I watched a Korean movie, Svaha: The Sixth Finger. I enjoyed it and thought of a couple of things. The director of this movie is Chae-hyŏn Chang, and this movie was his fourth movie after his directional debut. All the movies he directed featured at least one religious person. 12th Assistant Deacon, The Priests, House of the Disappeared, and Svaha: The Sixth Finger all featured Catholic priests or reformed pastors. Why is Chae-hyŏn Chang obsessed to use a religious person in his movies? What is that he was trying to tell through this setting?
Do Gods exist? What makes good and evil?
Svaha: The Sixth Finger
Pastor Park is an investigator of pseudoreligions. Listening to his voice, you can find the faith he has about his God, but you can definitely hear the voice of a man who seeks immediate gains. Accusing pseudoreligions of their dogmatic problems, he makes a living with this job. When you look at Pastor Park, you feel that the two contradicting values coexist in him. I think that is a very realistic description.
Pastor Park faces a very strange case. Maitreya, Geumhwa who was born to kill Maitreya, Jesus born on Christmas. They all are supposed to be god-like beings. Regardless of good and evil, they surpass the limitations of human beings. Maitreya is a Bodhisattva to come in the future. According to the prophecy, when human life expectancy becomes 80,000 years, Maitreya is expected to come to the world of the suffering and convert over 200 million people. However, in the movie, Svaha: The Sixth Finger, Maitreya kills a lot of people to be a transcendental being.
What about Geumhwa, who was born to kill Maitreya? Her outwardly appearance just looks evil. Does that make Geumhwa an evil? Geumhwa was born with the fate of killing Maitreya. To sincerely fulfill his fate Maitreya takes a lot of lives and Geumhwa succeeded to kill Maitreya. Does that make Geumhwa good? However, the audience never gets the feeling of Geumhwa's being good.
Svaha: The Sixth Finger
What about Jesus? Jesus was alive thanks to the death of a countless number of babies. King Herod afraid of the advent of the Messiah ordered to kill all the babies. That makes Jesus came to the human world with the price of multiple casualties.
In conclusion, Pastor Park, Maitreya, Geumhwa, and Jesus all exist on the continuum of good and evil. Could we accept them as gods? Can gods transcend the horizon of good and evil that human beings have never been overcome?
In my personal opinion, the director Chae-hyŏn Chang frames godly beings as being limited just like us in terms of good and evil. Perhaps, he is telling us that "there is no such things as god." I am not sure whether he is an atheist or not, but the concept of gods represented in the movie was highly critical. I liked this movie.
Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/556509?language=en-US
Critic: AA
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://flicktaste.net/2019/07/27/svaha-the-sixth-finger-god-of-goodness/