The Good, The Bad and The Weird

Korean cinema is, in my opinion, the template which every other country outside of America should be following. Thats South Korea of course, propaganda films are normally boring crap about how much bread everyone has. In Korea they have a quota system which means that cinemas have to show a certain number of domestic films. It used to be that they had to show domestic films for 146 days of the year but thats now been reduced to 73 days. Still it's better than nothing. Of course some free trade blowhards will say that this protectionism diminishes quality. Thats horseshit for two very good reasons. Firstly, 99 % of the time it's not the best films, however subjective that may be, that do well, but the most expensive. This is mainly because the films with money behind them can afford to spend millions on advertising. The resulting wankfest of newspaper articles, and MTV 'making of...' shows, changes the humble film into an event. Once a film is an 'event' it doesn't matter how abismal the reviews are, your kinda forced to watch it, just to confirm that it's rubbish. Second, films aren't, or shouldn't be, merely products, but cultural artifacts. It's important, I think, that a country has a strong national cinema as a platform for discussing national issues, whatever they may be. If cinemas are flooded with American films, of variable quality, then a national cinema cannot flourish and will struggle to find investment. Having said all this, the film which preciptitated this rant, The Good, The Bad and the Weird, is perhaps not the greatest example of what Korean sytem can produce. As the name suggests it's a parody of the spagetti westerns of Sergi Leone. It's a film which is essentially about nothing. Not about nothing in the 'modern culture is meaningless' way but about nothing in an insane, crazed fantasy world way. The plot revolves around a treasure map which various sharpshooters and nutbags want to get their hands on. Gunfights follow gunfights, which are then followed by long horse/car chases across the dessert with then further gunfights. It's all done in a very stylish, humourous way and the clothes are great. It's like a really amazing fireworks display, but with more guns. It doesn't tell you much about Korea, but it does go to show if you have a thriving film culture you can afford to spend a truckload of money on madcap films like this.

Jake Garriock