by Mehdi Achouche
Over the years, South Korea has been rocked by a dizzying number of mass tragedies that echoed all over the world. “Life Goes On”, a soulful, tender documentary, follows the aggrieved parents who lost a son or daughter in some of the most infamous man-made disasters: the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster of course, which claimed the lives of 304 people, among them 250 high school students; but also the 2003 Daegu subway fire and its 192 victims, or the 1999 Sealand youth training center fire, which claimed the lives of 19 children and 4 adults.
These are vertiginous figures, but how do you convey the sheer human reality behind each one of those statistics? “Life Goes On” succeeds remarkably well in that respect, opting for a subdued, tactful encounter with the parents who have been in mourning sometimes for decades.
This largely observational documentary, which proceeds at a gentle, unrushed pace, dispenses with authoritative voiceovers or interviews of experts to give the floor exclusively to the parents, who share their experiences with the audience, and with each other. The unobtrusive camera keeps returning to the recording studio where a podcast is being taped by Yoo Gyoung Geun, the president of the association of the Sewol Disaster Families for Truth and A Safer Society, and his various guests. The podcast, “The Love at the end of the World” (a title which could also have worked well for this documentary), is meant to allow the parents to express themselves.
Subscribe to AMP newsletter by clicking on the image below
And it is soon clear how great and enlightening the idea is to have families from totally unrelated disasters talk to each other rather than to the camera (although that too sometimes happens) and compare their experiences, thoughts and feelings. It is palpable that this setup can help them, especially perhaps parents whose loss is still very recent and raw, while the presence of the camera can help the audience understand what they all have been going through.
We learn for example that one of the similarities in their experiences are the legal and political difficulties they have been confronting. Many of them faced, and are still facing, a critical lack of commitment on the part of the authorities. For instance, the police doing a rush job in identifying the bodies, forcing parents to step in and essentially do their job. Or the lack of cooperation (not to say wilful obstruction) in identifying the real causes of the disasters, such as building regulations not being obeyed by contractors and building operators.
In one of the most heart-wrenching comments abounding throughout the film, Yoo Gyoung Geun tells a crowd that he used to think his role as a father was to protect his four daughters – but now that one of them is gone, he’s realized how foolish that was. The best way of protecting your children, he tells everyone and us, is to protect other people’s children. Only when your neighbor’s child is safe will yours be safe as well, hence the need for better and stricter regulations and solidarity, rather than retreat into our own individual bubbles of oblivion or sadness.
It is this idea of community, of bonding not only over loss but over common humanity, that undergirds the documentary. This makes the many difficulties and oppositions encountered by these families all the more difficult to understand. Most notably, the bereaved parents’ associations all have encountered huge difficulties in obtaining permissions to create memorials for their lost children.
Many local residents and shopkeepers express sympathy for the families – until their own neighborhood is proposed as ground for the memorial, at which point strong resistance invariably emerges. The resistance can even become political, as the shouting matches in the street between some of the parents and candidates in local elections make clear (although the documentary still stays largely away from the politics of the disasters).
Light shines most brightly in the last half hour as we meet the mothers from the May 18, 1980, uprising, when hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators were massacred by the military. The Sewol parents have been meeting and exchanging with these mothers, who have been fighting for 40 years to memorialize the victims and nurture democracy in South Korea.
While the Sewol parents’ activism can bring them incomprehension if not downright hostility in some quarters, the May 18 mothers have opened their arms and hearts to them, bringing them understanding and, most crucially, empathy. “I feel you” is the response they received from them, which could summarize the idea behind all of these parents’ work, as well as perhaps the documentary itself.
Visually, “Life Goes On” mostly offers the interviews and discussions among the parents, as well as archival footage of the immediate aftermath of the disasters. Comparing these images with the same locations today shows the passage of time, how life does indeed go on, but also points at the risk for society to forget about the disasters and their victims. This implicitly raises the question of how to memorialize the past, on an individual and collective level, a daunting task as the images of oblivious passers-by make clear.
Follow our coverage of the deeper depths of Asian cinema
We are also offered serene shots of the memorials or cemeteries, a welcome respite from the conversations. At these points, the documentary slows down, while the camera tends to choose wide shots which allow it to remain at a respectful distance. It often focuses on the vegetation, the peaceful trees and grass which bring visual comfort and soothing to the living and the dead. The sun that can sometimes be glimpsed behind the foliage, or the close-ups on blades of wheat, convey hope, renewal and a sense of peace for the lost children.
One shot in particular should be mentioned. An extreme long shot shows in the far distance dozens of high-rise apartment buildings, while the middle ground is occupied by a vast tract of wild grass. In the foreground, a giant yellow ribbon can be seen, the symbol of the Sewol disaster victims but also a sign of hope, solidarity and community-making. This is a beautiful shot tinged with hope but also sadness, as the distance between the living and the dead, the present and the past, history and memory, seems to be so great as to be almost unbridgeable.
Does time heal every wound, Yoo Gyoung Geun asks one of his long-suffering guests? The chilling answer is not long in coming: no, it does not – all you can do is embrace it and live with it. This is one of the terrible, but also in its own way beautiful, lessons conveyed by the documentary. Because life must go on.
