콘크리트 유토피아 「Konkeuriteu Yutopia」
Release Date: 2023
Duration: 130 mins.
Director: Um Tae-hwa
Writer: Um Tae-hwa, Lee Shin-ji (Screenplay),
Starring: Lee Byung-hun, Park Seo-joon, Park Bo-young, Kim Sun-young, Park Ji-hu, Kim Sum-young,
Based on a webtoon called Cheerful Outcast, by Kim Sung-nyung, Concrete Utopia is a disaster movie freighted with social critique contemporary issues around housing and finance dictate the worst impulses of characters who survive a society-levelling disaster and yet cling to their old world values. Korea’s entry for the 2024 Academy Awards is a smart film that uses this to fixe satire to social collapse as it looks at how people hide in or use hierarchy to survive.
Said disaster is an earthquake that levels much of Seoul during a cold winter. Brought to the screen with impressive CG, the ground rises like a huge wave, lifting cars and buildings high into the air before bringing them crashing down. The scale of destruction is breath taking and sublime, truly evoking a sense of awe and fear. What comes after the quake is almost as terrifying as people take stock of their new world.
Amidst the frost-covered rubble, wreckage, and corpses of the smashed city stands the Hwang Gung apartment complex, still whole and still intact while other condominiums lie like fallen dominoes. Survivors are drawn towards the towering structure and the residents, whose apartments remain miraculously unscathed, find themselves beset by people begging for help. As authorities fail to show up, many of the residents grow tired of providing sanctuary and turn to a mysterious, brave, and secretive man named Yeong-tak (Lee Byung-hun) who is thrust by more scheming members of the complex (one played by Kim Sun-young, so good in Three Sisters) into taking a leadership role. He soon dictates that tenants must fight to protect what they have earned. Thus, they begin repelling outsiders, sending them out into the freezing cold conditions of the ruined city…
The start of film primes us for this shift in behaviour shown by the residents as viewers are gifted a montage sequence made up of real-world news reels and promotional videos showing the whole aspirational culture behind apartment complex life of the last few decades during the rise of the Korean economy. It comes complete with narration from people talking about how hard they had to work and their hopes of ascending to something bigger and better in an endless cycle of competition. These clips convey the social ladder/competitive society thematic strand of the film. This is bolstered throughout the narrative with the apartment resident’s dialogue laced with details about taking on debt and resentment of outsiders from neighbouring, richer buildings. Another undercurrent that emerges is a sense of there being those who belong and those who don’t.
This subtext allows the film to pour drama into the residents ordeals as the social climbing of our world dovetails nicely into the even more harsh dog-eat-dog nature of post-apocalyptic survival. This propels the thriller aspect of the film as characters find reasons to bicker, betray, and brutalise both residents and non-residents alike as resources dwindle and frustrations between characters rises.
Navigating this are our main protagonists, Min-seong (Park Seo-Joon) and Myeong-hwa (Park Bo-Young of All of Us Are Dead). They are a civil servant and a nurse respectively, people who naturally want to help others but Min-seong finds himself caught in moral dilemmas as he tries to protect their place in the complex and suffers as a result. Meanwhile Myeong-hwa, written with an elementary morality to her character, wants to help everyone. There is something schematic about conflict points involving Yeong-tak, who becomes more dictatorial and, in the film’s most chilling scenes, holds show trials like an autocratic leader. Actor Lee Byung-hun (A Bittersweet Life, I Saw the Devil) takes on the role of a housing complex leader with skill and crafts a compelling character – less antagonist and more man with a lot of baggage and faced with difficult decisions and tempted to take the easy options but also willing to take on hard tasks himself. With this role, he goes beyond action hero to nuanced and complicated. He can fight, he can play hero and he is very convincing and menacing as a villain. Sometimes, considering the world they inhabit, he seems right and that makes the morality of the film much more interesting to engage with.
Indeed, the slide into autocracy and convenient scapegoating happens naturally through people unwilling to get their hands dirty, unable to see past their own selfishness, and too easily swayed by fear and the strong personalities of others and a group. Director Um Tae-hwa stages these scenes of submission to the group brilliantly. It is convincing that this proves to be dangerous behaviour and there is rising tension seeing our central couple have to navigate staying in the good graces of their fellow apartment dwellers or risk being turfed out and it leads to a satisfying finale at the building as actions in the film come back to haunt everyone.
As a disaster movie, this is entertaining and features bravura sequences that will be gut-wrenching to watch on big screens. More interestingly is the sly depiction of a dystopian society where people step on each other in order to protect their property, even if it threatens the survival of society as a whole. The apocalyptic background is really well realised through special effects work that creates a shattered cityscape in the grip of extreme wintry conditions and the cast fit in well within this treacherous environment, hunting for scraps in a world where scarcity seems to be the new norm. Trudging along shattered highways, crawling over bodies and through corridors to sunken food courts, the sights of fallen society ring true and helps power character motivation while providing food for thought.
Concrete Utopia played on October 16th at 13:00 at AMC NEWCITY 14 with director Um Tae-hwa in attendance.