Harbin opens icy cold with a bird’s eye view long shot of a broken soldier (Hyun Bin), in body and spirit, traversing the frozen Tumen River that divides the Korean Peninsula from Russia and China. The soldier, Ahn Jung-geun, is traveling from Japanese captivity back to his camp of Korean resistance fighters as the cold of the river surrounds and swallows him entirely. He looks so small before the mass of water with its grand, almost mythic, geometric spirals and swirls. The tundra is impossibly perfect to the point that it must be computer generated, though if the location exists anywhere in the world it might as well be in Latvia where Harbin was shot and co-produced. The opening also foreshadows the scale of the task ahead of Ahn and his co-patriots: to assassinate their colonizer and the Prime Minister of Japan, Itō Hirobumi (Lily Franky).
There’s very little actual action in Harbin, much like the director’s own Man Standing Next, but the compositions are so layered and well-composed that it’s never a slog. Most of the runtime circles around tables and train cars with the resistance fighters plotting, re-plotting after new hurdles appear, and discerning who amongst them can really be trusted and who may actually be a turncloak. They first suspect Ahn because of his time away (prone to selling out during Japanese torture) and because his refusal to kill POWs results in the slaughter of the men under his command (with him triumphing as the lone, suspicious survivor). For Ahn, the goal isn’t to kill as many Japanese as possible but to kill Itō Hirobumi and secure independence for Korea and wasting meaningless rounds on captured soldiers won’t move national independence an inch closer. Woo returns to the theme at the end when the group’s mole (whom I won’t name) is given an uncharacteristic chance at redemption. It’s never too late to become a patriot and serve your country, the ending preaches; you only become a Judas if you die before redemption.
If the opening on the Tumen shows off Woo Min-ho’s (The Spies; The Drug King; Man Standing Next😉 visual prowess, the subject material delights in his great professional interests: espionage, patriotism, history, and the meeting place of these other things in national meta-narratives. He brilliantly complicates what could easily be boring and clean shots with heavy contrast (even blackness), fog, and selective lighting that guides the viewer’s eyes. The resulting images never bore. One scene that comes to mind is Ahn’s speech convincing his comrades that he is loyal to their cause and country. The speech climaxes with the Korean flag being drawn with his own blood on the table they gathered around. The lighting only makes the white and red of the flag visible; the rest of the room is covered in a dark shadow. The viewer knows where to look: the thematically motivating flag. It’s the only place they can look, in fact. Woo, in this, unexpectedly reminds me of the writer Michael Chabon: if the latter is capable of writing a bad book but not a bad sentence, the former is incapable of making a poor image. I haven’t liked the entirety of his filmography, but only a fool would doubt his directorial talent.
The sounds of Harbin give more mixed results than the images, however. In the early battle scene where the POWs are caught, composer Jo Yeong-wook gives a huge, sweeping composition that overpowers the visuals for the only time of the film. It’s the kind of blockbuster score that disappeared with the aughts. The score never returns to this fantastic bigness again.
There are also a few blunders in the sound direction. The first comes through the role of translator Kim Sang-hyun (Jo Woo-jin). Perhaps it is only in the English audience cut, but when Japanese is spoken, the film translates it upon first utterance — and then translates it again through Kim as he helps the other Koreans understand. Had Kim translated for the audience too, the scenes would have maintained their flow much more efficiently. The other sonic choice that stuck out to me was a particular conversation at a bar or restaurant of sorts in Russia where the room carries no spatial volume whatsoever, despite the dozens of people having conversations and entertainment in the background. The only conversation we hear in the slightest is the dyad at the table. I’m sure the intent was to minimize the other sounds in the room to create a magnifying approach to the important dialogue at the table, but, at least in the version I saw, the scene felt awkward because of the lack of background noise, which had been eliminated more than minimized. This defeats the espionage feel of trying to change world history while daily life continues as normal for everyone else. On their own, these are incredulously small creative choices that do not ruin a good film — nor will most viewers notice them or care. They are, though, at odds with the immaculately thought-out visual compositions and they are only worth mentioning because they work against everything else Harbin accomplishes.
Harbin
2024
dir. Woo Min-ho
108 min.
Opens Friday, 1/3 @ AMC Causeway
Joshua Polanski is a freelance film and culture writer who writes regularly for the Boston Hassle and In Review Online. He has contributed to the Bay Area Reporter, Off Screen, and DMovies amongst other places. His interests include the technical elements of filmmaking & exhibition, slow & digital cinemas, cinematic sexuality, as well as Eastern and Northern European, East Asian, & Middle Eastern film.
