Institute History
Description
In this unique, moving feature, Gyeong-Tae Roh offers a penetrating meditation on the distance between individuals and the hyper-ritualized, technological encounters that replace human connection. In an exquisitely still atmosphere, intermittently punctuated by a soundscape of subtle music and ambient noise, successive individuals enact random, prosaic slices of life. A woman moans before a group of businessmen. A young man takes a handful of pills during a deadening subway ride. Guards subdue a hysterical man in an institution, while another engages in a serpentine dance.
These spellbinding shards of dramatic action, beautifully acted and photographed, seem strangely unhinged—albeit from specific, unseen narrative situations. Indeed, the attentive eye is eventually rewarded as recurrent characters and situations sketch bare outlines of mini-narratives, each with its own precisely measured moral and metaphorical weight. Almost cubist in its mastery of enigmatically connected patterns, Roh's film achieves its breathtaking affect with austerity and understatement.