"Si Mourning", as the 2015 South Korean Olympic masterpiece, tells a tragic story of the famous Si Mourning Shi Zi in South Korean history. 1762, Prince Si Mourning attempted to kill his father, and was put in a rice cupboard by the 21st King of the Joseon Dynasty, King Young Jo, in front of the Hall of Hyeongnyeong, and starved to death, known as the "Imnu disaster".
Lee Jun-ik spends eight days showing how the father and son went from being close to torturing each other.
The movie begins with a drum-heavy funeral music, as Se-ja breaks into Gyeong-hee palace (where his father, King Yeong-jo, lives) with a sword. Fearing that the son will cause great harm to his wife and children, the princess goes to the concubines, who are the son's birth mother, and begs for her help. The concubine, for the sake of the greater good, reported the matter to King Yeongjo. He is furious and orders the son to kill himself, but he is stopped by all the officials and puts the son in the rice closet.
The concubine and her own mother, despite their grief, are afraid of angering the king and dare not plead for mercy.
Only the son of the Shizi, the young Shisun, broke free from his mother's embrace and knelt before his own grandfather, crying and pleading for mercy for his father.
An opening scene explains all the relationships: the son wants to kill his father, the wife denounces her husband, the mother reports her son, and the father wants to kill his son.
Song Kang-ho plays Emperor Yeong-jo, who has lived in the shadow of the lack of legitimacy of the throne all his life. Youngjo's brother, King Jongjong, was childless and had not been king for long before his sudden death, which was rumored to be Youngjo's doing and the historical records were confusing. So the education of his son became his lifelong pursuit of purpose.
He wanted his son to be perfect in every way, to be kind and filial, but also to have the patience and toughness of an emperor.
He was also a loving father who stayed up all night writing books for his son.
Like all parents who look to their children for success, he was just as impatient and hasty. The young Si Mourning Seijo was also a heavenly child and was loved by his father.
He searched for the knowledge and attitude of a king with a na?ve vision, and he loved, admired and respected his father. But for a long time Yingzu's repetitive and changeable, suspicious and skeptical, made him afraid, aggrieved and overwhelmed, and he had to bear the humiliation of the despair of being manipulated by his father.
Time and again, the unjustified rebuke and humiliation pushed him to the brink of collapse, and the two scenes of kneeling became the key to his eventual madness.
The first scene is the one where the son kneels outside the palace gate in the snow and begs his father to take back the promise of abdication.
Another scene shows him accepting his father's unjustified punishment at the bridge in the pouring rain. And this punishment is only because of his father's suspicion and disgust.
In the end, his grandmother, who had been his "protector," dies, and his father blames him for it. The last string of his mourning finally broke, and his long-standing repression unfolded in a devastating way, deepening the gap between father and son until he finally broke into his father's bedchamber with a knife.
The rain was pouring down, the music was fast and furious, and the footsteps were even more so, as if he wanted to act as the best witness of his own "existence is a conspiracy", until he saw Young-jo in front of the window opposite Shisun.
When Yingzou asked him why he had to obey his father's madness and perform an unauthorized rite on his grandmother, he said calmly: "Rites and laws are made by people, and Confucius also said not to be bound to the end of the rite, the king's grandfather, even if he is not the king, I can still perform a thousand obeisance to you, because, at that moment, you are my grandfather, and not just my king, and on that day, I saw the same heart as my father. the same heart as my father. "
Perhaps that was the moment when Si Mourning finally decided to accept his destiny.
He put down his sword, and let the wind and rain soak his clothes, but there were only a thousand tears.
The only time I remember seeing a smile on his face was when Shisun was born.
He took the dragon and ran to his wife, who was in labor, thinking it was an oracle, but in fact it was the beginning of the end.
Young-jo says, "Being born into a king's family, you will raise your children as enemies."
Se-ja says, "The only thing I wish for is a glimmer of warmth in my father's eyes."
The love that Shizi wished for his whole life was exchanged for his father's sentence: your existence is treason in itself.
Even after his death, Yingzu still blamed him for it: why did you push your old father to such a point.
In this story
A father is not a father, a mother is not a mother, and a son wants to be a son
A wife is not a wife, and a husband wants to be a husband
The son of Si Mourning wants to be a son, and this becomes the reason why he must die.
Yoo Ah In's paranoia and total hostility fit the role perfectly.
Se-ja remembers the scene of Se-sun's birth through a folding fan in the rice closet, where he was painting in the palace, and then the camera pans to the small, dark rice closet, where Se-ja covers his face and cries.
In the small space, Yoo Ah In brings to life his son who is enduring to the limit just with his eyes.
In Si Mourning, there is the idea of propriety since childhood. When he couldn't even run, he was willing to squat down his weak body and spread his tender little hands to carry his loving grandmother.
In his own gradual loss of heart, behavior crazy time will also be just concubines for his mother to make up for the treatment of a queen's birthday feast.
His whole life is a struggle between filial piety and ego.
And that flying sword was just a sword after all.
Si Mourning still died in the middle of that grain cupboard that he could not get out of, humiliated all his life, and had to rely on others to force his legs to straighten out even after he died.
His whole life was in the narrow cage of political power, and no matter how much he cried out or resisted, he only dragged himself into the cold abyss of despair, and it was not only his father who killed him, but also his lavish imagination of the emotions and compassion of the imperial family.
The last fan dance and music with the poignant, desperate, miraculous, so full of complex feelings suppressed in the heart of the lingering, and then every time I hear it will be in tears.
The father left in his mind thousands of gestures, Shisun most remembered him pulling the full bow to the sky of the arrow, full of repressed resentment and good wishes of an arrow.
The movie ends with a fan covering his face.
Just like all the emperors and generals hidden in the river of history, there is no place to find their true colors.
There's a Fat Bird movie if you want to see it