Directed by Lee Chang-dong | 130 mins | 1999
Opening on a shocking scene of implied suicide, Lee’s sophomore feature proceeds to move backward in time, its reverse chronology following its protagonist’s unhappiness to its source, following him from the end of the ’70s to the close of the ’90s—years of enormous transformation in South Korea—and on a trajectory from youthful romanticism to the cynicism and disenchantment of middle age. A character study that doubles as an allegorical history of a South Korea beset by trauma after trauma, anchored by Sul Kyung-gu’s sensitive and versatile central performance.