Land of Happiness is another South Korean movie directed by Jung Min-gyu that combines dark comedy with drama and a message worth considering. The film centers on the same man who has been a state’s executioner all his life, sealing the fate of those condemned to die. When all of a sudden, the state decides to do away with the death penalty, he finds himself jobless and thus grappling with empty self-defining anxieties. This cinematography tells how he looks back to where he has come from coping with the sense of self and the ethics of the activity that he has been doing searching for the place in the deadened world where he can no longer work.
What’s very unique about Land of Happiness is its unnoticeable parallel to other social orders and justice in particular that plays out through the film. The film raises the question of ethics surrounding the death penalty and paying attention to obesity among the reasons, the film looks at what it personally costs to have a profession that is concerned with life and death most of the times. This film, in some way, portrays the complexity of the man as the executioner tries to fit in the world, which does not afford him the luxury of a ‘hired gun’ and a man.
What fascinates me most about this movie is the unusual angle that has been taken on a seldom portrayed vocation. The complexities of the main character’s inner struggle are pitched well, giving an interesting observation regarding the extent to which work can re-invent an individual. Land of Happiness is not only about the death penalty; it is also about people finding their way in the new, often relentless – and usually rather different than expected – world, and about the very essence of what seeking happiness is like in such world. To its credit, it’s not an action-filled romance drama; rather, it is slow and unobtrusive in the manner it tackles big subjects.
