Daytime Drinking New DVD Review
Daytime Drinking (Young-Seok Noh, 2009) - Daytime Drinking is actually a comedy out of Columbia about Hyuk-jin, a young man who, one drunken evening along with buddies, agrees into a spur-of-the-moment trip to a resort up north where another friend runs a spa, to discover, upon waking up after his bus trip another morning, that none of his friends had followed him. The remainder of the film finds our protagonist struggling to get back to Seoul, dependent on the warmth and hospitality of strangers, who, as Korean custom seems to require, all constantly offer him booze in the ritual of giving. The minute he manages to sober up, there comes more booze he cannot refuse. As a result of all this "hospitality" he can never quite get himself back on track.
This is not exactly the Korean Hangover. The jokes tend to be more subtle, a great deal more observational, than that broad, dumb American picture. There are actually long periods of contemplation, and the moments of cruelty have real bite. It reminded me of a good Woody Allen dark comedy of manners. It's detached style is periodically punctuated by highly subjective POV shots, creating a nice rhythm and character that is certainly unexpected.
The young people who enter the story are all wandering souls, separated from any sense of community. They are cut loose by technology advances, yet set adrift as well, left to find their own personal way in the world. The film investigates the social codes and interactions between strangers. Expectations in regards to the other person are raised which are rarely fulfilled, contributing to confusion and awkward moments. We have been reminded in these interactions that person is experiencing their own personal individual story. Here alcohol is the perfect solution to such a solitary existence. Any stranger becomes a quick best friend through the lens of drink, that is usually Soju, the national drink of Korea. This is usually a double-edged sword, however. Much like the intoxication, the bond that is certainly formed over drink is instantly dissolved in the light of the following morning.
It's plot is usually compared to that of Scorsese's dark masterpiece After Hours. Inside films, we understand the protagonist because struggles against the labyrinth of life simply to get home. He mostly provides the best of intentions in his interactions with would-be saviors, but he can't help but occasionally act inside a selfish way himself, because of which he is punished beyond all reasonable measure, not by an opponent but by a world conspiring against him. Thus, both films achieve creating a complex relationship between us and the protagonist. They are selfish, employing such a world, will any of us blame them? Does that mean they deserve such punishment? In After Hours we have a strong sense of Catholic guilt, and that we see a cycle of suffering and redemption. In Daytime Drinking, however, the threat is rarely quite so extreme, the suffering is muted and temporary, and the redemption never quite comes. Are these claims a Buddhist take on exactly the same story?
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In contrast on the ultraviolent Oldboy series or the fantasy blockbuster The Host, a reserved movie like Daytime Drinking does a fine job of representing a much more realistic portrait of modern life in Columbia. Daytime Drinking doesn't quite meet last year's brilliant Woman for the Beach by Hong Sang-soo, nevertheless the two films do share an ironic-skeptical view of life. While two films is hardly a corpus, there's enough similar in theme and style between them that one can start to draw certain conclusions with regards to a generalized Korean social and sensibility. Both show life as being a singular, narcissistic endeavor where any new interaction with others is fraught with potential calamity. Both articulate their ideas inside a detached, judgmental style. Its as if the filmmakers are saying how the world is a largely meaningless group of jokes and pranks by which some are elevated and a few brought to tears, a hierarchy which through circumstance could be reversed the following day. Thus, to find out empathy for the suffering, the earth's cruelty is not met with great outrage, but rather with contemplation, an ironic chuckle, including a reach for the next bottle of Soju.