Freedom Is Worth The Fight In The Korean Film ‘Phantom’

What is Joseon? That’s the question the half-Japanese policeman, Murayama Junji, asks his Korean mother in the film Phantom. Although she doesn’t reply, several characters in Phantom will answer that question with their lives.

The Joseon dynasty ruled Korea for centuries, so the nation was referred to as Joseon. When the Japanese colonized Korea in 1910 Koreans were told to forsake their culture and emulate everything Japanese. Phantom is set in the late 1930s, when, despite decades of Japanese rule, there are still Koreans who long—and fight for—their nation’s independence.

These independence fighters, named terrorists by the Japanese, operate secretly and are referred to as phantoms. The Japanese can’t be sure how many phantoms there are. The organization is so secretive, members may not know each other or even know of each others’ existence.

One likely suspect is Park Cha-kyung, played by Lee Ha-nee. Cha-kyung smuggles information to a movie theater manager so he can add coded instructions to a movie poster, Shanghai Express, a 1932 film starring Marlene Dietrich. The film’s story involves a train commandeered by the Chinese army in their search for rebels. It’s a timely film for Cha-kyung as she’s about to find herself in a similar situation.

Phantom pays homage to some classic films of the 30s. It’s not black and white, but the palette is subdued, plenty of black with shades of sepia and gray. Even the rain that falls in a pivotal scene seems a poisonous silvery black. Low light illuminates most of the scenes, misty distant daylight, flickering candlelight, a flashlight in a dark tunnel. Phantom plays out in the shadows. Phantoms live in the shadows and it’s hard for the Japanese to know where a phantom will strike next.

Lee and her fellow suspects are imprisoned in a cliffside building, overlooking a turbulent sea. The castle-like structure evokes the 1931 film Dracula, another film with a coded poster, and it’s also home to a monster, Japanese officer Takahara Kaito, played by Park Hae-soo, Kaito has no problem randomly killing his suspects, thinking of Koreans as less than human.

His gathered suspects include Miss Yuriko, a Japanese official’s secretary and lover, played by Park So-dam, and Baek-ho, an admirer of Cha-kyung’s played by Kim Dong-hee. The police officer, Murayama, is played by Sol Kyung-gu and the character is as much of a monster as Kaito. Gye-jang, played with great verve by Seo Hyun-woo, is a superstitious intelligence officer, who very much misses his cat.

Kaito is determined to identify the phantom, but also uses the interrogations as an excuse to further humiliate Murayama, who he considers defiled by Korean blood. Lee Ha-nee’s character is an intriguing study in how fear and rage present as composure. The character’s efforts to remain calm have such a tense undercurrent they hint at how terrified she is—and also how reckless. In Miss Yuriko, Park So-dam creates a complex and resilient character that’s hard to forget. Park, Lee Ha-nee and Sol Kyung-gu physically interact in a series of riveting and emotionally engaging action scenes that quicken the pulse of the film.

Phantom is written and directed by Lee Hae-young and was inspired by Mai Jia’s 2007 novel, Feng Sheng. The film was released in Korea in Feb. 2023 and is to date the second highest-grossing Korean film of 2023. It will be shown at the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) on July 30.