The Daoist monk (Oleg Li) and An’s wife (Valentina Te) in Mest’
The Criterion Collection’s restored version of Ermek Shynarbaev’s and Anatoli Gim’s 1989 epic Mest’ (or Revenge) was an interesting watch, to say the least. It’s the tale of a multi-generational grudge held by the Chae family against a wicked, murderous schoolteacher named An, and the quest for revenge which passes from father to son. But a bit surprisingly to me, actually: the film is as much about the displacement, rootlessness and disorientation of the Korean diaspora in the Soviet Union as much as it is about themes of revenge, mercy and divine justice. Despite being a significant piece of Kazakhstani cinema, it is very much so a movie that is made for, about and significantly by Soviet Koreans.
The film begins in the 1600s, with the King of Joseon (Oleg Li) and his courtiers watching a tortoise fight to make its way back to the sea; they muse briefly on the aim and purpose of human life as, in the corridor, the Crown Prince fights with, and is beaten by, a fellow youngster named Sungu. The King, ashamed of his son, appoints the captain of the Palace Guard his son’s mentor and guardian, and threatens to execute him if, by the time he is twenty, the Crown Prince is not able to defeat any warrior in the kingdom. A dozen years pass, and the Crown Prince has become the new King of Joseon, while Sungu (Aleksandr Pan) has become a courtier-poet. The King orders a guard who has deliberately lost to him in a wrestling match to be beaten to death. Sungu objects, but is unable to save the guard – he then leaves the court of Joseon and wanders off toward the west, into the blinding light of the setting sun.
Fast forward two hundred and fifty years. A schoolteacher named An has been thrown out of the Chae household. Crawling into a barn and covering himself with straw to spend the night, he eventually is shown to be making a living teaching writing to local boys and girls. One girl – the daughter of old Chae – slacks off in class; in a rage, An takes a sickle from the barn door and beheads her with it. Old Chae vows revenge – even putting his farm in hock so he can chase An all the way to China – but he has become too old and weak to carry out his revenge. He takes a second wife, a deaf-mute peasant girl, who bears him a son who is also named Sungu (and also played, as an adult, by Aleksandr Pan). Sungu, whose mother loves him but cannot understand him or speak to him, becomes something of a poetic prodigy – but his life is interrupted when his father takes ill, and calls him to his deathbed. Old Chae tells him what happened to his sister, and tells him never to rest until he has taken revenge on An. From then on, Chae Sungu is driven by a single purpose in life: to hunt down the man who murdered his sister, and kill him with the same scythe he used on her.
Mest’ is a highly disturbing and yet profound film; and there’s a lot going on in it such that it’s hard to know where to begin in describing or examining it. The first thing that comes to mind is the omnipresence of fate in the film; the characters seem to be less acting of their own accord, as they are being ‘ruled from afar’, in the words of An’s wife (Valentina Te), whose rôle in the film seems to be half-Cassandra, half-Fate herself. Fate seems to be accompanied by – and indeed signified by – disease in the film: the bloody disease which takes the life of Old Chae; the disease which nearly kills An’s wife; and the disease which ultimately afflicts Chae Sungu himself. There is a sense of despair and powerlessness which hangs over these characters, which is connected to the rootlessness that they all feel. Old Chae’s only offspring by his first wife was murdered; the second one was fated only to avenge the first. An’s wife, who was doomed to die from a young age, has her life saved by a mendicant Daoist monk (also Oleg Li) who informs her that her fate is to marry An and ultimately atone for his sins. And of course Chae Sungu is forced onto his path by family feeling.
There is a deep irony to all of these ‘fates’, particularly given how important family is shown to be to the Koreans even in their exile. Fate is linked to infertility. Of the three of them, Old Chae is the only one who is capable of having children (and even then, these children are either the victims of violence or damned to a cycle of revenge). An’s wife, it is strongly hinted, is rendered infertile by her disease. And Chae Sungu’s disease – which is tied up with his fate and quest for revenge – prevents him, after he moves to Sakhalin from consummating a romantic relationship with the Romanian expat Elza, who explicitly tells Sungu she wants to settle down and have babies.
Speech and poetry are also themes which crop up again and again. We do not hear, for example, old Chae’s daughter utter a single word before she is cursed at and slain by An. Old Chae himself is struck speechless at key points in the narrative – as when he tracks An down to a mine in China and unsuccessfully tries to kill him in the barracks. The second wife he takes, with whom he has Sungu, is a deaf-mute. The only words she utters are either to Sungu or to An’s wife, and at that in a flashback or a dream. And of course, after Sungu is told of his sister’s death and his quest for revenge, he falls silent for an entire year. He is unable to compose any poetry after that, as he tells the Daoist monk. He finds himself almost wholly unable to speak to Elza. He recovers his voice only toward the end, as it seems he is being guided by the ghosts of his father and sister to An’s house, where he plans to deliver his revenge, only to find a development he did not expect.
The tormented, often-powerless Sungu is made to stand in for the Korean diaspora in the Soviet Union. For the most part he carries himself with the righteous and stoic dignity of a youxia – but this is a dignity that is shown to be without a future. In the very end of the film, we are shown Sungu having washed up on a Sakhalin shore, seeing possibly illusory visions of a royal procession of the Kingdom of Joseon from across a shallow inlet. This otherworldly collapsing of time and space is accompanied by the dialogue of two elderly Soviet-Korean sisters harvesting clams along the shore, who talk about their fear of the sea and their desire to escape. It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to describe this film as elegiac, though. Even if they’re a displaced people, even if they’re bereft of a ‘place’ of their own, even if they’re bereft of a future and a past, the collapse of space and time in that ending scene seems to imply that they aren’t content to be forgotten.
Cinematographically speaking, Mest’ makes some interesting choices – the treatment of the Joseon court feels slightly claustrophobic (and Shynarbaev himself admitted in one interview that he was largely relying on his co-writer Gim’s knowledge of court customs), but the Korean village and later the Sakhalin coastal landscapes set in the modern time frame are treated with exquisite attention to detail. Visually, the film is arrestingly beautiful. (Hedgehogs are a recurring visual motif. Not sure if a Freudian point is being made there or not.) The soft-focus lighting effects in the film create a ‘glow’ around objects and people, creating a dreamlike quality even to the grim and disturbing sequences like An’s murder of the little girl Chae. The score and some of the special effects add to the eerie and surreal quality, particularly as Chae Sungu’s quest reaches its end.
I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Ermek Shynarbaev’s and Anatoli Gim’s film. Even though I can understand why the Criterion Collection added it and even though I can see why it’s a favourite of Martin Scorsese, the story overpromises and ends up in a bizarre, surrealistic cul de sac. For example, without spoiling too much, I still don’t understand what exactly happened to An’s wife. Still, just for the cinematography (and the hedgehogs!), I’m more than happy to recommend it for watching at least once.
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