Director – Shin Sang-ok – 1968 – South Korea – 95m
****
Free to view in the Korean Film Archive as part of
Korean Film Nights Online: Trapped! The Cinema of Confinement
(Friday, July 17th – Thursday, August 27th)
Viewing links at bottom of review.
Away from his main palace, a prince keeps numerous maids in a separate palace at Geumjung. These concubines are for the prince alone, to help him produce an heir, and to ensure that no-one else impregnates them before him the palace is staffed with eunuchs. Every night he chooses a maid to sleep with, usually by picking a token off a tray. He has a pretty low view of women – they’re all the same, he complains.
The women have nothing to do with themselves except wait around to be picked and gossip about who has been lucky enough to be chosen. They have no power whatsoever – there’s a story about a girl who refused to remove her skirt in the prince’s bedchamber and was executed for disobedience. With no sexually functioning men around other than the prince, some of the women turn to each other for fulfilment.
Thus, one night Min sneaks into the room of the sleeping Kim Ja-ok (Yun Jeong-hie) only to be repulsed when the latter wakes up, understandably startled. Ja-ok, it seems, already has a lover. Of sorts. Jeong-ho (Shin Song-il). Who has had himself castrated so that he can live in the palace and be close to her. When Jeong-ho and Ja-ok are caught in a tryst by Captain Gwang-jin (Park No-shik), they are separated and incarcerated apart from one another. Questioning them, the captain learns that Kim Ja-ok was the daughter of vice minister Kim, who had her sent to the palace.
Meanwhile, the prince takes a fancy to Ja-ok’s maid Gil-nyeo (Do Kum-bong) subscribing to the popular myth that the women of the lower classes are more loving and manages to get her pregnant. With the relationship between Ja-ok and Gil-nyeo under strain, the former gives the latter a knife and tells her to do what she will with it. In an ensuing struggle, the blade accidentally enters Gil-nyeo’s belly leading to a subsequent accusation that she’s killed or attempted to kill the heir to the throne.
Pregnancy can be a terrifying condition for women in Geumjung. When the Queen Mother complains of sickness, her trusted surgeon discovers her to be pregnant. She must undergo an abortion to keep this quiet, which kills her.
The confinement here is all about the royal family keeping their shortcomings hidden away from the population at large. No-one ever leaves Geumjung alive, we are told.
When Jeong-ho and Ja-ok are arrested, they are walked through an area where the wives of the former king are confined. Among these are the demented Lady Jeong, who believes the king is to visit her so the Captain obliges her by having her taken to her room then locked in.
The film starts off with a eunuch being tortured by the captain, not for any wrongdoing but so that he can learn the virtue of resisting torture for his prince. It’s all deeply disturbing in terms of modern day human rights, a glimpse into a past were rulers possessed absolute power and many of their subjects had none whatsoever.
It’s also fascinating in terms of the court protocol. When the prince shares his bedchamber with a chosen woman, she must be searched first to check she isn’t carrying any concealed blade or other lethal accoutrement. And while she is inside, a detachment of two eunuchs sits in the next room, backs to the wall, on hand should anything untoward occur to endanger the prince.
Shin Sang-ok, incidentally, is the director who along with his star actress wife was kidnapped by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and forced to make movies in North Korea for five years as recounted in the documentary The Lovers And The Despot (Robert Cannan, Ross Adam, 2016). A bizarre echo of the cruel plot of Eunuch and possibly one of the strangest cases ever of life imitating art.
Eunuch is free to view in the Korean Film Archive as part of
Korean Film Nights Online: Trapped! The Cinema of Confinement
(Friday, July 17th – Thursday, August 27th)
Intro:
Movie:
Korean Film Nights Online: Trapped! The Cinema of Confinement will be hosted on the koreanfilm website as well as the KCCUK YouTube channel. The recorded introductions will be live at 7pm in a playlist followed by each film, from the Korean Film Archive channel. More info here.
17/07 – 301/302. Park Chul-Soo (1995) 98m.
30/07 – Eunuch. Shin Sang-Ok (1968) 95m.
13/08 – Transgression. Kim Ki-young (1974) 111m.
27/08 – Sopyonje. Im Kwon-Taek (1993) 113m.