Love is a memory of the solitude, and memory is the solitude of lover. It’s not a quote from some romantic poem, but emotional experience of the Korean movie “Kyongju”.

Unlike other traditional Korean movies, there are something anti-tradition exsiting in this movie“Kyongju”, which means the romantic story, the design of unusual character, and the balanced composition that formed the basis elements of Korean movie that has been weaken and replaced by personal style of this movie, as well as Ki-duk Kim and Joon-ho Bong, who are the outstanding representatives of Korean filmdom. It is therefore filled with some contradictions in term of the film technique.

Firstly, about the composition, the “Balance” is usually accepted as the prior rule of aesthetical standard, keeping balance of the frames can lead people to concentrate on the plot development, rather than implying feelings with some puzzling images. But in this movie, the balance has been redefined since we get to know the beauty of unbalance that this film expresses. In one scene, the man, who was on his journey of seeking memory, had went back the town of Kyongju, and suddenly he had an interest on practicing Tachi when he saw an old people doing exercise with soft music in the forest, in which the image spacing of the characters was much smaller in proportion to that of the scenery, and the imagery of the “Lilliput” style that the director try to make, is probably aimed at teaching this truth similar to the principle of Chinese Taoism, that is, let nature take its course.

Mostly, the image design doesn’t attract much attention when the fascinating plot development overwhelms, but the movie is unable to show the unique charm without it.

Secondly, something about the story line, it’s the best way of understanding the connotation of the movie. “Kyongju”, a simple story filled with profound meaning of life, in this story, the man, who might have some troubles in his marriage and his overseas life, made his decision on returning to the place where he won the first love after he attended the funeral of his best friends, accidentally he made acquaintance with a beautiful teahouse owner and her friends during the journey. However, this romantic encounter didn’t go as everybody thought, just like the life itself, it could give us the chance of love, happy or hate, but never teach us how to control. The strange friends and apparently warmhearted strangers, goal-directed flattery and a talk heart in heart, seemingly contradictory, and factually all of those constitute the life we have. Like what the end of this movie, everyone had found the path to the heaven on their minds since they knew such truth of living, people should learn how to keep balance even in the unbalance environment, that’s what we’re living for, also what we’re fighting for.