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[HanCinema's Film Review] "QUO VADIS"

Michael Moore (played by Lee Jong-yoon) comes to Korea to get an explanation as to how the Church is doing. He then proceeds to run around trying to ambush South Korea's megachurch leaders into interviews because they're otherwise impossible to talk to. This in itself is not surprising. Scandals have rocked the larger megachurches in South Korea as of late, and there's little in the way of apparent culpability or remorse among the leadership for these actions.

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But don't let the Michael Moore framing device fool you. As is usually the case with Korean politics, the party lines don't fall along the neatly defined divides that circumscribe these issues in the West. Here Michael Moore is a devout Christian, who regularly engages in conversation with Jesus Christ himself. Although he still thinks George Bush is a joke. Kind of hard to blame him. In this day and age it's pretty cringeworthy watching the former President headline a peace conference where he talks about how important it is to bring about world peace by starting a war.

The political and pseudo-fictional elements in "QUO VADIS" are, to be honest, a little weird. At times I had trouble telling whether Michael Moore was ambushing actual church leaders or if the church leaders themselves were being played by actors, or maybe both at the same time through the use of look-alikes. A disturbing scene in the stairwell doesn't much help matters. People who don't know what documentaries are frequently accuse Michael Moore of not making "Real" documentaries, and "QUO VADIS" is open to the same basic criticism.

Fortunately, regardless of where you fall on the line of creative documentary versus fiction, most of the hard information in "QUO VADIS" is pretty solid. Frequent traditional interviews with learned professionals do a lot to elucidate the larger issues in Korean megachurches. This is welcome, interesting information told from a fairly neutral perspective. That means a lot since the voices on this subject are usually partisans one way or the other.

It bears repeating- Michael Moore is a Christian here. What's more, we also see plenty of other Christians- not just protestors, but pastors of small churches. While the megachurches make up the physical landscape, small churches are easy enough to find and enjoy. They practice a brand of the Christian religion more to Michael Moore's liking- a focus on piety, faith, and neighborly love. This is a stark contrast to the megachurches which seem to be increasingly motivated primarily by money.

But don't take my word for it. Look at the camerawork here. Note the big, gaudy, weirdly neo-modern and obviously expensive architecture of the megachurches. Mind the balloon release near the end. While that piece of imagery looks pretty in the moment in the long term that stuff will land in the ocean and make some poor animal choke to death. What would Jesus do indeed. Director Kim Jae-hwan perhaps goes a bit too far melding the acting with reality, but in the end there's definitely enough factually grounded, useful, and objectively presented information here to make "QUO VADIS" worth watching.

Review by William Schwartz

"QUO VADIS" is directed by Kim Jae-hwan

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