Sombras no Palácio

Shadows in the Palace is a mighty interesting film. First of all, it's a women's film. And I don't mean that in the sense that Lifetime is a "women's network", but more in the fact that the vast majority of the key creative positions in the film were filled by women. Second, the film is interestingly a sort of detective mystery/thriller with some horror elements put in the film, set in the Chosen era of Corean history. Although the film suffers from having too much going on, its wonderfully shot and costumed and the story has so much going for it, despite its weaknesses, that it certainly kept me interested.

The visuals in the film are absolutely striking. Although I'm uncertain that the costumes are necessarily historically accurate, they are absolutely beautiful to look at and the film is well photographed. The acting is mostly superb as well, having a primarily female cast, I especially enjoyed watching the more mature actors really get into their rather complex characters.

Another thing about the film I found fascinating was the exploration of court dynamics. While the court maids were bound to serve the royal family (and similarly bound to chastity, among other rules), there's a lot of hinting that power plays were happening behind the scenes on the highest levels of power and these activities had a trickle down effect on the court maids. It's also interesting to see just how much power the women in this story wielded and how they are internally self-policing and self-sustaining.

The story begins, however, with a corpse and one court medic's search for what really happened. Her search causes us to cross paths with one of the king's concubines, who bore the only male heir to the thrown and who is also embroiled in a political power struggle to retain her place in the court, being pressured by the house of the queen. We run into a number of the house's administrators, most of whom seem eager to quell the medic's investigation and a number of additional characters, who are in turn suspects and further victims both. Finally, some even more mysterious occurrences begin happening as well. And all these steps are actually quite interesting to watch.

Part of the problem is that there's more going on than is necessary. First of the all, I find the medic's story to be the hardest to empathize with, and while it all plays out, I don't find it convincing. In addition, there's a bit of a horror element to the film as well and I feel it adds an unnecessary layer to the film--I think it would've been better served being more grounded--the story could've been told easily without those elements (many of which risk being a little stale). Then there are multiple red herrings and actual stories going on and while I could follow each story, without a strong grasp of the language and the ability to keep track of who's who and what's what (my advice: pay attention to the costumes--they actually help you keep tabs on the non-central characters), it might certainly be confusing to the less attentive viewer.

But seeing the machinations of the court play out and, even more interestingly, how they affect the next layer down in the level of the court maid was quite fascinating. With great visuals, a well-paced who/what-dunit, and a set of interesting plot lines, I ended up finding myself pretty fond of this film. Granted, it's no masterpiece and some of its excesses, especially the horror elements, probably limited the film's impact. Also, even though the film was essentially created by women, this is definitely not the kind of stuff you'd find on an American women's television network. There is blood, gore, a few jump frights and some creepy imagery to spare. But in the end, this is a sometimes fascinating piece held up well by the twisting plot, the well propelled story and a whole lot of interesting things for the eyes to see. 8/10.

An interesting show, the setting and roles are familiar if anyone has seen the Dae-Jang Geum series (did they use the same set?). A palace maid, is found hanging from the neck and dead, dead, dead. A smart medical maid discovers during an autopsy (!) that there's a mystery. Now we see the palace maid corps and what a creative group these women are with sewing needles. A slight problem is figuring out who's who and what the heck is going on, but the who-done-it is done well. A supernatural twist is a neat spooky addition. Kind of a chick-flick with the almost all woman cast but a lot more blood, squirm factor and dark presence than the usual romantic melodramas.

Okay, I couldn't help myself after reading the previous comments.

Now, one thing the summary got wrong, the court maid wasn't hung from the roof rafter (whatever that is. She was found hung from the beam in her own room.

This movie opens with the cardinal rule of the Korean Palace, that all maids who entered into the Korean King's service is a potential mate and must maintain their chastity in case he fancied one of them.

The story revolves around the murder of the said court maid and the people in court who are trying to suppress the investigation.

At times I wonder if the movie is trying hard to glorify the Korean court medics of old.

An better than average film in my opinion.

A crime story and a lush costume drama about Joseon dynasty Korean court life are combined with horror elements in this directorial debut by South Korean Kim Mee-jeung. She was an assistant director for Lee Jun-ik's 2005 'The King and the Clown' and shot this on the same set. In Shadows,Wol Ryeong (Seo Yeong-hie) a maid-in-waiting at the palace, is found hanged. Chun-ryung (Park Jin Hee), the (female) royal doctor to the court women, investigates. Discovering the dead girl had a child of which there is no written record, she begins to suspect foul play. She questions a string of court ladies who might be implicated in a murder but nobody opens up and Chun-ryung's superior is obviously looking for a scapegoat to cover things up. This puts the doctor under the gun to find out what really happened before the scapegoat is named and everything is hushed up.

