2000｜108 MIN | Drama, Thriller
DIRECTOR OH Seung-uk
CAST AHN Sung-ki, PARK Shin-yang, KIM Suk
RELEASE DATE May 20, 2000
CONTACT CJ Entertainment
Tel : +82-2-371-8147
Fax : +82-2-371-6340
Email : filmsales@cj.net

After writing two of the most significant Korean films of the late 1990s, LEE Chang-dong’s gangster debut Green Fish (1997) and HUR Jin-ho’s melodrama debut Christmas in August (1998), OH Seung-uk followed with his own debut Kilimanjaro in 2000. Though critically well-received, the film failed commercially and prevented OH from making another film until last year’s Cannes entry The Shameless with JEON Do-yeon.

PARK Shin-yang leads the cast playing dual roles, the gangster Hae-chul who kills his family and himself at the outset of the narrative and his identical twin brother Hae-shik, who accidentally assumes his brother’s identity when he goes to his small seaside town after receiving a suspension. There he becomes embroiled in his brother’s troubles and teams up with a group of locals as he goes up against the town’s head thug.

Kilimanjaro, which takes its name from the setting of the film, the small Jumunjin neighborhood of Gangwon-do Province, sometimes referred to as Korea’s Kilimanjaro, was billed as an action-thriller, but aside from some tense and bloody scenes that bookend the film, the narrative plays out more like a slowburn philosophical and psychological drama, particularly in its exploration of brittle masculinity.

In many ways, Kilimanjaro harkens back to older Korean films, particularly those of the Korean new wave, as it removes itself from the increasingly glossed over sheen that had begun to take over the aesthetic of Korean cinema at the time. Here was a thriller that took place in a gloomy country town that seems to be stuck in the past. Our protagonist throws himself into someone’s dark history (his brother’s) for no better reason than to escape his own confused present.

Where he finds himself is with other disenfranchised men, either driving around country roads or willing away the time on desolate beaches. One of these men is played by legend AHN Sung-ki, who at one point is framed behind a frosted window in a shot that seems to reference the opening shot of the 1988 classic Chil-Su And Man-Su that he appears in.

Much like the films from the era, the protagonists never find redemption or peace in OH’s film, as they all hurtle towards a sombre finale. Today’s Korean thrillers tend to bring things to a close, whether wrapping up a vengeful vendetta or uncovering a dark secret, but no such closure exists in Kilimanjaro, a film that acts as a sounding board for the cries of a generation of men who had already begun to lose their foothold in a rapidly changing society.