The film, 'Architecture 101'

Architecture 101 (2012)

8.6

Director

Lee Yong-ju

Cast

Uhm Tae-woong, Han Ga-in, Lee Je-hoon, Suzy, Jo Jung-suk

Info

Romance/Melodrama, Drama | Korea | 118 min | 2012-03-22

Writer's rating

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There's homework due by next week. A report.

Take a trip through the neighborhood you live in now.

The alleys, streets, and buildings of the neighborhood you usually pass by without a thought.

Observe these closely once and leave a record in photographs.

Beginning to have affection for and understand the place you live in,

this is exactly the beginning of Architecture 101.

-From the first class of the film, 'Architecture 101'-

For the first time in a while I watched another film. A film I really wanted to see, a film I almost died of frustration over for keeping seeing only the tail end of it-it's 'Architecture 101.' The masterpiece director Lee Yong-ju spent 10 years crafting, the film 'Architecture 101,' was the best among the Korean melodramas I've seen until now. Among the melodramas I'd seen, 'Late Autumn' was impressive, but I think that's because Late Autumn's narrative method and several scenes were well made enough to stay in my memory. And the combination of Hyun Bin and Tang Wei too. But Architecture 101 can be called an 'impressive' film to me in a slightly different way. For one, I liked that it significantly raised the weight of 'casting,' which I value, and I also liked the 'subject matter,' the narrative method, and the way the story is unraveled by crossing time. The music selection, in which the director's sense was exercised, played a part too, and actually rebuilding the house was good as well. There are many things to talk about, so I'll begin the piece by discussing them one by one.

Yang Seo-yeon (Han Ga-in, Suzy) and Lee Seung-min (Uhm Tae-woong, Lee Je-hoon) have their first meeting in an Architecture 101 class. Seung-min, who keeps watching the slightly tardy Seo-yeon, feels drawn to her and a 'connection' is formed in that first class. A first impression that gives off a pure, slightly silly image: when asked what kind of tomb Jeongneung is, the answers range from King Jeongjong's tomb, to King Jeongjo's tomb, to Jeong Yak-yong's tomb. Living in the same neighborhood of 'Jeongneung-dong,' Seo-yeon and Seung-min board the same bus home after class that day. Seung-min's image as he watches Seo-yeon is the kind of gaze men in their freshman year of university would have sent toward pretty women. That kind of gaze and behavior most men can relate to. Seo-yeon, caught in the camera's viewfinder of Seung-min as he wanders taking photos, strikes up a conversation, and the two come to wander around Jeongneung-dong together. Seung-min, who grew up in this neighborhood from childhood, approaches knowing quite a lot, but Seo-yeon, knowing nothing, wanders giving glances here and there and discovers an empty house. The contrast between Seung-min, who does not enter because no one lives there and it isn't his house, and Seo-yeon, who enters thinking it's fine since it's empty, is both contrasting and beautiful. Should I say Seo-yeon's figure is like 'Zutka' from the novel 'Ferdydurke'? On the floor of the empty house, the very dusty floor, Seung-min stops Seo-yeon as she tries to sit and lays down a notebook for her, and at the sight of Seo-yeon, who suggested dropping formalities and dropped them first, Seung-min is flustered and pleased. Saying, "If you do this, I have trouble dropping the formal speech." The first space connecting Seung-min and Seo-yeon is precisely the 'empty house.' Later, the promise to meet at that empty house on the day of the first snow was surely because it was right there that the 'wall' between them-the wall of formal language-first crumbled.

The space called the house is very important to the two. Because what Seo-yeon asks for is also a 'house,' and the place where the two drop formalities is also a 'house.' The space where they begin a proper meeting with each other was all the 'house.' It was a location selection befitting the film title Architecture 101. (It's also a part revealing that director Lee Yong-ju didn't agonize for 10 years for nothing.) Later, the house that Seo-yeon, having become the 'lady of Cheongdam-dong,' entrusts for remodeling becomes a space where Seo-yeon will later live together with her own father, and the point where, through a 'daughter's' heart thinking of her father, Seung-min comes to look once more at his own mother, also shows the daughter's wisdom!

Anyway, the first subject was precisely the 'house,' and the second subject is precisely music. The second assignment of the Architecture 101 class was to go to the farthest place from one's house and 'explore' and 'understand' that place. There's music they listen to going up to a rooftop, riding the bus together to the 'farthest place' Seung-min wanted to go. It's precisely 'A Sketch of Memory' by 'Exhibition.' The scene of listening to Exhibition's masterpiece 'A Sketch of Memory,' which drew enormous popularity for its original musical mood, together with a very old CD player from Japan's company S, was content that anyone who lived in this era would relate to deeply, and even for those who didn't live in this era it was a scene where some 'nostalgia' is felt. On top of that, since there's no occasion these days to hear songs like 'A Sketch of Memory,' through that scene of sharing one earphone, each putting half in their ear and listening to music together, I thought this film was truly beautiful. There's the regret that the figures of Seo-yeon, who gives her beloved Exhibition's first album in advance as a 'deposit' for building a house later, and Seung-min, who keeps it and returns it, symbolize that the two's relationship won't end well. The fact that Seung-min has no CD player would indirectly mean it was revealed her contract couldn't be fulfilled. But later, Seo-yeon, who receives Seung-min's parcel, gets back the CD player and album she had left behind 15 years ago, and through this revives old memories.

What connects the 15 years is precisely 'snow.' The 'snow' of the present becomes a topic of conversation for the two and serves as a medium through which one can ask 'Was that wretched woman me?', and the 'snow' of the past means a promise. Of course, the past promise was not fulfilled. The promise to meet at that empty house they had seen back then on the day of the first snow was not fulfilled, due to Seung-min's declaration. Hmm... to be precise, it neither was fulfilled nor was not fulfilled. Seo-yeon waited at the empty house until late into the evening on the day of the first snow, and Seung-min belatedly stopped by that empty house and brought the CD player and Exhibition's first album. The 'CD player and album' and the 'house model,' which confirm each other's first love, are connected into one within the medium of 'snow.' Seo-yeon and Seung-min each held memories of each other, but due to a single incident Seung-min closed his heart, and Seo-yeon, having received a one-sided notice, in the end no longer talks, and the two's first love came to an end.

Men, watching throughout, say Han Ga-in and Suzy are pretty, but on the other side they get immersed by empathizing with Lee Je-hoon and Uhm Tae-woong, who played the character 'Seung-min.' 'Seung-min,' as if seeing one's own past, present, and future selves by each age group, also evoked a considerable level of empathy in me. From those 'fresh, budding actions' as he likes Seo-yeon and acts on it. And because it remains in memory, even that 'consideration' that he still does not forget. I want to say Architecture 101 was certainly the best among the melodramas I've seen recently. Though it's a pity I couldn't watch it together with a girlfriend.