddenly came when both the old couple had dementia. Song, when the memory faded, the affection between Nam Bong and Mae Ja suddenly became deeper.

1. Meaningful old love story

With "Romang", director Lee Chang-geun continues to exploit the familiar theme of Korean cinema as family affection. However, the work focuses on the impassioned love story of the South-aged couple and Mae-ja. When living with children, the pressure of life has caused them to develop many conflicts and quarrels. However, when the two suffer from dementia, the feelings of the two suddenly return like the first days of love. Every time he got sick, Nam-bong became a kid who only played with toys, and Mae-ja cried, broke, and forgot everything she had done. At these times, the provincial people are forced to endure and take care of the enemy until they recover.

Gradually, they could only talk to each other through pieces of paper stuck around the house. The rare moments keep their minds, both share a warm meal, do housework, or together review the spring time from memories of 45 years together. Although the journey is no longer together, Nam-bong and Mae-ja still respect and be happy with the moments of the present. The simple pleasures, the care of each other's conscientious couple have made a mark in the audience about a warm, romantic love story, not material.

2. A valuable lesson about family relationships

In parallel with Nam-bong's love story and Mae-ja, Romang also left many meaningful lessons about the relationship between family members. According to Asian conception, the father must be the financial pillar and strictly teach his children.

This inadvertently creates a certain distance between them and their families. Viewers easily recognized that detail in the movie when Jin-soo grew up still afraid of his father scolding him. He also expressed the blame for Mr. Nam-bong because he was too worried about work but never bought his birthday cake.

This is also the reason that the son of the Jo family has no intention of visiting their parents when leaving, and hesitates in finding a stable job to be close to his wife and children. In addition, the film condemned the misconceptions of parenting among a group of Asian parents. Focusing on his degree, Mr. Jo took care of Jin-soo to study for his doctorate and was always proud to show off that achievement to everyone. But he forgot to let his son know the value of labor. As a result, Jin-soo, like many modern-day youths, lacks experience to find suitable work and cannot work hand and foot.

3. The details are not satisfactory

While having many family meanings, the emotional element in "Romang" is not really impressive enough. The work chose slow tempo, to the climax, everything happened too quickly with a suspended ending. Director Lee Chang-geun's way of building and resolving conflicts in the film is still light and simple. Instead of building parallel lines of time throughout the time, the youthful story of the Nam-bong couple and Mae-ja appear only in a brief scene and disappear until the end of the film.

Therefore, it is difficult for the audience to fully appreciate the deep feelings and hardships they both experienced when most of them stopped at the lines. The lack of flashback scenes also made the Jo family's relationship and affection fade. In the end, the film still does not explain why a man who loves his wife and children like Nam-bong becomes grumpy, fastidious at the age of late, and suddenly changes after only a few events.

Tags: #Romang;