Crane for pistol, compass legs and many legs Sirens and warplanes in the sky. In Baek Seung-bin's film, it's not war, it's just the end of the world. The day before. But it’s someone’s birthday, and they are waiting for an unusual gift.
I can't remember when I saw a weirder movie. Stories about the three birthday parties (there is also a fourth birthday boy, a screenwriter, in whose history a kind of meta-level for all three stories is visible) take the viewer away from the working canvas “Project Apocalypse” into the world of three dialogues. In these worlds, everything external was empty, dilapidated and depopulated, and all the secret desires hidden from those closest to them were awakened and found flesh. On this birthday, nothing outside will distract them, and they will go for signs leading down the rabbit hole. Their own hole. In these burrows are hidden their personal nuclear bombs, and the interlocutor is like an operator with a nuclear suitcase in his hands.
Such a film will be despicably described through its specific images, so as not to break the impression, so one should continue with metaphors. If your personal nuclear bomb says "sick love," that's half the trouble. But if it says “Destruction of the Earth” in large letters, then the personal end of the world may well turn into the end of humanity, simply because someone decided to give you a birthday present. Their personal nuclear explosion is as surprising as a real-world explosion. Nora is dark and deep, and the cord set on fire by the Bickfords’ desires can lead to a box of fireworks, or even to kilotons of TNT.
Most of all, in this mixture of genres, in these three sci-fi routes from an exciting immersion in the reality of his desires to the awareness of the explosion, the lyricism that the director put into the picture, as if embodying the most beautiful dreams of his characters in the form of a road movie. A walk through secret places, whether it is an abandoned school in the woods, quiet corners of the university campus or a greenhouse hidden from prying eyes.
Sometimes a beautiful dream can not be seen to the end, and for good reason. Because its end may not be so beautiful, because its end is the essence of your desire. If there is love in the heart, even if it is strange and sick, then the red button must be pressed and blown to nuclear ashes your old world in order to realize your dreams in its place. But after the explosion, nothing will survive but love, and if it is not in the heart, then in the incarnated dream, you will soon disappear.
8 out of 10
Original