Thursday, November 8, 2012

A Movie Review of 광해 (Masquerade) and Updates on Subtitled Movie Screenings in Seoul


Korea's hit movie this fall is 광해 (Gwanghae), or in English, Masquerade. It's a movie based on Gwanghae, a king in the Joseon dynasty who was never given a proper king's name in history because the Confucian scholars of the time rejected his leadership, and eventually overthrew him in a coup. However, that's not the premise of the movie. The movie begins with Gwanghae suffering from the plots of government officials surrounding him. He finds himself a double (played by the same actor, Lee Byung-Hun, a name and face hallyu fans will certainly recognize), a court actor who turns out to be able to act quite kingly... at times. Of course, allowing a commoner to take the place of the king will lead to plenty of awkward mistakes and trouble making. All this is made worse when the actual king is drugged and the double needs to take Gwanghae's place for real. This is a great historical comedy/drama for anyone as it has elements anyone can enjoy from several great comedic moments, to intense drama, to somewhat of a love story. See below for the English trailer: 





 It's becoming much easier these days for English speakers to watch subtitled movie screenings. I recently stumbled across http://www.koreanfilm.or.kr, which has all sorts of Korean movie information, but most useful to me is their page which is updated weekly with subtitled Korean films in Seoul: http://www.koreanfilm.or.kr/jsp/schedule/subtitSchedule.jsp. I will definitely be linking to this site on the sidebar of the blog for future reference!



4 comments:

  1. Thanks for that link! It has always been a huge hassle trying to find out if and when English subtitle Korean films are on at the cinema. Hopefully we'll see lots of screenings in the future!

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  2. Yes, I was really excited to find this link too! These days the cinemas show the movies too sporadically and it changes week to week so it's impossible to find it by searching the movie theater websites.

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  3. I second Paul. Thanks for the link!!! :)

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  4. I really need to watch this. Great review.

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