Director: Lee Jun-ik
Starring: Gan Woo-sung Lee Jun-ki
Country: South Korea
Duration: 119
minutes Year: 2005
Awards: The 43rd Korea Grand Bell Awards 9 awards, including Best Film (Eagles), Best Director (Lee Jun-ik) ), Best Actor (Gan Woo-sung), Best Supporting Actor (Yoo Hae-jin), Best Screenplay (Cui Shi-hwan), Best Cinematography (Ji Ji-woong)
I don't know why the title was translated as "The King's Man", The correct translation should clearly be "The King and the Clown". If you watch this film with a curiosity about homosexuality, you might as well watch "Farewell My Concubine" or "Breakthrough". Although there is a man in the film who is more charming than a woman, he reverses the common people and the king, but ends up in the end. Can not subvert everyone's fate.
The film begins with an overhead shot, as if the eyes of God are looking down on the joy of the common people on the earth. As clowns, Zhang Sheng and Kong Ji can only follow the duty of clowns. They use exaggerated vulgarity to inform people. A smile, down to the people, up to the king. As a god, compassion is his responsibility, so when an actor dies, the camera becomes God's overlook again. Who controls the fate of all living beings? The people looked up at the clown who skipped the rope and stepped into the abyss. This is the state of the common people. However, as a king, Xiao can't prevent his mother from being poisoned, and he can't get rid of the hold of his ministers. Every lowly and noble person is nothing but Kong Ji. A puppet performing in the hands.
With the help of the clown, the king broke away from the identity of the puppet, and Kong Ji, who was more feminine than a woman, turned into a beautiful symbol in the film. Zhang Sheng's protection of him is not too sexually ambiguous, but more about the protection of the weak and the maintenance of dignity. Zhang Sheng is the bravest and sober person in the film. He has always known his identity and direction. Confessing fate but not self-pity. The king with a distorted character, looking for the safety of motherhood from Kong Ji, Kong Ji's innocent smile can warm the king's memory more than a woman. The court under the cover of power is cold to the bone and full of danger. When the king can only bury his head in the arms of the clown, he is as pitiful as the clown in the eyes of God.
Power is the best tool at warping, it warped the king's childhood, and when the king has it back, it continues to warp the king's present. The repressed release swelled the king's power out of control, and a series of bloody killings dyed the king's noble coat with flowers, as dilapidated as the rags on the clown's body.
Wang's loss of control finally ruined his own future, but the Joker's insignificant life was frozen on the skipping rope in the last shot. Everyone is just a puppet of God, the strings of manipulation are not in their own hands, and the result of losing control can only be self-destruction. However, Zhang Sheng and Kong Ji understood this truth and agreed to continue to be clowns in the next life. God can turn a king into a clown, but not a clown again.
This film actually wrote a good story, but it was misled by the media and turned into shallow entertainment like the performances of Zhang Sheng and Kong Ji. Too much emphasis on Kongji's gimmicks about men and women, or too much expectation of a man and two men's ambiguous, this will be a disappointing movie. If you overlap the angle of view with the camera, and experience everyone's fate in looking down and looking up, you will have the eyes of God and the feelings of mortals.
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