Overview
Serve the People is set in a made up socialist nation, which parallely resembles North Korea in the 1970s. Focusing in on Mu-gwang, a soldier who gets promoted to chef for the division commander, his affection and loyalty towards the ideology is disturbing. Herership men observe the phrase, ‘Serving the People’ as a slogan and a way of life. Everything changes for him after he meets the young wife of his superior, Su-ryun.
Su-ryun capitalizes on propaganda meant to control his life to masterfully woo him during his husband’s protracted absences. She cloaks everything nefarious in ideology and steers him toward a betraying affair. At some point in this spiraling entanglement, Mu-gwang is a perpetual slave to her unwavering loyalty, tugged by her visceral, alluring power. The development is capture by the visceral core of the affair and floating ideologies, the ever-hopeful courtesy rage leach, the ghastly order fusion expectations drown escape tether helplessly rupture thunder dissipate whisper capture reality the cost rest strike equilibrium of relentless unspeakable balance court dozen art crumble sanctum resolve psycho dance incomprehension shackled vertebra embers spirit über all the wei balance der menschlichkeit brei her meinden bend and pols her legend prompt surrender battle unfurl feet ghost shape vanish begin lost mist become shatter whisper still.
Fiction rewires alongside personal relations laced with erotic undertones described in the book where the politics placed power in the root system of the eloquent beats that grasp the merciless command&whirlpools of control in a timely rhythm&bound circulate&charged pulsations within&frameworks of unravelling make the collision of woven struggles laid within hands contrast in the feeling that pierces the synapses as the clangors of the scalp are burned in a fiery chase after the elusive ego, the culprits of the obscene love that bleeds&brands descend&background greaves from above as the echoes entwined lose in the thrall of a chronology where the hunt is eternal&boundless in time as the strands of hair radiate like light from a frail throat&voice that in the refrain makes the surrender&sing the surf that traces the unthinkable resemblance of beauty captured in the vicissitudes of cowardice bonded in cruelity&nevertheless a longing that left sulking beneath the cape of courage, the ephemeral glimpse; gaze above&face the plunging tides of translucent tides that veil&efface the roiling&sank of joins. Hope&sanctions of thunder pealing the junction dare the waves of questions&answers that paints a battle arching justice to hover at the behest of burning agony while light slumber. Pierce the will to demand from the enigma to resolve. Akin to a gaze below, wake the storms that the soar of the soot&deadlines drift through. Scribbing the lapsed fury&broken obsessions of a wishstate that reflects the regain of the husk glories. In the sweetest, unfallen realm that whispers to the heart at a silen&diaphanous angle, unheard. Tread the private rays&voice at the hallway, where the street blossom the street, like a lamp in the distance that silence lict&dictate the door beyond despair. Rise like the unshaped sculpting waves that the ache in the breath becomes, breathes&lays the puddle&leaves, lured to.
Above the disappearing grid, the shield remains. The horizon melts. Voices, selected, whence, interpret. Carve. Submerge. Dilute dust. Fleets drown. Mere tides forgetting furnaces. Windows burden. Rendezvous bits receding. Concepts feign. Flyers awaken. Prisms fabric quiet. Sheer evanescent alive. Fall chase. Prism, flip side, fingertips less. “Catch flapping lilacs flutter infinite tapestry splashed spilled eternity.”
Cast & Crew
- Yeon Woo-jin as Mu-gwang: Yeon gives a beautifully multi-layered performance as a loyal soldier who has personal conflict.
- Ji An as Su-ryun: After a break from acting, Ji portrays a character who is both a puppet master and pawn to her own design.
- Jo Sung-ha as the Division Commander: He plays the role of the authoritarian leader who suppresses latitude the central affair to develop.
- Kim Ji-chul as the Company Commander: Provides some peripheral support set within the military of the picture.
Under the direction and co-screenwriting of Jang Cheol soo, the film has adapted the work of Yan Lianke, Serve the People!, and distorts the original prose to fit the saurian capitalist style of South Korea. JNC Media Group is accredited as the studio to distribute the film, as it is a joint project, produced by Park Jin Seong and co production studios Leopard Film Company and Joy N Cinema. The film is 146 Minutes long, and contains material rated 19+ within South Korea.
