Fate Continues Even After Death. What would you do if after death you found out that all souls who betrayed will be punished and sent to hell. But you need to pass so many trials to be reincarnated...
Honestly, this movie shook me in ways I didn’t expect. The movie kicks off in a way that already makes your chest heavy: a firefighter, Kim Ja-hong, dies in the line of duty. Normally, you’d think, “Ah, sad but straightforward.” But no—this film spins death into this whole afterlife adventure that feels like a courtroom drama mixed with an epic fantasy. The moment Ja-hong is taken by these three guardians into the afterlife, I already knew I wasn’t just watching a movie, I was about to be taken on an emotional journey.
Gang-rim, Haewonmak and Deok-choon are all guardians who possess their own strength. Gang-rim is stern and unemotional, the type of leader who will have you sitting to attention. Haewonmak? He has a feel of the witty, sarcastic that breaks tension, yet conceals a dimension. And Deok-choon, you see, dear me, she is the center of the three, tender but strong, loving yet willful. They lead Ja-hong through the seven hells that are symbolized by sins as betrayal, indolence, injustice, violence, murder, deceit and filial impiety.
Now, this is where it gets wild. Every hell is a kind of a trial in a courtroom and the life of Ja-hong is being torn apart bit by bit. It is not simply you sinned, you did not sin--no, no, it is a messy business, has a lot of layers, all of our human contradictions. To illustrate, in the Hell of Violence, he is tried on the killing of individuals that happened when he was a firefighter. However, the next moment you can guess how much he gave up, how he literally placed other people in the forefront and then suddenly the boundaries between guilt and innocence become indistinct. It was like watching the soul of a person being dissected, when I watched those scenes, and I found myself thinking, “Had I been naked in front of the world like that, what dark secrets would come to the light?
The images, how about God, are something different. Imagine massive, scary scenery, rivers of fire, high-pitched judges and monsters that appeared to be right out of a nightmare. Despite all that messiness, there has to have been some beauty in the telling of that tale, the afterlife is not portrayed as a realm of unescaped retribution but rather more as a kind of reckoning, a realm where truth just cannot be kept in the shadows.
But not even those grand trials are the punch of it--it is in the little human details. Similar to how the mother and brother of Ja-hong are introduced to the story. You would imagine this is his life journey all by himself but then you are wrong, his life and decisions extend to theirs. My chest tightened the moment I noticed the amount he presented without telling anybody; the sacrifices, the shame he was carrying, the things that he never told anybody. One scene broke me, it is when his mother's problems are shown, and all the miseries she had to go through only to not break the family. That is when I needed to put the movie on pause, breath, and cry sincerely. It struck me because on occasions our parents experience storms that we cannot exactly see until it is too late.
And then there’s this twist. I will not even tell you it struck me in the face. At the moment when I believed Ja-hong to be the pure soul who will be reborn, you make me realize that he has darker secrets than the guardians think. It is then that the movie ceases to be simply a story of his experience but is now also about the guardians. Particularly Gang-rim--you feel this hard cold surface begin to fissure. He is not an accidental case, a random escort and he has his goals, his losses. It is then that the film ceases to be merely one about Ja-hong, but humanity in general.
A connection between the guardians and Ja-hong turns out to be one of my favorites. It begins as they treat him as another victim that has to be driven somewhere like a case, but it gradually becomes evident that the relationships are developing, feelings flowing, and even the beliefs that they hold are being challenged. As with Haewonmak, initially he is merely making sarcastic remarks, but his empathy comes out. And Deok-choon, every time she defends Ja-hong with her whole heart, I couldn’t help but feel protective of her. It reminded me of those friends who always see the good in you even when you can’t see it yourself.
But this is where my weakness really lies: the theme of filial impiety which is in other words the way you treat your parents. That part stabbed me deep. The relationship of Ja-hong with his mother grounds out to be the test in the trial. And when all this happens, I had to reflect on myself, and ask myself, do I truly value my parents enough? Do they realize how much I love them, or will it break out only after I am gone? It is the type of question this movie compels you to sit down and ask.
My feelings were mixed by the time it came to the climax of anger, sadness, relief, even gratitude. The finale did not simply serve to set Ja-hong into place, but also opened a window into the backstories of the guardians and alerted me that this was not merely another film, but rather the establishment of a bigger one upon which I was going to rest. The spectacle to the raw human emotion ratio was so high that when the credits ended, I simply sat there and stare processing all that.
Honestly speaking, it was not only the spectacular images of hell or the courtroom drama that I was particularly impressed with. It was how the film was able to reduce the human imperfections and still find a way to say: You are more than you do wrong. You’re more than your sins.” It is that message and is packaged in such a spectacular story that made this movie memorable to me.
I did not walk away, After the Gods: The Two Worlds, without more than being entertained, but this book not only opened its pages in spots to which I had not thought any light to be necessary. It gave me the idea about my regrets in life, my family, the unuttered sacrifices, and what is actually important when everything is taken away. That is why, in the event I should gist anyone about this film, I would say that it is not about gods, or the afterlife, or trials. It is about us--us and our decisions, our secret wounds, and that question always: if you were judged for your life today, what story would be told?
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