Review

The Close Up of Bae Chang-ho is both a film that sums up the cinematic world of director Bae Chang-ho in a single documentary as well as a reflective essay that meditates on his life and work. It is also why the film was co-directed by director Bae himself and director Park Jangchoon—a professor at Catholic Kwandong University whose Ph.D. dissertation focused on Bae. The documentary explores 16 of Bae's 18 feature films, omitting The Iron Men (1982) and Whale Hunting 2 (1985). The film revisits Donghae, Chun-ja's hometown in Whale Hunting (1984) where the three characters travel to and recalls both personal memories as well as the final scene of Hwang Jin-ie (1986). From there, the film moves to nearby Naksansa Temple in Sokcho, and talks about The Dream (1990). The journey continues through Namdaemun in People in a Slum (1982), Seoul Station in Hello, God (1987) and The Last Witness (2001), Dongmyo Market where love blooms in Love Story (1996), and finally to Gangnam, a symbol of desire in Flowers of the Equator (1983) and The Young Man (1994).
But this film does more than map locations. It showcases the meaning of these spaces and their emotional weight within each of the stories. It also offers insight into Bae's cinematic philosophy: his belief that ''the most mysterious space in a film is the human face,'' and that ''film is the act of compressing life into the space of time.'' Director Bae said that ''The road is the space that appears most often in my work.'' Fittingly, The Close Up of Bae Chang-ho feels like a road itself—one that leads us into the heart and mind of a filmmaker who helped define a generation of Korean cinema. (MOON Seok)

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