The impressive South Korean production «Concrete Utopia", at first glance, seems like a simple show based on Kim Soong-Nyung's webtoon «Pleasant Outcast - Part II». However, it is an ambitious story that addresses the three classic themes of art (love, life and death), and deals with a concept that is always present, at stake: private property.
The idea of personalized possession versus the common good has always been in the debates of coexistence on Earth: it is not an issue that communists made fashionable, but this type of property is often at the heart of joy and dramas that can reach tragic levels. Since we are aware that there is a history of humanity, nature and our own human condition question it: from the earthquakes that ends states or nations, to the fragmentation of inheritances because of greed. In fact there is no problem with us wanting to have our private property, but rather with hoarding, territorialism and extreme nationalism, all root cause of so much misery in the world.
«Concrete Utopia» is film with vast panoramas, spectacular visual effects and intestine struggles, but its plot is simple: during a cold winter, an earthquake shakes and destroys a metropolis of hundreds of high-rises, condominiums, horizontal properties, housing building glued to each other. However, an apartment complex remains standing, and victims arrive at that "surviving" concrete mass. Residents give them inn at first, but then, in defense of their exclusive property, they deny them shelter, throw them out and many die of hunger and cold. The residents organize, appoint a leader, go "hunting" (such as cavemen), and return with canned food. Soon they realize that they are surrounded by the thousands of victims of the catastrophe, the internal complaints grow and the situation explodes.
The movie is long (130 minutes) and the plot has sections in which there are no shocks or bombastic physical actions. The first act is fierce and dynamic and concludes with the ruthless expulsion of the homeless victims. The second act is more leisurely, showing the construction of the surviving community, in which personalities change and false identities are discovered. The brief and violent third act includes external attack and the setting of scores.
Fueled by the excellent performances of Lee Byung-Hun as the leader with mud feet, that of Park Bo-Young as the sweet nurse who becomes his antagonist (both winners of the Grand Bell for Best Actor and Supporting Actress) and that of Park Seo-Joon as a young warrior, «Concrete Utopia» is a drama full of irony and sarcasm about the struggle of humans to defend their little parcels, in a framework of visual splendor for all audiences.
