Land of Scarecrows Lights Up IFFK 2009

There were several interesting movies in the very first day itself of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK 2009), which was officially inaugurated at Nishagandhi Open Air Auditorium a few hours back. I saw three films: The Last supper, Eastern Plays, and Land of scarecrows. The third one was my pick of the day.

I had planned to watch Adrezej Wajda’s Sweet Rush, as I always trust the old guard than the flashy new comers (as in Cricket). However, I changed my plan in the last minute and went to watch Land of Scarecrows, a South Korean film directed by Gyeong-tae Roh. It is a remarkable film in that it is a rare blend of cinematic beauty and social criticism and yet provides insights into human nature and the environmental concerns.

Most of the events take place in two places, in Philippines and Korea, which is a bit hard to figure out in the initial stages. However, the picture post card beauty of the still frames (the camera never seems to move) captivate the viewers. Slowly, the main characters emerge: Jang, who feel she has become a man after the wet land near her home was filled with soil: Rain, a Philippino girl who wanted to marry a Korean and whom Jang marries in a made to order marriage ceremony in an obscure town in Phillippines, and Loi Tan, who is in search of his adopted Philippine father.

In some comic scenes, which break the monotony of charming visuals, Rain discovers that her husband is actually a woman. Then she meets Loi and there starts a silence romance.

The story of the characters is a secondary theme in the movie. The main theme is captured in an expletive-filled sermon of a spiritual guru, whom Jang consults to find a cure for her trans-gender problem. He says the cause of all the problems these days is “putting human’s soul in monkeys’ in humans, …. Carrot’s in onion, and onion’s in carrot”. One cannot agree more.