"Coo-coo." Having completed work on his debut English-language thriller “Stoker” (in the domestic localization called “Vicious Games”) and simultaneously presenting and producing no less English-language debut of his colleague Bong Joon-ho “Through the snow”, Park Chang-uk returns to his homeland, where he almost immediately begins to prepare his next project. It was the second filmed together with his brother, Park Chang-kyeon, the short film “One Day Trip” (or, literally, “Day Walk”).
Even before the start of viewing, you want to consider it as part of the dilogy with their first joint short experiment - Night Fishing, because when viewing both tapes there are persistent analogies and parallels. The main correspondence between them can be called a mystical union with nature, which becomes for the main characters by reconciling with their own death. Similarly, in the first half of Night Fishing, the main character (played by O Kwan Rock) accidentally hooks his own Death and remains locked in the spirit world, while in One Day Trip, the aged hero Son Kang-ho dies during rehearsal in order to consciously connect with the forest inhabited by the same spirits. Even considering the structure of the plot and the ways of its narration in these two works there is a kind of polarity. The first film is more innovative and experimental, its plot was built on two novels and a musical prologue, more like a video clip. Its parts seem to be connected with each other by the same mentioned death of the main character. In “One Day Trip”, the plot becomes almost a single interweaving from beginning to end – a joint story of two heroes. That is, what in the “fishing” was graded and divided into “life” and “death”, in the second film turned into a kind of unified interweaving and even the connection of generations, teacher and student, old and new. That is what pushes the main plot in the notorious presentation of both characters. Further, such elements as music, or, for example, the relationships of the characters, are subject to such comparisons. They are supposedly built to emphasize the connecting basic idea of these films.
However, with all this, it should still be borne in mind that both tapes, in their short duration, are completely independent works and never rely on each other, especially not a prequel or a sequel. With a similar spiritual message, they ended up being built differently, but using the same means. The one-day trip looks more holistic and mundane compared to its experimental predecessor. Her short storyline about the country trip to the forest of an old phansori teacher performed by Son Kang-ho and his student is served in a meditative and leisurely manner. So for all its 18 minutes of timekeeping, the tape tells only about a small episode of climbing the mountain conditional teacher and student and their unity with nature. At the same time, all the authenticity of what is happening on the screen is created by very imperceptible intersperses, possibly drawn from the ideas of Shintoism, such as the fauna of the forest, the waterfall, the departing people, the crying of the heroine. There, in the film, nature lives daily by itself, and the people in it are just guests, all this is mundane and at the same time filled with some own wisdom, to which the main character, the eternally coughing mentor of a young sorikkun, aspires. In the end, the forest seems to respond to him, and the flow of water (no matter how unnatural it may look in the film) is compared with the history of the song they perform Madana.
All this exotic and traditional musical component was quite competently used in the plot, becoming a central integral part of this story. The song permeates the whole history and philosophy of the short tape from beginning to end, it is in it that it reaches its climax, and it is after its completion that it ends.