Swing Kids Analysis: War, Freedom and Magic Shoes

I've fallen in love. Swing Kids is a fucking masterpiece, and I'm head-over-heels, madly, passionately in love with it. It's too rich thematically for me to do justice to it in a full review, so I've decided to take a few of the greatest scenes and pull them apart by themselves. Today, I have the 'Modern Love' dance scene, between Do Kyung-soo and Park Hye-soo.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of Swing Kids will know that it's about a group of unlikely individuals who form a tap group during the Korean War; the important members here are Rho Ki-soo, a communist soldier who falls in love with dance, and civilian woman Yang Pan-rae. 

I got carried away taking screen-shots for this - there's a lot of important points to take note of, and of course it's hard to look at a stationary photo of a dance and see it's charm. This film is beautiful, though, so I think each photo communicates the point well enough.

Yang Pan-rae says this: "These are magic shoes. When I wear them... War, food, miserable things... They all just disappear." This is probably where the tap shoes become more than what they are - suddenly, tap dance and the shoes that make it possible mean more than just a passion for our characters. They are a symbol for freedom, representing liberation from oppression (and also hope, which will become more important by the film's conclusion). The shoes aren't earthly, they give our characters the opportunity to fly, defying constructed boundaries - be they gender, class, and ideology. 

  Rho Ki-soo and Yang Pan-rae have every reason to be on opposite sides. Ki-soo starts as a devout Communist, and Pan-rae belongs to a village where Communism is detested. To demonstrate this, at the beginning of the dance, the two literally oppose one another, standing on opposite sides of the frame.

  Yet, they are perfectly in sync, and their shots are reflections of each other. It's a perfect demonstration of what the friendships in this little ragtag group are like. Although they rarely see eye-to-eye, they can understand one another through dance. It transcends their language barriers - actions speak louder than words, after all.
  Ki-soo and Pan-rae's dance is a release of pent-up frustration. Ki-soo is met with the doors of the building, the inevitable boundary the shows how he's prevented from pursuing his passion outside of that room. It clashes with everything he believes in, alienates him from all the people he cares about.
  Pan-rae, meanwhile, is met with protesters, a blockade that stops her in her tracks. What I think the protesters represent is her oppression, the people who would shun her if she stood out. Perception in society is a large theme in the film - as a woman, expected to be demure, but also somehow supposed to feed her siblings and make ends meet, Pan-rae is being twisted more than she would care to let on.
  It isn't until Ki-soo breaks out of the prison camp (literally kicking down gates as if he's unstoppable) and Pan-rae leaves the protesters behind that they're facing the same way, seeing things in the same light. Notably, Pan-rae unties her hair, the only time she wears it down in the film. Their dance descends into a sprint, a desperate flee from everything holding them back. Essentially, regardless of ideology, these two people want the same thing. The film's prominent anti-war message communicates that much.
  These are magic shoes - like magic, the two managed to conjure an illusion where they are free of war, food and miserable things. It temporarily bring them comfort. But when the song ends abruptly and Ki-soo finds himself back in the building, he leaves his shoes behind. He relinquishes, for the time being, freedom and hope.

I really hope people will give this movie a chance - I've heard complaints about the run time and editing and tonal clashes, but none of which I thought was a problem. The acting is superb, and the story pulled me in, and the DANCE. It really is like nothing else you'll ever watch.