Home Movie

Lee Jeong-hyang scores a surprise hit with The Way Home

By Robert Ito
Special to AsianWeek

For Korean director Lee Jeong-hyang, it was the oddest of casting calls. For weeks, Lee had been searching for a woman to play the part of a mute grandmother in her latest film. Scouting around a remote village in Korea’s Choongbuk Province, Lee spotted 78-year-old Kim Eul-boon grilling kimchi pancakes for her fellow villagers. Lee approached Kim, told her about the project, and asked if she was interested in tackling the lead role. Kim, who had lived in the same small town her entire life, had never seen a movie before, let alone acted in one. She declined, telling the director that she found it difficult to walk, a key element in the script.

“She told us that she couldn’t walk,” said Lee. “The next day, we ran into her at the marketplace and she was walking very fast.”

Lee ultimately convinced Kim to star in The Way Home, a low-budget film that became a huge sleeper hit in South Korea. When it was released in April, the movie easily outgrossed several Hollywood productions, including Spider-Man and A Beautiful Mind. After capturing the number one box office slot in that country for three weeks, the film won Grand Bell Awards (the South Korean equivalent of the Oscars) for best film and best original screenplay.

In the film, Sang-woo — a young, spoiled boy from Seoul — is forced to live with his grandmother in a rural village while his mother tries to find work in the city. Sang-woo is ill-prepared for life in the country. Armed with only a handheld videogame, tins of Spam and a supply of Cokes, the boy balks at the huge bugs that inhabit the grandmother’s home, and throws tantrums when confronted by a world without TV, fast food or indoor plumbing. When his grandmother tries to comfort him with repeated gestures of kindness, he calls her a pyongshin (“retard”). Little by little, however, a bond grows between the two. By the time the mother returns to take Sang-woo back to Seoul, the young boy has developed a strong love for his long-suffering grandmother.

Although Yoo Seung-Ho, the 7-year-old actor who plays Sang-woo, had had a little acting experience, the rest of the cast were non-actors pulled from the local village. Few had any idea how the movie would turn out. “Until the movie was completed, [Kim’s family] did not really expect much,” says Lee. “Granny Kim later told me that the whole time she was making the movie, she was worried that our company would go broke.”

In the end, Kim’s worries were unfounded. The Way Home is a powerful work, with gorgeous cinematography and wonderfully spare acting. There are plenty of funny moments, including hilarious scenes involving the world’s worst haircut and the boy’s unrequited love for Kentucky Fried Chicken. While the film could have easily lapsed into over-the-top sentimentality, Lee’s direction is remarkably restrained. No slo-mo tricks or violin-heavy soundtrack here; Lee sensibly trusted her actors and her script — which, understandably, has little dialogue — to carry the film. The finale, which left few dry eyes in the audience at a recent gala screening at Hollywood’s Paramount Studios, is probably one of the most unabashedly tear-inducing sequences in recent memory.

The film’s huge popularity in South Korea made Kim a reluctant celebrity. A website and “Granny Kim” fan club emerged. Tourists descended on her home village eager for a peek at the film’s lead character. The media pounced on the story and its popular heroine.

“The writers were writing whatever they wanted to write and it got out of hand,” says Lee. “I got hurt a lot, and so did [Kim].”

Fearing a media deluge at the Grand Bell Awards, both the director and Kim chose not to attend. “Neither of us could go outside, ride the bus, get on the subway,” says Lee. “We were hiding ourselves in our own rooms.”

Relief came from an unexpected source: the national Korean soccer team, whose success at the 2002 World Cup this past summer captured the attention of both South Korea and the world.

“The Red Devils and [coach Guus] Hiddink became such a rage,” says Lee, “that they forgot a little bit about this movie.”

At the Cannes Film Festival this year, Paramount Classics acquired the rights for the film’s U.S. run, which begins this month in New York and Los Angeles.

Although Korean films like Chunhyang, Shiri and Nowhere to Hide have had recent U.S. releases, The Way Home is one of the few films from South Korea that will be distributed by a major American studio. Lee is happy that more people will be able to see her film, which she considers a belated apology of sorts to her own late grandmother.

“I never got to say ‘sorry’ to my grandmother, and then she passed away,” says Lee. “I was a bad granddaughter. If I was a good granddaughter, I might not have ever made this movie.”

The Way Home will open in New York and Los Angeles on November 15.