Weekender
‘House of Hummingbird’ revisits Korea in 1990s
There’s something about the coming-of-age film “House of Hummingbird” — it offers a feel-good narrative, though the story centers on a teenage girl’s personal struggle in a male-dominated, volatile society.
The award-winning movie gives audiences a peek into the life of an insecure, timid 14-year-old girl Eunhee (played by Park Ji-hoo) who is wrestling with the burning issues of the male-dominated 1990s, such as extreme obsession for academic achievement and domestic violence.
But it still manages to convey a special message of her search for hope and love, much like a hummingbird flitting through the air with relentlessly flapping wings to keep itself afloat.
“This movie is about how humans communicate and share their love with one another,” says the director Kim Bo-ra in an interview with The Korea Times, Sept. 10, in Mapo-gu, Seoul.
“I find there is humor in every life despite the misfortunes. And that humor keeps people alive even when they are faced with adversities,” Kim said. “I didn’t want Eunhee to be seen as a victim, but rather an ordinary girl raised in the 1990s. So I wanted the story to give warmth to viewers.”
This tender film deliberately uses specific mise-en-scene elements, as well as scenes where characters simply communicate through subtle eye-gazes, to deliver the lyrical and mature storytelling style that grabbed critics’ attention and praise. The critically-acclaimed film took home 25 awards from 15 different film festivals around the world, including the Berlin International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and International Istanbul Film Festival.
“So many people asked me how old I am because they mistook me as a filmmaker much older than my age, which I think is a great compliment,” Kim said as she discussed her interactions with people at the festivals. Inspired by her own background, the 38-year-old director-writer took a close look into her adolescence to come up with the soft but thought-provoking film.
“I began by gathering childhood anecdotes that I found upsetting and ironic to put them into one film.”
The pieces of her adolescence were first cinematized through a short 28-minute film “The Recorder Exam” in 2011, which revolves around elementary school student Eun-hee. Then two years later, Kim wrote up the first draft of the follow-up “House of Hummingbird” featuring an older Eun-hee.
As the youngest of three siblings, Eun-hee falls into the blind spot in-between the troublemaking older sister and favored brother who her parents pinned their highest hopes on, a reflection of Korean society’s preference toward sons. Her parents are always busy running their rice cake shop to afford living in an expensive neighborhood, leaving their adolescent girl without the proper care she needs. Prioritizing their son over their daughter, the parents justified her brother’s abuse of her.
The middle schooler’s life gets even tougher outside the home. At school, students are segregated by their academic performances. Teachers are harsh on those slacking. She feels her relationships with her classmates are transient. Amid despair, she finds joy in drawing comics, yet no one seems to care about her, except her afterschool teacher Young-ji (Kim Sae-byeok).
Otherwise, the dark story invites a thread of light through the encounter with Young-ji, a free-spirited, cool teacher who waits until Eunhee reaches out to her to seek comfort. Though Young-ji is not a person with fancy words of wisdom, she gives Eun-hee enough care and guidance through which the two feel deeply connected.
“I think they have a lot in common, not necessarily a common background, but something that connects the two,” Kim said. “The reason two people are drawn to each other is they have a similarity in nature, and I think that’s what drew the two to each other.”
Kim explained Young-ji represents an ideal character she created based on people she met in childhood.
“There is the energy of tenderness and affection that we can feel when we interact with strangers and I’ve always felt the importance of that,” the director noted. “I wanted to reflect that you will always have someone to rely on no matter how hard the situation can be.”
Nonetheless, academic pressure, negligence, and betrayals continuously distress Eun-hee until her life shatters as the story reaches the climax with the collapse of Seongsu Bridge on Oct. 21, 1994, that took the lives of 32 people. The real-life tragedy caused by structural failure sets the flashpoint of a corrupt society, resembling the breakdown of Eun-hee in her own life.
“During that era, the signs of disruption had been prevailing from the smallest component of the society to an overall sense. And I thought the collapse of Eun-hee’s life aligned with the atmosphere of the society,” Kim said. Kim expressed that she wanted to address and criticize the long-standing problems of Korean society.
“The issues have long been prevalent in this society — gender inequality; children feeling extreme pressure over academic performance; and people judging others by their socio-economic status, educational background and achievements,” she noted. “So I wanted to tell a story that connects the past and the present in terms of those continuing issues.”
She added that as a creator she felt the responsibility to be at the forefront of social commentary and touch on less-discussed matters rather than sticking to charming tales.
The director, a Columbia University School of the Arts alumna, said her life abroad in New York allowed her to detach and objectively look through the problems.
“Living in America allowed me to look back with a healthy distance, and take a more objective view on my childhood and myself as a woman in Korean society,” she said. “This enabled me to see how Korea has reached the structure it has now.”
At the same time, she tried to provide a touch of warmth through the film, rather than a rough piece harshly criticizing society.
“Instead of zooming in on these situations with a cynical and dismal voice, I tried to lay them out with affection and to elaborate on the light that resides along with crisis,” she said.
The film was first screened at Busan International Film Festival in 2018 and hit local theaters on Aug. 29 this year. The independent film has sold over 81,000 tickets as of Thursday.
I don’t want Eun-hee to be seen as a victim.