The Glory (Netflix Original Series)

Choi Sunjae : “How about we die a slow, withering death together.” This is the chilling offer Moon Dong-eun (played by Song Hye-kyo), the victim of school violence makes to Park Yeon-jin (played by Lim Ji-yeon), her abuser from high school. In “The Glory,” Dong-eun drops out of school and makes it her life’s purpose to exact revenge on Yeon-jin and her clique. She is assisted by Joo Yeo-jeong (played by Lee Do-hyun) who had to witness the horrific killing of his father at the hands of a serial killer, and by Kang Hyeon-nam (Yeom Hye-ran) who is suffering continued domestic violence. The abusers spout drivel like “I do this and still nothing changes for me, you can do all that and also nothing will change for you” and “Just bored” as reasons for their actions. And indeed Yeon-jin is living like she didn’t commit horrendous abuse, protected by money and power. Just another underprivileged victim, Dong-eun receives no protection whatsoever from the school and as an adult she does not seek recourse from either the justice system or the press for the abuse. Instead, she puts into practice a strategy from the game of Go. “In this game the winner simply has to steal the home the other will so lovingly build,” says Dong-eun. With that, she personally tries to ruin everything her abuser holds dear the moment everything seems perfect and complete. Even on paper, we can feel how the story whips up the audience into clamoring for cathartic revenge. Still, “The Glory” never loses sight of its grand design. While peppering the episodes with tightly written, intense dialogue that completely immerses the viewer, each move on the path towards revenge progresses deliberately like the game of Go. “The Glory” is in Dong-eun’s dialogue : “From this day forward each day shall be wretched; it will be salacious and horrific.” 

White Noise

Im Sooyeon (CINE21 Reporter) : Director Noah Baumbach of the “Frances Ha” and “Marriage Story” fame has revealed his latest work on Netflix. This is the film adaptation of the book by the same name that launched the career of Don DeLillo, one of the most well-known figures in modern American literature. When the black smoke from the site of a crash where a truck carrying toxic waste ploughed into a train starts drifting into the nearby town, we see Jack Gladney (played by Adam Driver) and each member of his family prepare to evacuate according to each person’s beliefs. White noise emerges from a wide range of frequencies. We are usually not aware of this sound, but once you do pick up on it your quiet daily routine will start to fracture. The film “White Noise” likens this to our relationship with consumerism, information overload, and death; all of which are represented by the super-market in the film. While showing us how social critique from a 1985 book translates seamlessly to today’s world, the director takes his style of post-modern satire and gives it a cinematic treatment in the manner of personally cherry-picking then reassembling the cliches of 1980s and 1990s action films that conveyed catharsis through images of explosion and destruction. Noah Baumbach’s long-time partner Greta Gerwig returns to star in this film after a time away. “White Noise” was the opening film of the 2022 Venice International Film Festival. 

How to Do Nothing (Jenny Odell)

 Kim Gyeoul (writer) : With the new year many of us will be seeking to re-design our lives. For the body, there are diets and workouts. But what about the mind? Although each of us has a slightly different perspective on what sort of mindset is desirable and hence might look to a different direction, at least the starting line is similar in that we want to gather together our scattered attention and fragmented awareness. And a modern human’s attention and focus are the most plundered mental resources. Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing” is not about literally doing nothing. The book is a plea to fellow humans all placed in the crosshairs of the “attention economy” to reclaim their minds and ground it firmly in the real world. To genuinely do nothing, we must put down our smartphones, focus on the now, and enjoy a slow stroll. Instead of being strung along by the sound of unceasing alerts and the latest issue, focus on the people in the real world, the birds, the physical spaces we occupy. “How to Do Nothing” is about properly de-cluttering our individual minds, about how to bring to life again the sense of community which has been destroyed.  

“Hide into Night” (NightOff)

Kim Yunha (music critic) : Darkness is fear. When in darkenss that does not allow the smallest bit of light to enter, the human being feels fear and anxiety; even though we know that having sight restored does not guarantee that everything is now safe. Snow is the cold. It is crystals that cannot form unless the air is at freezing temperature. Any person who just once touches snow will remember that bone-chilling sensation. At the very mention of the word our shoulders bunch up as if a draft has just blown in. “Hide into Night” guides this very darkness, this very snow to a place completely different from what we remember. In front of our eyes and ears, the song unfurls a strange sense of security it has plucked from darkness so deep we cannot see the hand in front of our face, and the toasty coziness extracted from last night’s snowfall. Vocalist Lee Lee-un and guitarist Lee Neung-ryong met in 2018 and formed NightOff. Come to think of it, from the beginning NightOff had always reached out to us with that sound and that look. The same goes for their first single “Take A Night Off”, also the songs “With You” and “Because” on  “The Last Night” EP. They have always stayed the same. We do not know what despair and defeat await us outside of these protective circles we draw around us but at least in those moments when this music plays everything is alright, everything ebbs and flows. The springtime we will never share, the morning that will surely pull us apart, upon all these moments the colors of hope slowly seep in. The chillest voice sings of love’s paradox : cruelty without bounds, warmth without bounds.