Audiences interested in "The Ministers of Nanshan" are mostly preconceived by the subject matter. It is based on Kim Jae-gyu's assassination of President Park Chung-hee (October 26, 1979), and the Blue House, known as "bad feng shui", and the four major confidential agencies of the Central Intelligence Department, the Military Department, the Secretariat, and the Security Department have all appeared. An impromptu assassination, a failed coup, the revelation of the core of power is always exciting.
The main characters who appear in the film, whether they use real names or pseudonyms, do have their own people. The plot is based on history, but one thing must be clear: it is a fictional work that makes a dojo in a gray space that public history cannot tread.
South Korean political films have long been known for their lives. For Chinese audiences who are infected with Confucian culture, the viewing experience of Korean political films is not only fierce, but also has a different subtle taste: it seems to witness the violent, struggling, bleeding, and roommatemates of people who are related by blood, and it is inevitable that the feeling of rabbit death and fox sorrow will be sounded in the depths of their hearts.
The demands of political film audiences are different from those of commercial films and literary and art films. For the former, the screen is not a dream place, nor a place to watch human nature and feel the art of the world, but a virtual exercise of fierce struggle between people, a game of scheming and boldness, good luck and bad luck. Why do people always look at the faces of their kind under the influence of power? Probably because this pyramid spire, which most viewers have no chance of entering, while frightening and disgusting, also hides attraction.
It gives people the illusion that by watching movies, it seems that they can also participate in the course of history. When the locomotive of history comes to a fork in the road, which direction will it go? Witnessing these decisive moments in the dark makes it easy to get the thrill of driving the train with the protagonist.
"The Ministers of The South Mountain" can give the audience this kind of thrill of being in a special moment and anchoring the ground. Its selection of historical moments is thrilling and fascinating, exacerbated by the tension inherent in coups and assassinations.
"The Ministers of Nanshan" has a high score of 8.1 (61,000 people) on Douban, which is higher than the quality of the work itself. But audiences obviously don't score on the standards of fictional genre films alone, which is actually impossible, because these films that show historical moments have higher requirements for the audience—they need to know the basic background and are willing to consult the information after watching the film. The thrill of peeking into history was naturally added to the film's ratings.
Reality is better than movies. For example, you can check how the descendants of the assassinated President Park Chung-hee in "The Ministers of Namsan" continued their unfinished business. Add these to the ordinary film and shine with the gold dust of history.
President Park's actor, lee sung-min with swollen eyes, was the key to pulling the show to make this bizarre impromptu coup d'état set in place. He brings his natural gloom to the character, giving the portrait a real breath to those who are well versed in imperial power.
"The Ministers of Nanshan" tells a very simple story, and its dramatic plot does not have much tension. Without the scene where Kim Joo-hyun (Lee Byung-hyun) assassinates President Park, "The Ministers of Namsan" would have been much worse. In the first half of the scene, CPP Kim Gyu-hyun, GuardHouse Chief Koo Sang-chuon (Lee Hee-joon), President Park and the rest of the group feast. If Kim's trembling hands and close-ups of the toast are exaggerated, what happens next will make people believe that this is the air at that time.
In the room, the men were all trying to restrain themselves, but Kim's stiff and shruging shoulders and President Park's unconscious shaking were the animal's physical reactions in times of crisis. The audience held their breath, happy to see the trapped state of the politicians as they fell into the trap. But soon, Kim pulled out his pistol. He was not a killer, clumsy in his movements, and could not see the slightest quality of a soldier. Similarly, the head of the guard room also fell to the ground like a wine bag, and the face of the courtiers was always the same. The long camera watches the whole process smoothly, ruthlessly and cold-blooded.
It's like flipping through a smooth history book, with a silent cry Chinese word. Jin's anger and fear were mixed with the righteousness of his home and country, and he could not distinguish between them. His pistol jammed (or ran out of bullets), left the Japanese-style room with one foot on sticky blood at the end of the assassination, slipped on the grass mat, like a person who could not wake up from a nightmare, vulnerable, helpless. When President Park, who was swallowed up by power, slumped in a chair and his life flowed with the blood in his chest, a vague "I'm okay" became his epitaph. The blood seemed to wash away the shadow of power, revealing the true face of this man, a leader with a mixed reputation.
Unfortunately, in the end, no one got what they wanted. After the praying mantis catches cicadas and the yellow finches, the farces and tragedies of the Blue House are not washed away by blood, but can only be sacrificed by blood.