The Singer (2020)

Intro to Korean pansori and folk tale.

Based on a Korean folktale about a young filial daughter with poor blind father, who sold herself to fishermen looking for sacrifice to the sea deity, to save her father from blindness & poverty. The deity takes pity on her when she jumps into the ocean, and returns her to the land in a giant lotus flower. Then she was taken in by the imperial couple because she resembled their dead daughter, and adopts her as their princess. The new princess throws a week of feast for the poor in hope to reunite with her father, who was still blind, poor and driven by the guilt of losing his daughter, wondered the country in despair. When they were reunited on the last day of the feast, the father hears the daughter's cry and miraculously regains his sight. Everybody lives happily after...

The musical took the basic concept from the folktale and made few interesting realistic tweaks. Seeing Lee YooRi in a movie for the first time was exciting, although her role was small the character was likeable. Surprising musical talent was discovered in Kim MinJoon and Park CheulMin. Overall, the movie had nice dip into the folk music, glimpse into the Joseon era, and kept everything simple and light with happy ending. The plot could've gone darker but aside from emotionally intense pansori, it was a story about loving couple with sweet optimistic younger daughter, loyal quirky friends, and villains where justice was served.

A sample of pansori THE STORY OF SHIMCHUNG is on YouTube. Cha JiHyun sings in the perspective of the blind father, reminiscing about his daughter, towards the end, https://youtu.be/kV2OjootdNA. Although it doesn't have subtitle, you can feel the intensity of the character's emotion. It's an amazing show.

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Musical without the music

I fell in love with Lee Bong Geun's voice when watching Six Flying Dragons (which I recommend, BTW), and started researching him. When I found out that he was cast in a movie about a travelling singer, I HAD TO watch it!
How huge my disappointment was when this fascinating, unique traditional singing was covered up with generic "film music" of the type you can hear in cheap productions from around the world. Why would you do that? If I watch a movie about traditional music, I want to hear traditional music, not some stock musac.
The travelling singer is performing in front of the crowds? You can barely hear his voice from beneath a western style orchestra playing a romantic tune. A girl is about to sing a song for a granny? No way, you cannot listen to that song a'cappella, they need to play some cringy strings as an accompaniment.
You hate traditional music so you make a movie about traditional music? That's just plain stupid. Playing background music while the character is singing is in itself quite weird, if you ask me. In case of a movie that was supposed to showcase that very singing, it's absurd.
I was let down and irritated. As I wanted to watch this movie because of music, I dropped it in the middle.

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