인연 (Fate)
약속해요 이순간이 다 지나고
yak sok kae yo I sun gan ni da ji na go
다시 보게 되는 그날
da shi bo ge dwe neun keu nal
모든걸 버리고 그대 곁에 서서
mo deun geol beo li go keu dae gyeot te seo seo
남은 길을 가리란 걸
nam meun gil leul ga li ran geol
인연이라고 하죠 거부할 수가 없죠
in yeon ni la go ha jyo geo bu hal su ga eobs jyo
내생에 이처럼 아름다운 날
nae saeng e I cheo leom a leum da eun nal
또 다시 올수 있을까요
ddo da shi ol su iss seul gga yo
고달픈 삶의 길에 당신은 선물인 걸
go dal peun sal me gil le dang shin neun seon mul lin geol
이사랑이 녹슬지 않도록
I sa rang I nok seul ji ahn do rok
늘 닦아 비출께요
neul dakk gga bi chul gge yo
취한듯 만남은 짧았지만
chwi han deus man nam meun jjal bass ji man
빗장 열어 자리했죠
bis jang yeol reo ja li haess jyo
맺지 못한데도 후회하진 않죠
maej ji mos tan de do hu hwe ha jin ahn jyo
영원한건 없으니까
yeong weon han geon eobs seu ni gga
운명이라고 하죠
eun myeong I la go ha jyo
거부할수가 없죠
geo bu hal su ga eobs jyo
내생에 이처럼 아름다운 날
nae saeng e I cheo leom a leum da eun nal
또 다시 올 수 있을까요
ddo da shi ol su iss seul gga yo
하고픈 말 많지만
ha go peun mal man ji man
당신은 아실테죠
dang shin neun a sil te jyo
먼길 돌아 만나게 되는 날
meon gil dol la man na ge dwe neun nal
다신 놓지 말아요
da shin noh ji mal la yo
이생에 못한 사랑 이생에 못한 인연
I saeng e mos tan sa rang I saeng e mos tan in yeon
먼길 돌아 다시 만나는 날
meon gil dol la da shi man na neun nal
나를 놓지말아요
na reul noh ji mal ra yo
khuyến mãi thêm lời dịch nữa nài :D
Fate
I promise you, when this moment is over,
on the day we meet again
I will throw everything away and stand by you
to walk the way left for us...
It is the thing called "fate", I can't deny it
Can I have such a beautiful day again in my life?
You're a gift upon this weary path of life
I'll continue to shine this love, not to make it rust...
Though our encounter lasted a short time, like a drunken affair
You've unbolted my gate and occupied my heart
Even if our love is unattainable, I won't regret it
because nothing is forever...
It is the thing called "fate", I can't deny it
Can I have such a beautiful day again in my life?
There're many things I want to say
but you probably already know them...
On the day we meet again after the long way round
Please, don't let go of my hand...
The love we couldn't have in this life
The fate we couldn't have in this life
On the day we meet again after the long way round
Epic movies with beautiful acting and excellent story telling don’t come often. Fortunately, The King and the Clown just happens to be the big break we’ve all been awaiting. The film is dripping with sheer enjoyment and superb acting that it has become the top-grossing Korean film of all time with more than 12.3 million viewers in South Korea itself. In addition, it has set a record as the first movie to receive 15 nominations for the 43rd Grand Bell Korean Film Awards!
This infectious comedy transports you to Korea during the 1500s, when King Yon-san (played by Jung Jin-young), a notorious tyrant responsible for many deaths of his countrymen, reigned. The movie traces the path of destiny threaded by 2 minstrels, namely the free-spirited and courageous Jing-seng (Kam Woo-sung) and the physically and emotionally effeminate Gong-gil (Lee Joon-ki) as they travel to capital, Seoul, to seek their fortune.
When they were found entertaining the crowd by satirising the king, they were threatened with death unless they performed for him and succeed in making him laugh. Fortunately, their lives are spared and they’re compelled by the king to stay in the palace and perform regularly. However, tragedy unfolds as the king becomes more enamored with Gong-gil’s beauty, invoking jealousy in his lady, Nok-soo (played by Kang Sung-yeon), who then hatches a plot for the minstrel’s death.
