The truth is a fickle friend. Some people never want to hear it because they cannot handle the wound that the unaltered truth would cut into their comfortable projection of the world. You can determine the strength of a person’s character by how quickly they will settle for any answer that best suits their peace of mind without regard to its validity. For those that have nothing to hide, the truth is the best tool to have at one’s disposal. For those that have much to hide, the truth is the most dangerous thing they could face. For this reason, defending the truth is always a battle. Unfortunately, the truth is an exceptionally political and subjective concept; when someone has power over human life they become a fount of truth, however biased the water may flow.
In Joint Security Area (2000) and No Man’s Land (2001), the truth plays a major role in the central conflicts. In this paper, I will be arguing how globalization creates the need for half-truths and blatant lies because of the politics involved in allowing the truth. For this paper, globalization will be defined as the translation of cultural, economic, and political values and ideologies from the local to the international. I will be analyzing these two movies in order to show how, through the use of cinematic devices, they both suggest the truth is a political tool and possibly even seen as secondary to human life whenever the status quo is at stake.
In Joint Security Area, Major Sophie Jang, a UN-appointed mediator, is assigned the task of uncovering what really happened during an encounter involving four border soldiers on the North – South Korean border. As she goes from man to man seeking their respective version of the incident, she realizes something is amiss. One man won’t talk at all, another promptly commits suicide, and the third is happy to talk but unable to complete his story when forensic analysis suggests another side of it. As the story unfolds, interestingly enough at the same rate Major Jang is uncovering the information, we learn that four of the men had become close friends and were visiting each other at the North Korean border house at night. This may have been acceptable if North Korea and South Korea weren’t political and time-tested archrivals of one another. The fact that their border patrols were fraternizing, the very representatives of the culture, values, and ideas that each country embodies, was a very serious and politically charged problem. The friends knew this, too. If the truth were uncovered, the consequences for both sides would be dire.
In No Man’s Land, three opposing Serbian and Bosnian soldiers at war find themselves trapped within a trench between opposing sides. They cannot leave the trench in daylight because they would both be shot indiscriminately, since neither side would hesitate in firing at an armed man running toward their line. To complicate matters, a landmine finds itself armed with a biological trigger as the allegedly dead body that was placed atop it regains consciousness and learns that he cannot move without first detonating the claymore underneath him. As the two mobile soldiers agree to set aside any differences to wave white flags to request help, the UN Protection Force is called in to assist. UNPROFOR command would rather its units leave the trench alone, however, and continue protecting aid convoys elsewhere. To further complicate matters, an English news crew shows up after learning of the situation by tuning into the UN’s radio frequency, and demands the UNPROFOR command do something to help the men. With the two soldiers attempting to kill one another whenever the other has his back turned, a conscious landmine unable to move without detonating, a UN Sergeant who genuinely wants to help, a higher UNPROFOR officer who genuinely wants nothing to do with that situation, and mounting global attention courtesy of the English film crew, it should go without saying that the main conflict is complicated and not easily concluded.
I argue that the driving force behind the central conflict in both movies is globalization. Globalization in itself is not a negative idea; it is the consequences of the international ties and reputations that are created through globalization that force a country to act within expectations and “professionally.” It is the pressure to remain consistent in the international community, the pressure to remain reliable and ideologically solid to ones allies, and the pressure to set examples so that one is not seen as weak that makes a country neglect or manipulate the truth of individual situations of lesser importance for the motherland. It is globalization that makes the UN command act so coldly, and the Korean soldiers fear the truth so much.
In No Man’s Land, the camera rarely leaves the trench in order to emphasize the limits of the situation, and even when the UN APC pulls up it is only shown from a low angle within the trench. Close ups are used often in order to show the frustration on the men’s faces while they experience their fates unfold. The camera brings you into the trench with the men in order for you to understand the need for action. Joint Security Area employs wipes and flashbacks in order to portray the unfolding of the story as an actual investigation by Major Jang. Dim lighting is used liberally whenever the need for secrecy and privacy is necessary, and bright lighting usually signifies the calming of the storm where the men need only act natural.
When the UNPROFOR command is told that the landmine is not defusable, it makes the easiest decision: lie to the international community, say the bomb was defused, get everyone out of there and leave the poor man to the elements. Just get the pressure off the UN, because it is not acceptable to show weakness; international validity comes foremost to admitting you can’t do everything. The nervous and detached UN official tells everyone, “Good job today” as he trots back to his helicopter and resumes flirting with his dazzling secretary. The scene of his elaborate and pristine office is an effective portrayal of his distance to the worldly situations that he commands. The camera angle is just low enough to exclude his secretary’s head from the frame as she walks in; her bare legs stand in for any personality she may lack while she plants herself atop the UN officer’s work desk in a skirt. How can this man make appropriate decisions when his world is so unlike the actual one outside? As the movie ends, the camera cranes vertically as if to emphasize the manmine’s ascendance to a better place, while still only showing the inside of the trench, the whole of his final world.
As for Joint Security Area, Major Jang is released from her assignment before she could finish it because it slowly became apparent to both the mediators and the opposing sides that the truth would do more harm than good. To let the international community know that two of the border patrols from each side crossed the uncrossable to become friends would do much more harm than just allowing it to fade out of attention. Two men were left dead, soon to be three, just so the world can keep on believing the two countries are legitimate enemies. When the men were huddling together for a picture, the North Korean soldier with the camera told them to huddle even closer until the picture of their Dear Leader was obstructed by the other three friends’s smiling heads.
One of the North Korean soldiers even squatted down in his final moments to show one of the South Korean men how to properly shine his shoe. All politics were cast aside to show that their friendship would always be stronger than paltry constructs like nationality. If only the world had known that those four men had once pranced gaily around on one foot and chickenfought with one another, the need for such a flawless reputation may have been trumped by the collective realization that everywhere across the world, people are people. This is at the core of both movies; we should never let our worldly duties interfere with the opportunity to create ties more permanent than any party loyalty could hope to offer.
Works Cited
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117788433.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&query=Joint+Security+Area.
Ebert, Robert. "No Man's Land." Roger Ebert Movie Reviews 21 Dec 2001 10 Mar 2009
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20011221/REVIEWS/112210306/1023.
Holden, Stephen. "No Man's Land (2001)." The New York Times 07 Dec 2001 10 Mar 2009
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=3&res=9403EFDB123CF934A35751C1A9679C8B63.
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