Throughout the film, the smooth workings of the Korean film-making machine are evident in lovely shots, nice but not grandiose settings and costumes, and an elegant period feel. The focus is far and away on women, and it's twenty minutes into the film before a single male appears. Men are seen as attractive predators. Higher ranking women are agents of repression. The underlying issue is that court maidens are meant to be virgins, but court men are out to impregnate them. This is always the maiden's fault and punished by death if detected.

Both 'Shadows in the Palace' and the previous 'The King and the Clown' are dramas that use a period setting to bring up issues of court (i.e. government) repression. 'Shadows' focuses on women and shows how they're treated cruelly in the palace, even by each other. In fact the focus on this is so strong--and there's a subplot of a concubine, Hee-bin (Yun Se-ah) who wants her son to be made crown prince--that intense interest is aroused in the sexual politics of the Korean court. The repressions of the supervising court maid (Sung-ryeong Kim) and her agents is shockingly brutal, and some of the torture scenes are hard to watch. She tries to pin everything on a court maid named Jung-ryul (Jeon Hye-jin), but it's obvious this cover-up is to protect a high ranking male. Meanwhile a court maid who's gone mute (Lim Jeong-eun) is terrified but nonetheless provides valuable evidence.

About half way into the story, the trappings of a scary movie begin to filter in--things that go bump in the night, screams, ominous music. That may raise the heart rates of some viewers, but detracts from the socio-political and procedural themes.

A review of the film on DVD two weeks ago on the website Twitch expressed what is probably the reaction of many. Shadows in the Palace, the Twitch writer (Mack) said, "is an attempt at the 'epic genre' that simply doesn't convince. Plot twists aside, when the real intentions behind the murderous plot are revealed you are neither surprised nor convinced, they are almost expected considering the context and content of the film." The reviewer was "more interested in the maiden court workings than. . .the horror/haunting elements. The physical and mental stress that came with positions in the court was more horrific than the ghost bits. They were stronger, more interesting and actually bloodier than their horror mashing counterpart." This is quite true. The socio-political themes work quite well with the mystery. The supernatural element may be logical as an outgrowth of the superstitions of the period, but it detracts from what was already a complicated enough story. Kim Mee-jeung shows talent in this handsomely put together film and the cast turns in good work. Maybe the director's focus on women's issues will find better and fuller expression next time.

Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival, April 2009.

The original term of this movie called "Gungnyeo" refers to women waiting on the king and other royalty in traditional Korean society. A "gungjung yeogwan" is therefor a lady officer in the royal court, serving the royalty. "Shadows In The Palace" portrays the everyday life at the royal court during the time of the Joseon dynasty. The movie has a lot of documentary elements and focuses on the role of women at the court. The women were sworn into secrecy, submission and celibacy and devoted their whole lives to the well-being of the royal family. By showing the negative sides of this society filled with abuse, intrigues, murder, rivalry and treason, this movie is above all an almost documentary criticism of Korean's traditional society. It's also a very dedicated movie about the fate of women during that period, an aspect many historical movies and scientific books remain silent about. The movie convinces with authentic characters, detailed settings and beautiful traditional costumes. It teaches a lot about Korean history and if you're not into this kind of topic, you should simply avoid this movie. You might find it has many lengths if you only want to watch a crime flick.

Underneath these intentions lies a rather complicated story about a murder that is arranged as a suicide and nobody wants to speak about. Despite several menaces and warnings, the royal medic wants to discover the truth and has to suffer a lot before she discovers the main intrigue at the court. The final solution to the murder may not come as a surprise by the end of the film but you still discover a couple of elements about the different characters that add some in depth development to the movie.

It's quite for Western audiences hard to distinguish who's who and who did what and what are the reasons behind this. This epic historical flick contains a lot of different characters that all have diversified intentions and the story is not always easy to follow even if the ending returns to a certain kind of simplicity. That's why it's somewhat hard and for some even frustrating to sit through this movie that requests a lot of attention in my humble opinion. You may only discover some elements at a second sight and this film might request multiple views.

The whole things isn't helped by some fantastic horror elements that begin to appear towards the second half of the film. In my opinion, the flick didn't need these elements and eventually loses a lot of credibility. The strange ghost story simply leads the viewers on a wrong path as they might imagine that a vengeful ghost is the main reason behind the initial murder and the dramatic turn of events that follows. This simply doesn't fit to the quite accurate historical portrait of the movie and must be seen a s a big flaw.

In the end, I liked this movie from a cultural, historical and social point of view. From the point of view of someone that expects a crime movie, this flick is rather complicated but still worth a watch. For those who are looking for supernatural elements or horror influences, this movie is a rather silly deception. The movie simply contains too many unnecessary elements of different genres to be more than just a quite good film. This flick should have been more focused on its two main elements which are the historical portrait and the crime elements or it should have been divided into two full movies with more scenes giving additional informations and the viewers some time to digest the whole thing.

It's up to each one of you to decide if he or she takes the desperately needed time to get into this complex flick.