Movie ‘One in 10,000 Seconds’, finding the reason to become lighter

*Contains spoilers for the movie 'One Thousand Seconds'.

“It has to be lighter.”

'One in 10,000 Seconds' is a movie that keeps telling Jae-woo (Joo Jong-hyuk), who is preparing for the final selection for the Korean kendo national team, to 'get lighter'. The painful memories of the past, which cannot be eased easily and are replayed like Sisyphus' stones, weigh on Jae-woo. Jaewoo's intangible anger has suddenly become a gigantic form that can engulf even himself. For him, letting out all his inner anger and becoming lighter is only possible by looking at the other person accurately.

When he was young, Jae-woo's older brother got caught in a fight with Tae-soo (Moon Jin-seung) and died unexpectedly, and the grief that fell on the family was never recovered as before. As a result, Jae-woo's family is devastated, and at the training camp for the final selection for the Korean kendo national team, Jae-woo encounters Tae-soo, the person he resented so much for causing misfortune to his family. In fact, the governor seems to have completely forgotten what happened in the past.

Is this an empty cry for a broken time that can never be restored? Jae-woo, who tried hard to hide his distorted face, only expresses his raw emotions after putting a mask on his face. Tae-soo, whom Jae-woo faces only after calmly defeating other competitors, is somewhat fearful to Jae-woo. This is not because of the overwhelming difference in skill, but because it is the moment when emotions that have been hidden so long come out.

However, kendo is a sport that protects your territory while exploiting the opponent's gaps. You must maintain a certain distance and capture the moment when balance is lost. The effective striking areas in kendo are the front, left, and right sides of the head and neck, wrists, right waist, and left waist. It may be lumped together as a sport similar to fencing, but it is fundamentally different. If fencing is an aggressive form of reaching forward from a fixed position, kendo is a sport in which the final blow is delivered by repeatedly striking and blocking the opponent.

Jae-woo, who pushes his opponent like an angry bull, always ends up being disturbed in front of Tae-soo's composure. Let's go back to the opening. Director Kim Seong-hwan shows a person waving a wooden sword in all directions in a pitch-black space from an angle that makes it impossible to tell whose point of view it is. The audience is also assimilated and feels anxious together. How much time has passed? The audience realizes that Jae-woo is the main character whose pupils are shaking aimlessly and finds stability, but Jae-woo is still out of breath. 'One in 10,000 Seconds', which emphasizes that emptying is the most important sport, shows Jaewoo's condition from the beginning in the opening. Jae-woo's rough breathing and unorganized emotions not only make it difficult for him to look at the other person, but also make him feel like he is on someone else's stage.

Jae-woo's father's name written on the red bandana that Tae-su wore on his head became the detonator for Jae-woo's anxious but not overstepped boundaries. Jaewoo, who witnessed the incomprehensible act of teaching kendo to the person who killed his son, chose to separate from his father from that day on. Now Jaewoo is trapped in a swamp that he cannot escape from, trapped by the trauma of his past. He obviously has to work hard to be in the top 5 for the national team selection, but now Jaewoo's public sphere has been invaded by his private sphere. Perhaps Jae-woo is trying to restore the family's irreversible time before his brother's death by sparring with Tae-soo.

‘One in 10,000 Seconds’ is a film where heavy breathing rather than dialogue dominates the screen. Therefore, director Kim Seong-hwan pushes Jae-woo to the brink by repeatedly arranging heterogeneous sounds from outside or colliding images. The calm melody of Debussy's 'Arabesque' even feels strangely alien to Jaewoo's sharp and nervous situation. The weight of the past, which I held on to to the point that my hands bled, only becomes lighter the moment I bring my father, whom I had lost contact with, to the hospital. What was tying Jaewoo like a string that was so tight that he couldn't let go were memories, resentment, and anger of the past that he had to let go of someday. At the end of the movie, Jaewoo sees snow falling from the sky and chooses to spread it out instead of holding it tightly in his hands. Perhaps the weight of the past he carried could have easily melted away like snow.

Even though it is his first feature-length film, director Kim Seong-hwan has created a beautiful yet pathetic gesture through a tight structure and gradually heightened emotional lines between the characters. However, the process of explaining events and conveying the story through images or sounds rather than dialogue, as well as the process of Jae-woo struggling to let go of the weight he carries, may feel long.

Nevertheless, the part where the new director's witty perspective can be felt is his deep insight into the sport of kendo. The biggest appeal of 'One in 10,000 Seconds' is that the complex emotions of swordsmanship and characters are drawn gradually, as if drawing a drawing, by adding several layers of lines. I think it will be a work where you can see the intense eyes of actor Joo Jong-hyuk, who played a sly character with a scheming trick in the drama 'Weird Lawyer Woo Young-woo'.

The movie ‘One Thousand Seconds’ will be released on November 15th. Running time 100 minutes. Suitable for ages 12 and up.

Reporter Ha-neul Lee, Ten Asia greenworld@tenasia.co.kr