The "Branded" Hiding in the Underground Parking Lot Crash into a Hierarchical World [Slate]

Director Lee Jong-pil's Film "Pavane"
The Survival Story of Three Youths Who Dare to Be Humble and Hold On to Each Other
Breaking Free from the Gaze of Others to Restore Human Dignity

Film 'Pabanneu' still cut

Physical appearance is the most vicious and rigid hierarchy constructed by capitalist society. Writer Park Min-gyu's 2009 novel "Pavane for a Dead Princess" brought this proposition into the Korean literary scene and created a heavy impact. Its temporal setting is the mid-1980s, when consumer culture, symbolized by department stores and professional baseball, was exploding. It sharply captures how looks and credentials hardened into a new form of power that judges human worth beneath all that glamour.

Director Lee Jong-pil resurrects this novel 17 years later as the film "Pavane." It proves that the chilly prophecy of the 1980s still holds true in a present dominated by smartphones and social media. In step with the spread of digital technology, it incisively lays bare the violence of an even more grotesquely evolved cult of appearance.

The film inherits the department store intact as a vast exhibition hall of desire and follows the trajectories of three young people. There is Mijeong (Go A-sung), branded ugly by the world and driven into hiding in an underground storage room; Gyeong-rok (Moon Sang-min), who has fallen from aspiring dancer to parking attendant; and Johan (Byun Yo-han), the free spirit orbiting around them. In the dark underground parking lot and storage space, where the light of the glittering luxury boutiques does not reach, they lay bare their own sense of loss and shame without restraint and forge a clumsy yet solid bond.

Stills from the film 'Pabanneu'

Through spatial contrast, Lee dissects head-on the ruthless system that grades human beings. The luxury boutiques drenched in dazzling light and the exhaust-filled underground parking lot are a microcosm of a modern caste system. They visually present a distorted reality in which only visible outward appearance reigns as the sole form of power. The film takes unerring aim at the chronic ills of our society, which ceaselessly appraises an individual's commercial value through others' violent gaze.

Mijeong bears the brunt of this violent system's oppression with her whole body. Branded ugly by the world, she hides herself away in the underground storage room to escape others' eyes. She surrenders her inner self to extreme self-hatred and shame. Lee refuses to consume her as a mere object of voyeurism or a pitiable victim. Instead, he shines a deeper light on her hunched shoulders and anxiously trembling eyes, forcing the audience to confront the violent gaze they may have casually cast in everyday life.

This reversal of the power of the gaze decisively erases even the critical blind spots found in the original. The male narrator in the novel was criticized for his patronizing attitude of pitying and saving an ugly woman. The film depicts Gyeong-rok as a shabby youth trapped in emotional blackout, firmly blocking any narrative of unilateral salvation by a superior man. Instead, it focuses on the desperate survival story of two people who have fallen all the way to the bottom and clasp hands on equal footing. Gyeong-rok leads Mijeong out into the world, while Mijeong, in turn, rescues Gyeong-rok from his suffocating lethargy.

Movie 'Pabanneu' still cut

The key axis that adds density to their awkward solidarity is Johan. He leans on rock music to mock the world's hypocrisy, yet in truth he is the one most deeply cut by the contradictions of the ruthless system. He thoroughly disguises his fatal wounds with a veneer of nonchalant cynicism, but he is more acutely attuned than anyone to the pain of those suffering from the same lack. The warmth concealed beneath this solid defense mechanism becomes the decisive catalyst that binds the two incomplete protagonists together.

Their bond is a sharp counterattack against a grotesque era. The capitalist vanity and alienation that the original exposed through the lens of the 1980s have evolved today into something even more meticulous and cruel. "Pavane" sounds a chilling alarm over a reality in which people, trapped in others' gaze, end up placing themselves on display. Going further, by foregrounding the solidarity of those who acknowledge their own lack, it breaks down the prison of hierarchical yardsticks. It offers the paradox that only when we dare to become humble and embrace others can we reclaim human dignity and genuine love.