Behind the tragedy

While better know in the western world for his vengeance trilogy, Park Chan-Wook should be praised for a less known film called JSA.

Joint Security Area is a political thriller set in the Korean Demilitarized Zone where soldiers of each side end up fraternizing before things turn bad in some kind of greek style tragedy.
Directed with brillance (non-linear storytelling full of intricacies, sophisticated framing and photography...) the film not only entertains but it also makes the audience pondering on the whole point of the North/South dichotomy. It depicts a world from which women are excluded, where the sense of honor and patriotism have rendered people enemies.

If Park Chan-Wook's discourse is cheesy at time ("we are all brother after all, let's love each other"), the director sums up in this Joint Security Area the ridiculousness of conflicts where fleeting ideologies create a state of war and imaginary barriers to separate men, epitomised in the "your shadow is on my side" line in a rare funny moment of the film. JSA depicts a tragedy in which human beings have traded their freedom of thought and individualism with allegiance thus becoming slave of the homeland's will.

Ten years after the release of the film, South and North Koreas may be on the brink of war. JSA reminds us that political conflicts and their procession of bravado and chivalry usually hide a situation which is in some respects incredibly pointless.