Final Rating: 3/5
I mentioned previously in my Perfect Days review that as someone who was raised in Florida and currently resides in New York, I am very much a city person compared to a suburban person. Of course, one of the tradeoffs of living in a city versus the suburbs is that you’re more likely to be living in an apartment than a single family house, which has its own pros and cons.
As someone who’s on his third apartment in nearly ten years in NYC, it’s not just the floorspace of your apartment or the amenities in your building or distance from the subway that matters though. One of the reasons I really love my current place is that we’ve really grown to love the neighborhood we’re in and the people we see everyday. From the neighbors inside our building that I share a fantasy football league with, to other dog owners who we see on our walks, to the bodega and restaurant owners who know our orders once they see us walking in the door, there’s a real sense of community that other neighborhoods I’ve lived in lacked.
That said, there is also a sense of (and perhaps a bit of guilt at maybe being a part of) gentrification happening as we see new luxury buildings being built a few blocks away – we’ve seen what the yuppies and hipsters did to Brooklyn after all. As New York (and cities in general) become more and more expensive to live in, a right to shelter really starts becoming a class issue
As we’ve seen from films and shows such as Burning, Squid Game, Train to Busan, The Handmaiden, and of course Parasite, South Korea is no stranger to dealing with issues of class in its movies. In particular, Parasite uses the architecture of the building where most of the film takes place as a metaphor for class in and of itself.
So it’s no surprise that South Korea’s recent submission for this year’s Oscars, Concrete Utopia directed by Eom Tae-hwa, deals in similar fare. The premise is that one day, a biblical level earthquake has flattened all of Seoul – except for a single apartment building complex. Now I could go into a whole other thesis about how fascinating I find apartment complexes and urban planning especially in Asian cities, but for the context of this film (which is alluded to in the opening montage of the film), it’s important to know that apartments in Korea were seen as a sign of the country’s growing industrialization after the Korean War.
Since then, they have come to be seen as the Korean version of the “American Dream”. Instead of a two story house with a yard and a white picket fence, it’s a swanky apartment that has a fancy name such as “Imperial Palace,” which is the name of the sole standing apartment in the film. (For more information on Korean apartments this Bloomberg article about the history of Seoul’s apartments is fascinating)
As the only standing structure around, of course the Imperial Palace apartments will get refugees clamoring for shelter, which puts stress on the existing residents and their limited resources. As things go in these kinds of post-apocalyptic stories, a charismatic leader emerges, an in group (the residents) and an out group (the non-residents) is established and the cast goes Lord of the Flies in creating a new society from the scraps of the old one. Some members try to grasp onto the morality of the old ways – breaking the rules of the commune to help the outsiders – while others embrace the new order where they are conveniently placed on top.
In that sense, Concrete Utopia isn’t anything new per se – we’ve seen this kind of story play out multiple times in other dystopian films. I can’t even really remember the names of any of the characters, and really can only remember them as the archetypes of “the morally conflicted husband who just wants to survive,” “his kind wife who sticks by her morals of helping others,” and “the elected delegate who likes his new position of power” (though my wife as a k-drama fan recognizes them by other roles they’ve played in the past – notably, the latter is played by Lee Byung-hun, the front man from Squid Game).
I could even call out the plot twists about 15-20 minutes before they actually happened (for example, there is one resident revealed to not actually be a resident that I was able to predict). That said even if it’s not necessarily presenting any new ideas or raising any novel questions, it does present and raise them effectively.
What would you do in such a scenario – would you try to survive best you can or hold onto the trappings of the old society? Is it just to leave those struggling out to dry when you’re barely surviving as is? Would you be able to resist the groupthink that happens in creating an in and outgroup? If you were hurt by someone to the point that your life is destroyed, are you justified in taking what is theirs in retribution?
As with most dystopian films out there, these hypotheticals really are probing at our present reality. If I think hard enough, there is even maybe something in there about the way that fanaticism around a figurehead leader can be dangerous especially with regard to propaganda and creating those outgroups – something particularly relevant given North Korea is just to the north of Seoul. If you’re looking for something novel, perhaps this isn’t for you. But if you have any passing interest in the explosion of Korean cinema out there, you could absolutely do worse.
While I can understand why this ultimately was not shortlisted for the Oscars this year in the international feature film category, I can’t deny that like other thriller type films from South Korea, this was an enjoyable way to spend the evening. Apparently, they liked the post-apocalyptic world they had created for this film so much, it was decided that a sequel would be made even before this film was released; that’s coming to Netflix worldwide in January 2024. So between that and having an excuse to dive deep into the history of South Korean urban planning, I can’t say this film was a total failure.
