my mighty princess (korean movie,2008) has an interesting kafkaesque feel to it with elements of magical realism. it was like watching a live action manga/wuxia. very romantic, hard hitting and yet still light. despite the gritty ambiance created by a color scheme favoring various shades of grey and other dark colors, the story managed to be positive and cheerful.
the movie starts with the most mundane of daily rituals in the lives of most middle class families around the world: a parent waking their child for school. in my mighty princess, the family is a rather forlorn unit of two individuals: the father and his daughter, kang sohwi. the father harangues his daughter to wake up, which she does, while he prepares breakfast. then there is the inevitable argument over eating breakfast, which the daughter decides to skip. what makes this trite sequence mesmerizing is how the daughter does some not-so-ordinary things in the course of getting ready for school. as soon as i saw some of her stunts i was hooked. next we follow the daughter on her way to school as she continues to do things that seem trivial to her but are nonetheless amazing.
this opening sequence in addition to capturing my interest also alerted me to the fact that these characters were masters of their chosen martial arts discipline. having enjoyed movies like crouching tiger hidden dragon, hero, house of flying daggers, shaolin soccer, and other wuxia with this sort of opening sequence i knew i was in for a treat featuring nice special effects work and imagery. this anticipation was borne out by the rest of the movie.
the story line follows the heroine kang sohwi as she joins the hockey team as an assistant, attempts to get closer to one of its star players, honor her father, and remain true to herself. i thought it was funny how the hockey player our heroine was interested in was infatuated with an older woman - a woman who is old enough to be his mother as she says. it seems in her role as a police officer, she had saved his life by pulling him out of a car wreck. his romantic interest in the police officer may have its roots in his attachment for his mother whom he lost as a very young child. he had tremendous difficulty in coping with her loss. perhaps in the police officer he sees a replacement maternal figure who gives him a second chance at life after the car collision.
the second male character who has a romantic interest in our heroine is ilyeong the son of her father's friend. both the father and son are also fellow martial arts master. ilyeong's devotion to our kang sohwi is longstanding having trained alongside our heroine since childhood to continue the martial arts discipline and lineage his father represented.
the context of the story is the following: there is a group of four masters who represent four different martial arts traditions. of these four, only two have children: kang sohwi our heroine and ilyeong her childhood martial arts partner. unfortunately, the group faces challenge from a heuk bong, a lone master who is after an important sword which belongs to our heroine's mother. in addition he is interested in destroying and displacing the existing group of four masters. it seems this antagonist was only able to succeed in obtaining the sword as our kang sohwi and ilyeong were practicing illicitly with the sword one night. by this time they were both high school students and fairly advanced in their training. unfortunately they were still not able to withstand the lone master heuk bong who came upon them practicing from stealing the sword.
the loss of the sword is not the only damage perpetrated by the lone master heuk bong. our heroine kang sohwi sustains a near fatal injury that wipes out her memory of her fight with the lone master for the sword. it is after this event she ceases to train with her father in martial arts. it is also when she ceases to have contact with ilyeong her martial arts companion and partner, the son of her father's friend.
her life had been saved by ilyeong who had gone to the lone master heuk bong to bargain for her life. in exchange for her life he has to give his. ilyeong becomes the disciple of the lone master heuk bong and continues heuk bong's agenda of destroying the other four masters. ilyeong is powerless to stop himself as his obedience has been ensured through the use arcane sound technology.
this is the background against which the events in the movie unfold. the storyline was skillfully filmed to keep my interest. although there wasn't too much psychological depth i thought some of the ideas and filming techniques were noteworthy: the idea of a thought language that remains independent despite the general enslavement of ilyeong, sign language, the use of sound to enslave, and of course the martial arts. i also noticed that our heroine and hero, kang sohwi and ilyeong, for all their strength/prodigious aptitude are kind of wonky almost as if to make up for the fact their excellence in the discipline of martial arts. she is not excellent in every way, she has a wonky side to her as well. we see this sort of characterization in other movies as well (for example, my baby and i, another korean movie where young female genius is wonky despite her enormous intelligence).
overall, i found my mighty princess very elegant and pleasant to watch. i wasn't as flooded with questions as i was after watching hana yori dango or hana kimi. for this reason, i found watching my mighty princess a lot more relaxing. another aspect of the film making i was struck by is the hybridization between western story telling and eastern story telling (perhaps it should be movie making?). there are a lot of body jokes and body language in comedic scenes that i recall from western comedy. for example, in my mighty princess, when ilyeong takes off all his clothes except for his underwear in the laundromat so that he can wash them seems so familiar. almost chaplinesque. as you watch him take off each piece of garment and put it in the washing machine, there is a sort of completeness to the act that is reminiscent of a sort of innocence which marks many of the more memorable sequences in a charlie chaplin movie. as i watched him removing and placing each garment into the washing machine, i found myself almost expecting him to put himself also in the washing machine to wash himself as well as his clothes. the visual equivalent of a punchline is delivered when he finishes loading the machine and squats in front of it to wait. the camera pans to the right and we see that we are not the only witnesses to this scene. this is viewer's cue that we have reached the end of the scene. we can stop gazing in marvel, wonder. we can laugh now. in fact we are prodded to laughter by ilyeong's subtle body movements of surprise and startlement when he notices he is not alone. the scene evokes pathos, sympathy, innocence, the ridiculous and the absurd.
overall, i found my mighty princess very elegant and pleasant to watch. i didn't get flooded with as many questions as with hana yori dango or hana kimi. for this reason i found watching my mighty princess a lot more relaxing.
