A Taxi Driver (DVD) (Verkauf)

South Korean director Jang Hoon’s 2017 film, which ultimately focuses on the real-life events of the Gwangju Uprising in 1980, has a number of intriguing elements. Perhaps the most original is Jang, and writer Eom Yu-na’s, juxtaposition of the semi-comedic circumstances leading to Song Kang-ho’s Seoul taxi driving widower and father, Kim Man-seob (Kim Sa-bok In real-life) accompanying Thomas Kretschmann’s German news reporter, Jürgen Hinzpeter, into the heart of the uprising and the uncompromisingly bloody aftermath that follows. It’s something of a moot point as to the extent of Kim’s (real-life) ignorance of his countrymen’s dissatisfaction with the regime of the authoritarian Chun Doo-hwan – leading to the uprising – and politics, more generally, given that director Jang apparently knew little of Kim’s background, but the film-makers do an excellent job in the film’s portrayal of their protagonist’s ‘ordinary man’s’ eyes being opened and in the depiction of the pre-internet world’s ability to hide events away from the public’s gaze.I found the early sequences of the film – which at over two hours running time turns into something of an historical epic – to be most impressive, as Kim scams a rival taxi driver out of the not inconsiderable fare from Seoul to Gwangju, allowing Kim to pay his rent arrears and the dawning realisation on Kim at just what Hinzpeter does for a living and what is in store for them in the battle-zone that is Gwangju. Inter-character Korean-English translation issues are a recurring (often comedic) theme as to the general confusion, whilst Kim’s nationalistic, anti-protestor, pseudo-pacifist views are all called into question as he witnesses just what the South Korean powers-that-be are capable of. As Kim befriends a number of Gwangju taxi drivers we get a positive theme of the profession’s and, more widely human, solidarity, before the film moves into somewhat more formulaic territory. The film’s rioting and mass shooting sequences are certainly impactful and moving, even if stylistically they more and more resemble how Hollywood would typically treat this subject, with stock 'baddies’, plenty of fanciful coincidences and outlandish car chases (loosening the film’s ‘based on real events’ credentials). In the end, despite any shortcomings, Jang’s film remains an engrossing one, particularly notable for attempting to dramatise a key event in South Korea’s history (a fact which the current president Moon Jae-in has acknowledged).