Actor Kam (A Bold Family, Spider Forest) manages to deliver a theatrical performance worthy of an Oscar. His mannerisms, speech and realistic acting are convincing enough for you to believe that he’s just being himself. What’s even more incredible is that the actor only had a month to learn how to walk on a rope and play the instruments of that era, things which he had never done before, according to an interview with director Lee on twitchfilm.net.
Like his counterpart Jing-seng, Gong-gil, manages to win the audience’s compassion and sympathy for him when fate backs him in a tight corner. Gong-gil’s performance is explanation enough why he may just be the next hot star. Furthermore, his god-given feminine features and porcelain skin were made even more womanly in the film, leaving him looking very androgynous and putting his real gender into question.
Still, if there was one character you had to invest your sympathy in, it’ll be king Yon-san, who’s fleshed out beautifully by veteran actor Jung (Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield). His stern demeanour when you first meet him slowly melts away to reveal a man overshadowed by his late father’s achievements. To add to his torment, his mother was sentenced to death by his own father. Although the effeminate Gong-gil offers a potential chance for redemption, king Yon-san’s gradual descent into the pits of insanity overrides any hope that he could overcome his grief.
On a superficial level, The King and the Clown appears to be just another Korean movie by director-actor Lee Joon-ik, who had directed Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield, a historical film which attracted 2.9 million viewers. However, on a deeper level, the movie is actually a psychological portrayal of human nature in society.
In an interview on twitchfilm.net, Lee explains that Jung-seng is the character who fights against his given fate, while Gong-gil has learnt to accept his destiny and adapts to it. However, the most tragic figure would have to be the king, who tries to fight against his fate but ends up creating massive problems for everyone else.
The story flows brilliantly, as the level of tension and drama develops like an ocean wave, with each one rising higher than the previous, until the climax of the film where it tapers off with an excellent conclusion. You are not left hanging, as the movie has closure, but it will certainly leave you thinking about the conclusion and the events that have helped to mould the characters into who they ultimately became, for better or for worse.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well written and smooth the script was. Judging from the uproarious laughter and satisfied faces leaving the cinema, I’ll not be wrong in saying that the audience I watched the movie with thoroughly enjoyed it.
To phrase it metaphorically, The King and the Clown is like a buffet of brilliant acting and excellent dialogue with a rich philosophical soup base underlying the film. This is definitely one Korean move that you wouldn’t regret catching on the big screen. At the risk of sounding cliché, this movie is a must-see!
Rating: 4.5 / 5 stars
Movie Details:
Running Time: 119 minutes
Cast: Lee Joon-ki, Kam Woo-sung, Jung Jin-young
Director: Lee Joon-ik
Jang-seng has had enough of this abuse of his friend, and together they escape from the troupe to make their fortunes in the capital. Arriving in Seoul however, they find that the previous King has reduced the opportunities for performers, seeing them as vagrants or beggars and having most of them run out of the city. Combining forces with another group of entertainers they meet, Jang-seng has a new idea for a show that will make them famous – a risqué sketch mocking the King’s current Royal Consort, Nok-su (Kang Sung-Yeon), a once notorious courtesan. Not unexpectedly, they find themselves arrested for treason and about to be flogged for their audacity, but manage to convince the authorities to allow them to put on the performance before the King to let him decide himself whether it is funny or not. The King’s advisor Cheo-seon (Jang Hang-Seon) agrees – if the King laughs they will be released, but if he is displeased heads will roll. But Cheo-seon has an ulterior motive and, as the minstrels nervously perform their treasonable show, the King (Jeong Jin-yeong) does not look amused...
The King and the Clown, as the above description might indicate, is not particularly original in its storyline. It’s the old story of the King and his Jester, the minstrel who speaks the truth that others dare not, Jang-seng and Gong-gil revealing to the King not only how his subjects view him, but gradually opening his eyes to the corruption of his Ministers and the scheming within his Royal Court. One major revelation about his parents during the performance of a Chinese Opera in front of the Queen Mother even recalls the travelling players drama in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, the performance having a similarly violent denouement, while the opera itself and the course of the friendship of the two performers - their success caught up in the political machinations of the period - follows to a large degree the trajectory of the Chinese Opera singers in Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine.
