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“In Korean society, there are many cases of extreme choices when you are suddenly cut off at work. The job I devoted my whole life to is my dignity and value of existence, but if it disappears overnight, I can’t see the future. You can find something else, but it’s terrible right now.”
– This is a story told by director Lee Tae-gyeom (50), who also wrote the screenplay for the movie’I Do Not Fire Me’, which was released on the 28th through a telephone interview on the day of the release.
If a company that has been dedicated for 7 years is unfairly dispatched to a subcontractor overnight. The film depicts the one year Jung Eun (Judain), who is in such a situation, endured to regain his place. The subcontractor’s job, appointed by Eun-Jeong, a clerical worker, is repairing and repairing transmission towers. In reality, where he was as dark as the height of a transmission tower, the journey of step by step comes calmly. After seeing a newspaper article that said that a middle-aged white-collar woman had endured the shame of being sent unfairly to a local field job, Director Lee wrote a scenario “It’s not like a man.” After his debut film,’Boy Director’ (2008), the films he had been preparing were lost in a row, unemployed, and he was also suffering from depression.
Released on the 28th,’I will not fire me’…
The director who suffered from depression due to repeated failure of film production
“It’s not like Nam-il”
Leading actor Jeong-se Oh, Last Year’s Jeonju International Film Festival Actor Award
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The title I wrote in front of death as an adult in depression
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– “It’s a pleasant personality, but it’s scary when I get depressed. There is no motivation in life and death is always right before your eyes. I’ve been lying down and doing nothing for a long time. Even if I chewed the rice, I felt like I was chewing grains of sand, and I didn’t feel the taste at all. If it stays like this, it will be a big deal. But, if you get up like a little bit, you won’t be able to get up again. I should never hurry. Even if the movie didn’t work right away, let’s write this article (scenario) somehow, and it made me feel better.”
After researching the data, I wrote a draft in one month in 2017 and the title came to mind. “’I don’t fire me’. It was also a word to me. What should I think of myself in this dark age when I can’t play my role as a director? Oh, I should start with acknowledging and affirming me, I wanted to.”
The power transmission tower, which has been passed by from a distance, stands directly below it, revealing its heavy and dizzying reality. Carelessness can lead to electrocution. Jung Eun, who has a fear of heights, receives basic education and practice every day after work, but the transmission tower is like an obstacle in reality that looks down on him. The scenes of the power transmission tower in the play were mainly filmed at the Electricity Training Institute, where actual safety equipment is provided and practice related to power transmission towers.
- Why was it a transmission tower?
– “The light is always next to us, but in fact it arrives through a very dangerous process. The transmission tower is a regular structure, but it feels difficult to interpret because it is geometrically complex. The height to look up considerably is like our life as a professional in modern society. Anyway, I tried to capture the parts that each had to hold and climb with the camera’s eyes.”
- They reported covering workers on the actual transmission tower.
– “I went after the transmission tower site in the mountainous area. There was no road between the pylon and the pylon, so in the summer I went through the bushes with a sickle. Lee Myung, a professional soldier told by the commander of the field, entered the movie music with a’woong’ sound. ‘People like us die twice. “Once electric roasting, once falling” was also included in the dialogue.”
- The management staff drew them as cross-sectional villains.
– “I had a lot of worries right before the rehearsal, but in reality, I wondered if the manager could be seen in a cross-sectional view from the perspective of the person who suffers the same thing and the weak. When moving to the movie, it is customary to see that the character is a little bit like that, but the reality is more cruel. There are many more examples than movies.”
Oh, let’s take it out even now
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– Someone’s death, captured at the end of the movie, as if passing through the screen, approaches like a silent clamor. It seems like an unspoken declaration to face the tragedy that our society has been looking for in the blind spot of the law. “At first, I tried to add sound as well. It must have been a tremendous roar, but I ended up taking it out. I don’t think I’m going to kill the audience too hard. I drew it as indirectly as possible.”
There is also a good performance of actors in the way these understated scenes hold the heart for a long time. Judah-in, who watched the delicate inner acting of the independent film’Hyehwa, Dong’ (2010), played the lead role. The subcontractor colleague’The Youngest’ who helps Jung Eun was played by Oh Jeong-se, who received attention in the drama’Stove League’ and’When Camellia Blooms’.
– Oh Jeong-se also received an Actor Award at the Jeonju International Film Festival, where the film was invited last year. Director Lee, who has seen most of his casts, explained, “Actor Oh Jeong-se is good at a villain, but he has a natural goodness. In this movie, he is busy raising three young daughters, so he cannot reveal his goodness.” Along with the moment when the youngest who was fighting with Jung Eun confessed to herself, “The real scary thing for us is fired rather than death,” the youngest stared at the court official who harassed Jeong Eun as “the peak of expression”. “Humanly, I feel that this is not the case, but I can’t protest for the livelihood of my three daughters. My eyes are mixed with everything. I want to see how I can do that, so I often bring out that scene.”
I resigned my job with the Department of Trade and chose a movie.
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– Director Lee’s own life was also not smooth. After graduating from Kyung Hee University’s Department of Trade, I got a job at the Korean Chamber of Commerce, but I couldn’t forget the sense of expressing myself in a mask dance class when I was in college. In my thirty year, I started studying movies at the Independent Film Association’s Film Workshop, so I didn’t want to lose myself even in my organizational life. Eventually, after a year and a half, I threw my parents’ opposition and resigned. Since then, there have been many bends.
The day he released his second film in 13 years, it snowed from the morning. “Because the world has to do, it feels like you are born again like the main character of our movie?” Beyond his laughter in the handset, I could hear the baby screaming. I got married and got a child while preparing for this movie.
“It was a vague idea, shouldn’t we make a popular movie even though the first movie is in touch with the reality of our country. Now the work itself is precious. I thought about the movie more seriously and made it my life partner. I like Ken Roach and the Darden brothers, but I can’t compare it to those of you, but I’m also very interested in restoring humanity. Instead of living by thinking of others as an’island’ that you do not understand, how will you live as each one while understanding each other? I want to make a movie with that thought.”
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Reporter Na Won-jeong [email protected]
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