In this context, sensational displays of violence and cruelty are understandably the norm, though that doesn't make them any more palatable. They lick dynamite sticks for extra food, and praise the emperor in order to curry favor with their jailers. Characters are routinely reduced to their human needs, whether it's using the bathroom, or finding ways to feed themselves. Ryoo's film is, in that sense, more of a reaction to than a straight-up rehash of Spielberg's war dramas. But "Battleship Island" is ultimately Gang-ok's story because we can observe just how good he is while Yoon only rallies people around him using demagogue-like speeches. Seriously, why this guy, and not Hak-chul Yoon (Kyoung-young Lee), a political prisoner who is believed to be the Korean resistance's only hope of defeating the Japanese? Gang-ok's story dovetails with Yoon and his disciples' attempt at escaping Hashima Island. The most noble thing that Gang-ok does is create an elaborate bartering network whose primary beneficiary is, well, him. He sweats, and bends over backwards when he thinks he's currying favor with the Japanese. He tries to save himself and his bandmates from going to Hashima by arranging for a bribe, but that ploy backfires quickly in a heart-breaking early scene where Gang-ok realizes that almost everybody is trying to bribe their way out of trouble. You spend much of the film's first hour wondering why he is the film's main character. Everybody works, and nobody is exempt from the anger of Japanese wardens/guards, not even the Korean collaborators who serve as middle-men between Japanese soldiers and Korean prisoners.Ĭircumstantial peril humanizes Gang-ok to some extent, but he's always portrayed as a comically desperate fixer. Men are typically forced to work in coal mines where they must navigate claustrophobic, and highly combustible make-shift tunnels.
Women of all ages are herded into "comfort houses" where they are prostituted for Japanese officials pregnancy and venereal diseases are treated as inconveniences that bring dishonor on the island. But occasionally, the drama splits off from Gang-ok and his daughter, and focuses on secondary characters in order to further contextualize the nightmare that Gang-ok and Sohee find themselves in. Most of the film's diffuse ensemble drama concerns former band-leader Gang-ok (" The Wailing" star Jung-min Hwang), and his pre-teen daughter Sohee (" Train to Busan" lead Su-an Kim). "The Battleship Island" is set in a Japanese internment camp on Hashima Island just before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They're human, and they do what they must to face each successive challenge they're confronted with. The heroes of this film are, in other words, selfish, but never in a venal, or ugly way.
Granted, co-writer/director Seung-wan Ryoo clearly drew inspiration for his story of a group of Korean prisoners of war from such Steven Spielberg staples as " Saving Private Ryan" and " Schindler's List." But the most ingratiating-and sometimes frustrating-aspect of "The Battleship Island" is Ryoo's championing characters whose suffering is quantifiable, whose survival instincts are materially observable, and whose sense of altruism and community stem primarily from necessity and dire peril. That kind of cynicism-as-humanism is what makes "The Battleship Island" so exciting.
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