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Film Screening
Man with three coffins
Directed by Lee, Jang-ho
21 August 2009
A man travels to the eastern coast of Korea carrying the ashes of his deceased wife. He hopes to scatter
the ashes in a place close to her hometown which
lies in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating
North from South Korea. Along the way, he
becomes burdened with the deaths of two more
women who cross his path. At the same time, a
nurse attempts to escort the dying chairman of a
business conglomerate to his hometown which is also located just beyond the DMZ. Pursued by
henchmen of the chairman’s son, a politician who
wants to keep his father’s journey out of the press,
the nurse encounters the man who metaphorically
carries ‘three coffins’. Underlying the film’s political
content are strong Shamanist themes, punctuated by glimpses of bells and a Shaman’s clothing.
A Shamanist notion of fate ties together the two
protagonists in this dramatic story. Although by no
means an easy film, Lee Jang-ho’s film possesses
a striking beauty and a brooding, dark tone that
places it amongst one of the great films in the annals
of Korean cinema in the twentieth century.
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