알레고리 영화로서의 <마더>

Bong, Joon-ho's 'Mother' as an Allegorical Film: Tragic Properties of Contemporary Korean History Presented in Film

Bong, Joon-ho's <Mother> seems to deal with insane maternal affection. However, the film contains too many vague and unclear scenes to be considered drawing only a mad mother's love, and as these obscure and uncertain scenes don't belong tightly to narrative of maternal affection, it sometimes seems to be unnecessary and useless. This study examines on what ‘layer of meaning’ is hidden behind ‘layer of surface’ of maternal affection in Mother as an allegorical film, relying upon the fact that the obscurity and ambiguity Mother has are in line with the discontinuous and fragmented aspects of allegories in Walter Benjamin’s 『The Origin of German Tragic Drama(Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels)』. Events surrounding Hyeja and Dojun; Jintae and Ajeong; and the old man in a junkyard, etc. describe tragic contemporary Korean history and citizens as the subjects who have led the contemporary history. Dojun and Jintae signify the South and the North Korean governments, respectively, born as twins by the tragedy of the national division after Japanese occupation period; Hyeja who is in a mother-son relationship, the citizens who established the South Korean regime; Mina who is a daughter of the Manhattan, the U.S.; Ajeong, many youths who had been sacrificed while shouting for democratization criticizing the violation of human rights; and the old man in the junkyard, the uncomfortable truth of history which we want to throw away like junks. The film depicts through character of Hyeja our image as the people who have undemocratic and violent propensity and our portrait as the subjects of history who make tragic history repeated by distorting, hiding and forgetting our own images and realities. Moreover, through the relationships among all characters, the film describes the issue of the division after the independence; that of ending pro-Japanese sentiment by South Korea and North Korea; the hostile, symbiotic relationship between South Korea and North Korea; and the relationship between North Korea and the U.S. over the issue of nuclear weapons. Like this, the film hides the layer of meaning of the tragic contemporary Korean history; the repetition of tragic history; and the relationship between them and our portrait as the people who are undemocratic and violent; who distort, hide and forget the truth under the surface layer of maternal affection. The director's view on the tragic and desperate history contained in the layer of meaning of Mother doesn't originate from the sense of despair from the salvation that is no longer realizable but from recognizing the desperate situations from beginning to end from the persistent recognition. Mother, based on the results of such a recognition, thus, suggests an insight through which we can see through all the tragic properties of contemporary Korean history, getting out of a step of simple accumulation of historical facts or of the faithful description of the facts.