What the film most successfully achieves however, particularly through its own very nature as a colourful popular entertainment, is the power of art and drama to express emotions and communicate with audiences important messages about life, love and politics. Abruptly changing tone in the second half however, the film questions how a person armed with powerful and privileged knowledge should wield such information. Does one have a duty to make such knowledge public, or is it better to allow the people to remain “blind” to what is happening behind closed doors? It’s a small-scale theme for a relatively small-scale film, one that has no pretensions towards the epic grandeur that the period and the enormous box-office of success of the film might indicate, but the manner in which it presents this central question and handles the abrupt changes of tone, is compelling. Simply put, the film makes the very best of its modest storyline, plot development and characterisation in a workmanlike fashion that has little flair, but makes the most of its strengths which are the not overly ambitious theme of the solid storyline, the colour of the period and outstanding performances from the cast of clowns and acrobats. (It’s aided in many of these respects for English viewers with an excellent English subtitle translation, which captures the tone of the period as well as the rhyming and bawdiness of the dialogue superbly). The King and the Clown is all about entertainment and entertain is just what the film does.
The unexpected success of The King and the Clown, becoming the highest grossing film of all time in Korea, has surprised many people, the period drama - particularly one that has homosexual references - not traditionally being a genre that attracts the younger audience that is necessary to compete with Hollywood blockbusters that usually dominate Korean cinema screens. It has had many critics and Korean journalists (and no doubt studio executives) seeking to find a pattern in film viewing trends and searching for sociological changes in the make-up of the viewing public. It seems a lot simpler to me than that. I’ve said it before in my review of Memories of Murder and it still holds true – Korea is making the best, popular genre films in the world today, and The King and the Clown is the best in its field, taking on the strengths of solid traditional Hollywood cinematic storytelling, giving it a fresh and uniquely Korean twist and beating the increasingly formulaic, sequel and TV-remake reliant US blockbusters at their own game. For two hours the superbly paced The King and the Clown is utterly gripping and as pure an entertainment as you are likely to see – mixing comedy and tragedy, action and adventure, drama and political intrigue into a moving story of an unusual friendship, never faltering and never failing to convince.
DVD
The King and the Clown is released in the Korea by Art Service. It is released in a Special Limited Edition four-disc box set, which contains three DVDs and a CD of the soundtrack. The DVDs are in NTSC format and the set is encoded for Region 3. Disc One contains the Theatrical Release of the film, Disc Two the Extended Version, Disc Three the supplements. The discs are housed in a digipack within a magnetically clipped sturdy box. Also included in the box are 8 A5 sized postcards of character poster designs held in a display case, and a beautiful photobook containing cast photos and biographies, and set designs.
Video
The film is a blaze of colour in the sets, and in the bold costume designs of the performers and the Royal Court. This comes across quite impressively on the transfer, which is strong throughout and actually almost overpowering, such is the richness of the colourful costumes and sets. Colours may be slightly oversaturated and overly processed, with tints looking slightly unnatural and reds in particular being very bright, vivid and tending to bleed at edges. As I often find on Korean releases, the black levels are also rather flat, lacking in shadow detail or tone. I imagine however that few people will have any problem with these niggling details, since otherwise there is really nothing else here to fault. The image is clear and stable, free from any marks whatsoever and shows good detail, with reasonable definition even in wider shots. Judging from the somewhat clinical lighting of scenes and the overall flow of the image, it may well be that the film has been shot in High Definition Digital Video.
Audio
The audio tracks are both fine and get a good workout in the thumping of drums and surround-sound audience noise when the actors perform their open-air routines. The DTS track doesn’t have any particular advantage over the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, both mixes functionally serving up the dialogue and sound effects clearly and strongly without ever being either overly impressive or distracting.
