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really-good-inc · 7 years ago

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The Last Princess (2016)

Hello,

It’s been a while.

I’ve been wanting to go back to posting on this blog again for quite some time now but frankly, I haven’t watched a good enough movie worthy of a blog post. This is mostly because I have been busy with life but I have also noticed that the cinema industry has been rather mild these days. So if anyone has good film reccommendations, feel free to let me know!

Okay so, I watched this movie upon the reccommendation of a friend and it was a great decision. The Last Princess, directed by Hur Jin-Ho, is a period drama about the last princess of the Korean Empire, Deok Hye. It is based on the book by Kwon Bi-Young.

The story starts when the Princess was a little girl in 1910s and Korea has been annexed by the Japanese. King Gojong, Deokhye’s father, wants to protect his daughter from the Japanese as they want to bring her to Japan and eventually marrying her to a Japanese men to assimilate the Korean imperial family. The movie shows Deokhye’s life in Korea and Japan and the hardships she had to face. One thing to know is that this movie does NOT have a happy ending. Deokhye wasn’t granted entry to Korea until very late in her life due to the Korean government fearing the reinstatement of the empire if the royal family were to be in Korea. Deokhye enters Korea in 1962 and dies in Changdeok Palace in 1989.

I love watching and reading about Korea under Japanese rule, I think it was such an important and interesting era in Korean history. Unfortunately not many works gets translated into English about the colonial era. I can’t wait to be fluent enough to read the book this movie was based on. That being said, I have a couple of things I want to discuss about this movie.

First of all, it had stellar cast and acting. I was completely immersed in the storyline, I cried so many times over the simplest things. It had a great balance of melancholy and hope and misery. However, the socialist in me made sure that I didn’t forget that Deokhye also had a pretty decent life. When you think about it, and think of all the people who were taken as slaves and workers and all those who sacrificed their lives for the Korean independence, Deokhye does seem like just a “princess”. I believe that she had a difficult life and people’s struggles aren’t a competiton of who had it worse but I also think that one should be aware of these things, specially when watching a story of this kind.

While I loved this movie I should also mention that Princess Deokhye is,by no means, my favourite character of this story. And she doesn’t have to be. She seems to be too focused on her own worries and pain and doesn’t consider the bigger picture of the Japanese rule until she is shown by her nephew. She hates the Japanese but not for the truly patriotic reasons. She wants to return to her country, but because Japan is foreign and she misses her mother. She is not a hero. She isn’t strong, but she had potential which was wasted.

I don’t support the existence of monarchies so I couldn’t relate to her pain when she couldn’t enter Korea as a princess. It is a title she never gave up. But I did feel her despair as a woman being unable to return to her home she longer for.

The Last Princess, while being about Deokhye’s life, is also a source of discussion about patriotism, democracy and foreign occupation. The same thing has happened in my own country and the last monarchs but who could blame the people who died for their country when they say “These people haven’t done anything to help us. Why should they be allowed to come in after the war and rule us again as if nothing happened?”.

If you watch The Last Princess, let me know your thoughts about it. We can also discuss the amazing Park Hae Il playing Kim Jang Han as I can’t give any information about him in order not to spoil the movie. It is a good introduction to the era and the history, it is rather light on the subjects it touches compared to other movies and dramas I have seen. Overall, The Last Princess deserves 8 potatoes out of 10. I wish it could reach a bigger audience.

#the last princess #deokhyeongju #덕혜옹주 #korea #kmovie #2016 #park hae il #son ye jin #kim soo hyun #deokhye #korean empire #world war 2

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