Reel Memories: Unspooling the Magic of My Favorite Films

Ever since I was in my mid-20s and working a job that paid a certain amount of money every month, every Tuesday has been a day to buy. As a cultural person(?) who likes movies, I thought it was a natural and reasonable consumption, and I would buy a freshly released copy from a bus stand on the way home from work tiredly, hold it in my arms, and read it on the subway on the way home. I don’t know why, but I always had a habit of reading backwards, starting from the last page. I usually liked to read the columns at the end of the magazine first, and I would read the interviews with the actors who graced the cover slowly, later. When I think about it, I think it was a time when I felt very close and familiar with the stories of movies, movie directors, and new actors who had just debuted. Getting older may mean that the distant world that has nothing to do with me and my reality become separated and I become more indifferent.

As a child, I am an old-timer who was exposed to movies through the famous movies of the weekend or at the famous movie theater where voice actors dubbed the movies every Saturday and Sunday night. It was the first movie I saw in the theater, and I lived in a time when I went to see the movie in a long line in front of the Daehan Theater with my friends on the day it was released. When I was in college, whenever I had time, I went to a movie theater in Jongno and watched movies and drank alcohol, repeating the process hundreds of times. During vacations, my sister and I rented videos from the video rental store in front of our house and watched two or three movies a day. I was a fan of Wong Kar Wai’s films because I lived in the era when Hong Kong films were popular, and even now, if someone asks me what my favorite film is (even though I’ve definitely seen many better films since then), I’ll probably answer Ina. My favorite movie character is ‘Hwang Fei-hong’, so I watched the whole series, but later my ideal type changed to ‘Howl’ from .

Most of the many ‘tastes’ that determine my life are difficult to explain why they are good, and most of them are just good to me for no particular reason. Wong Kar-wai’s movies, as well as Hong Sang-soo’s movies, are one of those types of tastes, so I don’t know why, but Hong Sang-soo I also like ’s work. Coincidentally, I have seen most of Hong Sang-soo’s movies alone at the theater, and I think it’s because it’s easier to keep my feelings to myself rather than share my feelings with someone after watching his movies.

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It was 2009 when I started living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Living in Ho Chi Minh City made it a bit difficult to enjoy my favorite hobbies.

1. Buying books

2. Listening to the radio

3. Watching movies

Especially the three above. When you live abroad, you have no choice but to become distant from many of the things you enjoyed in your own country, but in my case, the thirst and regret for such cultural life felt greater than being distant from people and my work.

Ho Chi Minh City also has large theaters such as CGV and Lotte Cinema, and many Korean films are imported. Perhaps because it is a city with many Korean residents, there are times when very famous foreign movies are screened with Korean subtitles. However, I think I can count the number of times I’ve been to the theater here in the past ten years on one of my five fingers. For some reason, I couldn’t quite feel the emotions and emotions of movies and theaters that I felt in Korea.

It is said that the film industry in Korea is not as prosperous as it used to be, and the theater culture has changed a lot in the era of streaming, so even if I had continued to live in Korea, I might not have sought out and watched movies as much as I used to. Raising children, being busy with my own life, and living a realistic life, my emotions don’t respond the way they used to…

Nowadays, you can open your iPad or laptop and watch whatever you want at any time, but sometimes, even if you think about watching a movie, you often end up scrolling through the Netflix menu for a long time before giving up. For some reason, it has become quite difficult to sit down and watch a movie from beginning to end in one sitting.

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Was it the year before last? I went to my sister’s house and by chance, I ended up watching a Japanese movie again for the first time in a very long time. I already knew all of the content, and it was a famous movie that had been talked about a lot in the past, so I watched it without much thought, but unexpectedly, I was so immersed in the movie that I watched it in a daze… and I burst into tears. It poured. But rather than just being sad about the content in the movie, my heart was shaken more, I was sadder, and I burst into tears so much that I couldn’t control myself. Wiping away my tears.. Ah, why is it so sad? Why is this like this? Was this movie so sad before? As I thought about it, I realized.

A flash of me from the time I was watching that movie in the 90s popped up inside me. That it popped out.

It’s been so long since I’ve seen those emotions and feelings back then, and I’m embarrassed, happy, sad, and nostalgic.

I liked the movie so much that I went to the theater to look for it. After watching the movie, I wanted to know how the director made the movie and what kind of thoughts the actors had in acting in the movie, so I searched movie magazines, collected movie posters and still photo postcards, and after watching the movie, I looked for movies. I had completely forgotten about the time when I was having a glass of soju with my friend, whispering stories about movies, and my heart was pounding, and then I met him again. And I felt like I realized that the person I am now has come so far from the person I was back then. Most of the emotions that accounted for that feeling were longing, and that emotion created a hole in my heart and became sadness. That sadness penetrated me to a greater degree than I expected.

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The last time I went to Korea, I watched two movies back to back at the same theater in one day, alone. I was alone when I saw the close-up of the main character’s face in the final scene of a movie I watched during the day. While my heart was pounding, I went out of the theater and spent time drinking coffee at a cafe until the movie was shown in the evening. And when the sun went down, I went back to the same theater and waited for another movie, which was great. Both movies were not five stars, but three and a half or four stars, but I just liked the time, myself in the theater, and the atmosphere in the theater. I thought it would be rude to go home right away after watching a movie, so I walked down the street at night for a while.

Thinking about movies, I think about living without forgetting the preciousness of the moments when I can fill my life with my tastes.

Illustration: Sohyun Lee