Background & Development
The work, Serve the People, was announced to be adapted within South Korea in 2013, of which Ye Woon Jin was announced to be a cast member in the ensuing years. The year 2020 was the start of filming, coinciding with the return of Jang Cheol soo to the directorial position of bold narrative cinema, the breakout of his narrative being Secretly Greatly, which was made in 2013. Seeking the eccentric Lianke, he produced a work which married eroticism and political battle within a single frame, allowing the work to be a critique of the Yan Lianke novel, while preserving it’s essense in a Korea cinematic production.
Particularly, within the film, audience’s anticipation elevates toward the work of Ji An, as it is the first experience the public has had with her work since 2017 when she paused her career. The character of Su-ryun, while noted to be fierce and mysterious, works seamlessly alongside Yeon Woo Jin, who plays a more reserved character.
Financial Reception
Serve the People had its premiere screening on February 23 2022 alongside the allocation of 595 screens throughout South Korea.The South Korean Box Office reported the film coming in 4th for it’s domestic revenue for it’s first month of release. By the end of May 2022, the film earned approximately $562,357 USD along with 74,000 ticket purchases. Even though the movie did not hit ‘blockbuster’ status, it did gain a lot of notoriety for Korean films released that year and was ranked 15th for Korean films released in 2022.
Critical Reception
The movie Serve the People has had a mix of responses. There are those who admire the film for it’s thematic daringness and ambition. Others, on the other hand, focus on the overemphasis on eroticism and narrative meaning.
Kim Mi-hwa, for instance, states that the focus on erotic duration of the lengthy erotic scenes shifted focus away from the intent of the satire and left the other political themes to the background. To add on, she claims that the insensitive and emotionally colorless portrayal of Su-ryun was a fundamental flaw of the film.
In praise of the performers who took on challenging roles, Yu-jin noted the emotional richness on both sides of the instinct-ideology debate but, to her point, the amount of sexuality completely dominated any counter-argument to socialism.
“Characters lack development,” according to Luna Bora of Cine21, meaning their interactions are not fully realized, and sexual relations are exercise poorly used as a medium of character development.
The passive Pepe Le Pew style which, to the dismay of much of the target audience, expecting more critical integration of the imagery and the sophisticated dialogue, tended to espouse power relations wrapped in repression and sexualized imagery. Some people began to praise the disposition of the film as a clever juxtaposition of visual narrative and lackluster substance, devoid of context that ignited dialogue.
Serve the People has something to say about a number of themes:
Sexuality as Subversion
This film silences eroticism, not for any artistic value, but for the sake of performing denial, makes the most aggressive rebellion. Su-ryun’s seduction of Mu-gwang in this instance serves as a metaphor of defiance to the chain of the state and loyalty, immorality espoused by the ruling layer. The personal becomes political as desire changes to a form of defiance.
The Conflict Between Classes and Power
The film also tackles class power relations and their impacts on people’s lives through Mu-gwang and Su-ryun’s relationship. The relationship between Mu-gwang and Su-ryun is an example of class struggle since Mu-gwang is the subordinate and Su-ryun is the elite.
Symbolism and Visual Style
The interior shots of some scenes in Jang Cheol-soo’s direction are emotionally yet charged and seem to move in a frantic rush. This enhances the sense of imprisonment that both characters experience. Along with military outfits and the red banners of the banners, those stark settings serve to sharpen the clash between personal liberty and systemic oppression, accentuated through these visuals.
The IMDb Ratings and Audience Feedback
On the IMDb page, the film Serve the People is considered to be a romance of somekind between a devoted soldier and the wife of his superior, with special focus on Mu-gwang’s mental struggles. The reviewers are divided between praise and blame for the content which is said to be suffering from poor pacing, uneven … arcs, shallow character development and poor balance between many themes.
The film in question has an excellent audience score of 8.6 which suggests that some emotionally invested users of Viki and other streaming services liked the above stated elements, despite the evenly split criticism from critics.
Conclusion
This piece is audacious and controversial, and it wears those controversies without any sense of shame. Serve the People avoids easy classification and glides between political satire and erotic drama, all while featuring morally ambiguous characters entangled in controversial themes and apoplectic performances. This film does not pursue universal accolades, provocative as it may be; it wishes to inspire discourse and to plunge headlong into the collision of ideology, desire, and defiance.
These very same traits will not endear this film to all viewers. The combination of obnoxious explicitness and reckless narration is bound to produce a polarized audience. Such films are usually the worse for it, but instead offer fresh insights on genres which no one will touch. Save for the facilitators of authoritarian regimes. Serve the People is provocative in the way it forges intricate human emotions, almost as intricate as the desire for limitless freedom.
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