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Alex Morgan

•

5 min ago

★★★★★4/5

Just finished watching this. Visuals were stunning but the pacing felt a bit off in the second half. Still worth a watch!

Daniel Cooper

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2 days ago

★★★★★2/5

I don't get the hype. The plot was predictable and the characters felt flat. It seems like style over substance to me. Maybe I missed something, but I was bored throughout.

+142

Priya Sharma

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15 days ago

★★★★★5/5

An absolute masterpiece. The director managed to weave complex themes into a compelling narrative without it feeling forced. The cinematography is some of the best I've seen in years. Truly a cinematic experience that stays with you.

Overview

The Korean Wedding Chest (2009) is rated ⭐ 5/10.
Ulrike Ottinger’s provocative mélange of ethnography, stunning tableaux and baroque vignettes was inspired by what she calls the “well-stocked miracle” of Korean wedding chests, assembled according to time-honored customs. This exploration of love and marriage in South Korea looks closely at ancient and present-day rituals, revealing what is old in the new and new in the old. Her inquiry leads us from shamans, temples and priests, to the enchanted maze of 21st-century Seoul, where vendors of medicinal herbs co-exist with high-tech beauty salons for wedding couples and secular marriage palaces. Using film much like a canvas, Ottinger creates a modern fairytale flush with mythological heroes, traditional rites, ancestral symbolism, dreams of eternal love, and a whole lot of Western kitsch. One of her most acclaimed documentaries, it captures the amazing phenomenon of new mega-cities and their contradictory societies caught in a balancing act.