Lee Eun-Soo (Cheon Jeong-Myeong) wakes up in the darkness of a forest after crashing his car. He is greeted by Kim Young-Hee (Sim Eun-Kyung), a pretty, young girl holding a lantern, who leads him through the trees to her ideallic home – a stately house that could’ve come straight from a fairy tale.
Inside, Eun-Soo meets the rest of the family, Young-Hee’s elder 13-year-old brother, Man-Bok (Eun Won-Jae), and her younger sister, Jung-Soon (Jin Ji-Hee). Their unnamed parents are anxious, over-friendly people.
Despite Eun-Soo’s repeated attempts to reach civilization, he is invariably forced to return to the house, and when the children’s parents soon mysteriously disappear Eun-Soo is left to care for them. Things are further complicated by the arrival of a lost, though insidious, couple, who seem not to understand that they can never leave and who exactly is in charge .
Hansel and Gretel Director, Cinematography, Set-Design and Music score
This was Yim Pil-Sung’s second outing as a director after his debut Antarctic Journal. He’s undoubtedly another one to watch, because he knows how to put together a great crew.
Working with Pil-Sung was cinematographer Kim Ji-Yong (who worked on the visually slick though somewhat lacking A Bittersweet Life), whose assistance in composing Hansel and Gretel’s phenomenal visuals is strikingly similar to that of the brilliant Guillermo Navarro.
It’s a good thing, too, that Ji-Yong could show off the sets of Ryu Seong-Hee, who’d also previously worked on A Bittersweet Life as well as the masterpiece that is Oldboy. And the sets in Hansel and Gretel are first-rate, from the spectrum of childish colours that decorate every room to the labyrinthine attic.
The music score by Lee Byung-Woo is another asset, sounding remarkably similar to much of Danny Elfman’s work (and especially Sleepy Hollow).
Hansel and Gretel Cast - and the Children Really are Our Future
Cheon Jeong-Myeong puts in a very good, very kind and beleaguered performance as Eun-Soo. All the adult cast, in fact, are very good, despite the character extremities thrust on some of their shoulders.
This cast, however, is all about the children and about an indistinct line that’s been crossed from a time when children were seldom anything other than cringeworthy on the screen to a time now when there seem to be more and more capable child actors in the world, in well-written parts at that. When did this happen?
There’s Eun Won-Jae as Man-Bok. He’s brilliant, managing menace and youth equally well. And he's perhaps the least impressive of the three. Nevertheless, he and the two girls play all their parts with an in-depth understanding of what's needed, which they do emotionally as well as rhetorically.
Even more incredible then that Jin Ji-Hee, playing Jung-Soon at eight years old, probably turns in the best performance from such a young actress that this reviewer has ever seen. It’s almost baffling to watch Ji-Hee assert a mature show of hatred or calm, only to become a perfectly innocent little girl again. She doesn’t steal all the plaudits only because she’s so young that her role is more limited than the other two.
Sim Eun-Kyung as Young-Hee, in particular, has been roundly praised for her immensely mature and touching performance. And genuinely incredible she is, also perfectly bridging the gap between total innocence and the cultivated knowing of something that may not be so innocent.
Hansel and Gretel Summary
It’s easy to see at the outset how the original concept of Hansel and Gretel has been reversed, but, more importantly, that this still has a great deal more to offer. Even the director has apparently said that this is not a horror film, but it has many of the trappings and behind the fairy tale surroundings lurks a brutal and uncomfortable dose of reality.
Conversely, the start of the film is a supreme blend of edgy suspicion and humour in the presentation of the family and their fairy-tale environment. The darker aspects of the film are brought forward quickly, and linger – but, sadly, for a little too long.
It’s in the second hour when the plot and dialogue begins to circle a few too many times, which is not to say there aren’t many memorable scenes in the process. The story is more straightforward than the piece-by-piece reveal at first suggests, which ultimately works against it (at a reasonable two hours, the film feels a tad longer than it needed to be). The use of Santa Claus was also peculiar and somehow unsatisfactory, but that might be subjective, as may be the former complaint.
It’s just a pity, because if these elements could be adjusted, Hansel and Gretel would be an all-time favourite. As it stands, it’s still highly favoured.
In terms of it’s technical and creative approach, this looks as good as anything out there and the overall impression of the film will regardless have a lasting and positive effect because of it’s beautifully composed sets, shots and cast of three exceptional children.
There were incarnations of this story throughout the 20th century, beginning with J. Searle Dawley (also director of the first Frankenstein) in 1909. This, even though only loosely based on the original tale, is surely one of the very best.
- Producer: Choi Jae-Won
- Director: Yim Pil-Sung
- Screenplay: Kim Min Suk, Pil-Sung Yim
- Starring: Cheon Jeong-Myeong, Eun Won-Jae, Sim Eun-Kyung, Jin Ji-Hee, Park Hee-Soon
- Released: December 2007 by CJ Entertainment
- Running Time: 117 mins.
