Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Railroad / Gyeongui-seon (South-Korea, 2007)



The railroad is a film where i experienced mixed and different feelings after watching it. Two stories are being followed, one about a young university worker (a woman) and one about a metro driver. The part about the university employee couldn’t really convince me, the story was not really innovating (everybody knows probably several kind of stories about students falling in love with married men) and it felt like there could have been much more with it. The other part though, about the metro driver, was really interesting and convincing. This deals about a young man who experiences a horrible accident in front of his eyes. Part of the story focuses on his mental stability after this accident. A rather emotional 20 last minutes of this film lifts it above average. You really can feel the emotion of the guy who never will be able to erase those horrible seconds out of his head. The acting of both main characters is very good, they act pure and it never looks like they practised too hard to play the scenes.

The film is not spectacular, very silent and sober. This approach works pretty good to the story, together with the beautiful cinematography. This is such a movie with has its good and bad moment.