Synopsis
When this film was put on screen in 1991, it was called "a bomb that blasts off all indicators of French movies." Actually, this film has been made completely free from the culture and literariness of French movies. It is meaningless to judge this movie with the common yardstick of perfectionism. The story unfolds in such unkindly way that the viewers can grasp the outline after seeing much of it. The extreme angles continuously tire the eyes and the exposure is excessive. Director Ossang seems to pursue a merger of impossibilities as the main characters search for stelinskalt, a synthesis of two fundamental substances, which is impossible to make in a natural environment. Here, the aestheticism of silent movies is united with the image of a nucler age symbolized by the Chernobyl incident, and the rock'n roll soundtrack is married with the stories of adventure films of the 1940s. The story begins with a man confined in a mental asylum receiving a proposal to return to the island where he found stelinskalt sometime ago and extracted oreon energy from it. The over-production of oreon energy resulted in the emergence of a new virus that eventually deteriorated the island to a place where people can't live. The proposal came from an expedition team which was going to find stelinskalt. The team has Dr. Turc who had inspected the island with Aldellio. Ulyssess or "capitaine mort" leads the team which upon arrival in the island can't stay at the hotel. Some members show strange physical symptoms. They feel the island is literally a hell. The film would look not only unfamiliar but also painful to see for viewers who are accumstomed to big-spending science fiction movies made in the United States. It seems to show a sheer nightmare, a state in which one can only survive by running indefinitely. When the characters wander about without any purpose, they are exhibiting Ossang's will to escape structuring. The film's world where the irreconcilable times and space are intertwined may be called a world of science fiction that does not have a nationality. ( Im Jae-chol)