[HanCinema's Film Review] "Upside Down"

"The Truth Shall Not Sink with Sewol" was the immediate incredulous reaction to the South Korean government's poor handling of the Sewol tragedy. "Cruel State" was the protracted, despairing reaction as time went on and surviving family members were belittled for wanting an explanation. And now, we have "Upside Down", a documentary which, two years later, tries to find out how the families are holding up, and what the best explanation is, now that there has been ample time to test out all sorts of theories.

Advertisement

The immediate distressing part of "Upside Down" is realizing that more Sewol documentaries are even necessary at this point. What it really boils down to is a simple lack of accountability. The students who died in Sewol weren't just random statistics. They were people, with family who loved them, who even in the present day talk about their children as if...well, as if they were still vibrant presences in everyday life. Their deaths are hard to process because the whole tragedy was so obviously preventable.

"Upside Down" goes over each of these issues one by one, like bullet points. There are the indications that the crew had a much better idea how bad the situation was, yet failed to notify the passengers. There's the matter of how a quick response was constantly subverted because apparently not enough people with sufficient government credentials were on the scene yet. There's the preventative safety angle, going over how deregulation eliminated many of the safeguards that should have made a capsizing physically impossible.

The list just goes on and on, and it's a little overhwelming how all this time later, still no one can point to any action by the government which seriously worked to correct the systemic problems. Punishment is discussed, like Park Eun-hye's somewhat extreme decision to disband The Coast Guard, yet none of this posturing inspires much confidence in the way of preventative measures. The immediate reaction to the Sewol crisis was apathy, and absent constant protests, that streak probably would have continued.

But "Upside Down" is informative in more than just the matter of Sewol itself. Foreign observers were surprised when left-wing parties defeated the incumbent right-wing government in recent elections. Yet watching "Upside Down", which was of course produced beforehand, it's clear there's a powerful activist element in South Korean politics that's sick of all the excuses. Park Ju-min, one newly elected lawmaker, has been working as a lawyer for the families of Sewol victims and ran for office mostly to put himself in a better position to do just that.

I should probably note that in terms of technical construction "Upside Down" is not the most elegantly designed. The documentary ends quite abruptly with little build-up, and overall the film is little more than a construction of personal anecdotes, subjective reactions and objective analysis. But it's an issue that speaks to people for good reason. Anyone who uses a car, or a subway, or even just walks the street could fall victim to the same indifference that doomed the passengers of Sewol. It's more human to grieve with victims than it is to be as aloof as the administrators.

Review by William Schwartz

"Upside Down" is directed by Dong B. Kim