Oasis, casted by the same main actor and actress with Peppermint Candy, directed and scripted also by Lee Chong-dong, gives me a totally different watching experience --- feeling eternal happiness. I think it's due to my immersion into Jongdu's world at his first appearance. Jongdu, a 29-year-old loafer behaving like a 10-year-old bad schoolchild, should be a man I keep a distance from in real life. The movie provides me with a chance to watch such a man's life as an irrelevant third party, and I realized that he built a beautiful inner-world where the norm-defined people fail to reach. Jongdu speaks with high pitch, a child-like voice, and he walks like he is dancing. Not caring about others ' scornful glancing, Jongdu worked on his own way to make his concerned people happy.I feel that Jongdu's inner-world is full of music and he behaves with the rhythm instead of the social rules.
Gongju is disabled severely by cerebral palsy and appears more different with the normal people. She raised Jongdu's affection: although Jongdu at first indeed attempted to rape, I think his behavior is out of the strong feeling he had with Gongju. A white pleasant “bird ” introduced us to Gongju: at that time, she was playing with sunshine by a mirror. The white bird is created by Gongju's imagination towards the shape of light shadow, indicating that she also has her own inner-world. The two fell in love as they share the same perspectives toward the outsides and obey similar rules. In the movie, Gongju imagined several times about singing& dancing with Jongdu, embracing and kissing him. If I just saw those pieces, I doubt I would feel sorrowful for Gongju for her failure to realize those dreams. However,I thought those imaginations meant true joy for Gongju by watching the whole movie. It is a mental state I could hardly to reach.
I was amazed by the director's profound master of narration: he opened an access for the audience to stand in the social misfit's shoes. Other movies about non-normal people, such as Rain Man and Little Man Tate, generally make me feel depressed. Those movies are constructed upon the tension between the structured social beings and the unstructured ones, while in Oasis such tension is unimportant. The key of this movie, I think it's whether the audience can alter his/her position. It is the metaphor of Oasis instead of the contradiction between Dessert and Oasis that winds through the movie. The real society is a desolate dessert for the main-roles: although still connected by some social ties, they have been essentially abandoned by their families and are hard to find meanings or hopes in reality; only their meeting builds this Oasis.I think the movie reaches its climax when Jongdu hacked the tree near Gongju's home. He intended to remove the shadows for the oasis in Gongju's tapestry; such absurd action is indeed a struggle with the institutions and helps the audience to see what Oasis means in this movie.
Lee Chong-dong is really a master. I even learn lots of sociology concepts from his movies. This movie could be said to be a sociological experiment by constructing a perspective of social misfits, from which we can see several real-life absurd behaviors might be taken for granted, such as escaping imprisonment for the reason to support the family, taking advantage of family member's disability to obtain house. Oasis also reminds me of the animation Mary and Max. I cried for the feeling of loneliness when I watched that movie , however, Oasis leads to rethinking the warm between the two pen friends. They are actually similar stories; and only from those extreme examples, the audience can tell what makes we human beings really feel happiness.
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