태극기 ~ Tae Guk Gi—The Brotherhood of War

The movie Tae Guk Gi—The Brotherhood of War was one of the most emotional films I have ever seen. By the end of the film, I could not stop crying for the bitter lot of the two brothers, especially Lee JinSeok (이진석), the younger brother. He desperately tries to keep his brother from sacrificing himself for him, and through this, he is forced with unbelievable hardship, to grow out of an innocent schoolboy and into a mature soldier.

The main theme of the movie is exploring how the bond between two brothers can be ravaged and thrashed to absolute extremes by unimaginable forces, which in this case is the war in 1950 between North and South Korea. Albeit this monstrous force, the bond is still able to hold on until the very end.

The two brothers start out being poor but happy shoe-shine boys in the streets of a village near Seoul. Then, by an evil twist of fate, they are drafted by merciless recruiters to join the unexpected war effort. There, JinSeok’s older brother JinTae (이진태) tries to do everything he can to both keep his brother out of danger, and to get his brother discharged and sent home. JinSeok, on the other hand, is alarmed by his brother’s mindless boldness on the battlefield to achieve these goals, and wishes that JinTae would not risk so much for his brother. The movie then takes us through many tense battle scenes as the South Koreans slowly advance on North Korea, and at the same time, JinTae becomes more and more absorbed in trying to get the medal that will in theory allow him to send JinSeok back home. After North Korea reconciles their war effort with Chinese reinforcements, JinSeok ends up imprisoned under suspicion of being a Communist. JinTae attempts to rescue him, but seems to fail as the commander who should have issued JinSeok’s release orders him to be burned instead. This drives JinTae insane and he joins North Korea to fight the evil South Koreans who killed his brother. Meanwhile, JinSeok is alive and learns of his brother and flees the South Korean army to see him. After a long, gut-wrenching scene of trying to make JinTae come back to his senses, he finally realises that JinSeok is really still alive and tells him to flee, promising to return. Here, the movie comes full circle with the archaeology scene it started with, but now we see an old JinSeok looking down at the bones of his boor brother and crying his remorse about how his brother never returned.

Even though this movie has so many special effects and stunts created to make the battles seem realistic, which are in fact, extremely successful and effective, these are only background effects. They are not what you remember about each scene they are featured in after seeing them. What you remember is the tension and how you plead in your mind for the characters not to do something (such as run through enemy fire, or hit each other), and how you can almost literally see the bond that ties the brothers together being violently jerked and stretched to the breaking point. It is one of those movies which I don’t want to keep watching because of the exhausting emotional experience, but cannot stop watching at the same time because of the suspense and beauty of it all.

Tae Guk Gi is an unforgettable emotional experience that will make you rethink how you take those close to you, and their love, for granted in such an eye-opening way that it will stay with you for a very long time.