Oh Min Wook’s Eternal Brightness, adapted from Jo Gap Sang’s novel Eye of the Night, narrates the past and the present lives of the characters who have lived through the contemporary history of Korea, from the Korean War in the 1950s to the Busan-Masan Democratic Protests calling for the Park Chung Hee administration’s Yushin regime in October 1979. Occasionally the narration recites passages of the novel, and the actor who is askedto star in a film repeatedly walks the areas of Sujeong-dong, Nampo-dong, Busan Station, and Busanjin Station, where a character in the novel walked. The night and day scenes of these places coexist strangely in experimental images, and in the end the movie actor, who wanders the spaces where the novel’s characters have lived, faces the video of the turbulent history and watches the history that follows the lives of the novel’s characters.
(Source: BIFF)