Possible Love
TIFF Film #17
Lee Chang Dong's Possible Love is another in a long line of Korean cinema exploring the destructive nature of capitalism, the oppression of the working class, and the friction that exists between those employed and those who employ.
It is primarily mining at ideas of exploitation. Not only in the ways that workers are exploited for capital gains to make the rich richer, but also how creative endeavours are often at the expense of working-class people. The framing of this movie, being a documentary filmmaker coming into these lives that have already been upended by layoffs, really keeps this idea of exploitation at the forefront of your mind.
Framing this through the story of the wives of both of these husbands takes this a step further. The documentarian's husband, a very wealthy business owner, allows her to enjoy her creative endeavours, even though she has no clear idea of what she wants her film to be. She's allowed to play and mess around and figure things out.
The wife of the laid-off worker, seeing this as an opportunity to get their story out there, to make people understand the hardship that they've gone through, but also viewing this as gaining a friendship - despite that being based on a falsehood. On this idea of exploitation - is constantly making you question whether or not their friendship is real.
The idea of freedom and who is really free in this age of capitalism, and particularly in this new era of automation, is explored so masterfully throughout this film. I was constantly finding myself in scenes questioning and examining who really is the winner in all of these scenarios. Automation is supposed to free us from work. But what happens when we have tied our identities so much to our working lives?
There is so much to unpack with this film and the ideas that it's exploring. It's so layered in all of its depiction of its characters, of how we share this same world but couldn't be further from the same. This desperation and adoration of the upper classes, and how some fall into this idea of hope, and others fall into this idea of the crushing brutality of the structures that have been put in place, truly just masterful stuff, incredible character work that leaves much to think about.
Having been at the receiving end of being laid off twice I was blown away by how skilful this movie interrogates our self-identity. There's so much in here essays could probably be written about it, but for a first viewing, I was incredibly stimulated and it prompted worries that I have about the future of work which was fun...