Salt (1985-Film)

the 209th page wow!
kaiju film? well it was on the list?! wow!
Salt (Korean: 소금, Korean pronunciation: [sʰo̞ɡɯm]) is a 1985 North Korean tragedy film directed by Shin Sang-ok. It is the third of his North Korean films after he and his wife Choi Eun-hee were abducted and brought to the country against their will. Choi stars in Salt as an unnamed mother who disapproves of her son after he runs away with guerrillas, but eventually comes to see them as fighting for a just cause. The film is set in 1930s Kando (Jiandao) where ethnic Koreans are persecuted by the Chinese and Japanese.
The film employed a new virtue in North Korean cinema of short and condensed stories instead of multi-part epics. Unusual for a North Korean film, it was favorably reviewed by foreign critics. Choi's performance in particular is praised for realism. She was awarded the Best Actress prize at the 14th Moscow Film Festival in 1985 for her role.
== Plot. ==
The film opens with a quote from the Bible (for the first time in the history of North Korean cinema where only quotations from Kim Il-sung were typical): "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?" (Matthew 5:13).
The setting of the film is Kando (Jiandao) in the 1930s, torn apart by ethnic conflict in which the Koreans are "literally caught in the crossfire" of Japanese occupiers, Chinese bandits, and communist guerrillas. The local policing force is supposed to protect the peasants, but in truth only works when the interests of the Japanese occupiers are at stake.
The protagonist is an anonymous mother whose husband is killed by bandits. Her son Pong Shik runs off with a band of guerrillas, and her other children fall ill and are denied care by a doctor. The youngest of her sons was born after she was raped by a Chinese landlord, in a scene described as the darkest in the film. After a failed abortion attempt, the mother tries to suffocate the unwanted child before finally deciding to hang herself. However, her neighbor comes to her rescue, cutting the noose just as she is about to commit suicide. The neighbor, although poor, gives the mother's family some salt and suggests it as an opportunity to help leviate her plight.
At the end of the film, the mother carries an expensive sack of salt on a mountain trail with other smugglers. They are attacked by bandits, who in turn are chased away by the communist guerrillas. The guerrillas vow to protect the common people and the mother realizes that her son did not run away from his family with bad intent, but was in fact a hero. She is now determined to find her son and follow the guerrillas.
== Rating ==
PG?
== Runtime. ==
96 minutes.