Synopsis
Nothing illustrates better the epic elements of a dream than Zhuangzi's famous dream of becoming a butterfly. In a view of life in which the boundary between self and the outer world is blurred, the film The Dream directed by SHIN Sang Ok(Simon SHEEN) transforms Taoistic perspective into Buddhistic one. One day during the Three Kingdoms period(4-7 century. AD), Buddhist monk Cho-Shin sees Dal-Rae and decides he wants to make love to her even if it means falling into hell. Knowing Cho's romantic desires, his master shoves him into the temple's sanctuary and lures him into a hallucinatory dream. In the dream, Cho-Shin elopes with Dal-Rae at night and successfully becomes a plain man and a father of three children. But he loses one of his sons as he escapes from Dal-Rae outraged fiance. He wakes up from his dream as the fiance slashes his neck with a sword, and finding himself groaning and sweating in the floor of the sactuary. Cho-Shin comes to a Taoistic awakening and decides to give up Dal-rae. Dream herein is a means to relieve and cure unachievable desires. Like another SHIN's movie, a thousand-year-old fox, in which the same actor SHIN Young Kyun and the actress KIM Hye-jung play the starring roles, "the Dream" relives hell invoked by lust, which is one of the Buddhists' five deadly desires, by using the world of fantasy. However, the Buddhists' five deadly desires, by using the world of fantasy. However, the motivations by which CHO goes in and out of the fantasy world are too clear and simple, so much so that the integrity of the movie suffers in terms of intensity and conflicts. But SHIN's artistic talent shows up in early part of the movie in the filming of the natural landscape and sun rays piercing the windows of the temple sanctuary. (Kim So-Young)