Subtitles
English subtitles are provided, in a reasonably sized white font. As I observed in the review of the film, they are excellent at capturing the tone of the various situations, the formality of addressing royalty, the common dialogue of ordinary folk and the bawdy qualities and rhymes of the performer’s routines, which can consequently be uproariously funny. The subtitles curiously also seem to provide some background historical information during the opening title sequence, for which there is no corresponding Korean text.
Extras
Disc 1 Extras
There are two commentary tracks for the Theatrical Version of the film - Commentary 1 by the Director and Crew, Commentary 2 by Cast. Neither commentary is subtitled.
Disc 2 Extras
The second disc contains the 128 minute Extended Version of the film, which I’ve seen listed by some retailers as the “Director’s Extended Version”. Whether it is the director’s cut I can’t say, but none of the additional scenes alter the pace or the content of the film in any significant way. Among the extra scenes I noticed an additional scene with a fortune teller on the duo's arrival in Seoul, an extended scene of the Seoul street performance duel, involving the hot coals, some fooling around between Jang-seng and Gong-gil after the minstrel auditions and a scene where two of the ministers plot the Kings downfall after the banquet scene. The quality of this feature is on a par with the Theatrical Version, containing identical specs and fully subtitled in English, though it has no commentary tracks.
Disc 3 Extras
The extra features on Disc 3 are divided into 3 sections. None of these extra features have English subtitles, although those marked * require no subtitles.
Act 1 The first section looks at the making of the film from various aspects. The Making of documentary (22:27) shows filming of the acrobatic and performance scenes and some sequences between Gong-gil and the King. It is interspersed with interviews with the director and filmmaking crew. There’s a more in-depth look at the Art and Costume Design (19:21), with interviews with the production designer. Cast interviews are divided into two sections, one (17:10) with the main cast, the other (12:43) with the “three clowns”. Six Deleted scenes (9:37) are included, some of them extended versions of scenes in the film. One of the extended scenes – the hunting scene climax – is certainly more complete in this version, the fate of one of the characters being quite evidently missing in the Theatrical Cut, but it is not in the Extended Cut either. There is also an interview with the Music Director (6:21) and a *Behind The Scenes
Act 2 The second section shows the preparation for the historical period detail of the film. "Samul Nori" Dance performance (13:49) shows footage of some traditional clown groups in performance, with cast and crew attending clown school. "Pung Mul" Dance performance (17:46) focuses on the drummers who perform for the acts. The King's banquet performance (8:20) shows rehearsals for the dances that make up part of the performance. Beyond the Movie: "Yi" - The original stage play (23:41) takes a look at the original play that the film is based on, showing scenes of the stage performance and interviewing (I assume) the original author. The True Story of Yeon San (14:31), a look at the historical background of the King and the period, is the one feature here that I wish was subtitled, as it would be very interesting to know the factual basis of the film. The Banquet Scene - Behind the scenes (5:44) shows rehearsals for the main performance piece in the film.
Act 3 The third section, the promotional material for the film, is the only section that is mainly friendly for non Korean viewers. The *Poster photo shoot (5:34), shows the cast being photographed in costume for the promotional materials (the final versions of which are included in this set as postcards). There are a couple of Q&A sessions in a Press conference (6:00) and the Footage from the premiere (4:39). The *Music video (4:19) is the obligatory plinky K-pop ballad with sweeping strings. The *TV Spot (1:04) and the Trailer (2:28) are letterboxed and contain what could be considered spoilers. A *Stills gallery (2:05) frames the images in such a way that they can scarcely be distinguished.
featurette, showing outtakes, stunts and candid shots, which has no real dialogue, but is set to music from the film.
Best Film- The King and the Clown
Best Director- Lee Jun Ik
Best Script/Scenario- Choi Seok Hwan
Best Cinematography- Ji Gil Woong
Best Leading Actor- Gam Woo Sung
Best New Actor- Lee Joon Ki
Best Supporting Actor- Yoo Hae Jin
Most Popular Actor- Lee Joon Ki
Most Popular Actress- Kang Seong Yeon
Most Popular Actor Overseas- Lee Joon Ki
Main Trailer
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