Hashima
Island off Nagasaki was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, despite the
fact slave labor was used and abused there. Of course, that totally fits with
how the UN does business. It was a grim place for workers, but even worse for
the enslaved comfort women. The war is nearly over, but the atrocities will get
even worse in Ryoo Seung-wan’s The
Battleship Island
(trailer here),
which opens this Friday in New York.
Although
small in total land surface, Hashima was an imposing concrete rock jutting out
of the Pacific, featuring a punishing coal mine that bored deep into the Earth.
Nobody would volunteer to “work” there, but plenty of Koreans, as well as some
Chinese and Southeast Asian prisoners were either remanded there or press-ganged
off the docks of Nagasaki. That is what happens to swing band-leader Lee
Kang-ok, his musicians, and his young daughter So-hee. Fortunately, he largely
manages to avoid the mines by performing for the Japanese. He also secures
house-cleaning work for So-hee rather than comfort woman duties, but the way
perverted senior Japanese officials look at her represents a constant danger.
The
good news is the war is going badly for Japan and is likely to end soon. The
bad news is the military and mining company officials will want to eliminate all
evidence of war crimes, most definitely including the victims. Park Moo-young
might be able to help. The OSS-trained Korean independence fighter originally
infiltrated the island intending to rescue Yoon Hak-cheol, a well-respected
resistance leader, but that mission was complicated by unforeseen developments.
At
one hundred-thirty-two minutes, Battleship
does not scrimp on suffering and misery. It makes it painfully clear what
slave labor entailed during the militarist Showa era. It is not pretty.
However, Ryoo also stages a spectacular, island-shaking, massive-in-scale
escape-revolt that stands up to any of the celebrated scenes in Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart, or
Heaven help us, Titanic. Still, it
takes too long to get to there and the constant presence of So-hee is a
buzz-kill. Don’t misunderstand, Kim Soo-ahn is very good in the part—perhaps too
good. She is just so young and innocent-looking, it is exhausting in a not-so-fun
kind of way to be constantly worrying about her.
Oddly,
Hwang Jung-min, who ordinarily swaggers he way through films, is
uncharacteristically whiny and churlish as Lee, the swinging scrounger.
Instead, it is So Ji-sub who delivers the hardnosed in-your-face attitude as
Choi Chil-sung, a gangster who turns rebel after getting shanghaied to Hashima.
Plus, the ever-reliable Lee Kyoung-young do his thing as the crafty Yoon, as
usual.
