Kim Dong Wan showed his affection for his new film Singer (literal translation).
Singer, which will be released on July 1, is about Hak Gyu, his daughter Cheong, and his assistants wandering through Joseon’s eight provinces after searching for his kidnapped wife, Gan Nan. Kim Dong Wan, who appeared in the film for the first time in 5 years since One Way Trip (2015), played the role of a “Fallen Yangban” who meets Hak Kyu and roam Joseon together.
In the round interview held on June 25, Kim Dong Wan said, “The scenario was good, but the final version of the movie was also excellent. The Indangsu scene reminded me of Pirates of the Caribbean. It (the movie) came out better than I expected, so I half-jokingly said that our movie was a blockbuster.”
His love for the film continued. “The ‘charms of pansori’ is well shown in the film. I don’t think there ever was one like this. There is a great movie called Sopyonje, but it was almost impossible to do real-time recording at that time. But now, the technology has advanced enough to even capture the rolling sand. Singer captured all those sounds,” he added.
Kim Dong Wan then expressed his affectionate respect for director Cho Jung Rae. He said, “My faith in director Cho Jung Rae continued from the start to the end. Since his previous work Spirits’ Homecoming used the subject that everyone was interested in, so naturally, I watched it, and I was shocked by his directing. Those who like director Christopher Nolan probably all felt it. He wrote a lot of scenes of time and space moving back and forth in Spirits’ Homecoming and expressed them in such a luxurious way. I may sound a bit like a klutz, but it felt his genius.”
He then expressed his feelings about finishing his first historical film. “It was a lot of fun just from being part of the project. I kind of realized why actors who worked on historical dramas only do historical dramas. In modern works, my true self is sometimes shown, or I have to see the bottom of my acting when trying to express subtle emotions. However, historical film has the overall classic charm and seems to have a distinctly different approach.”
Kim Dong Wan also added that he learned pansori even though there was no scene where he sang pansori himself in the movie. “There is a scene where I say ‘Eolssu,’ but when I tried to practice by myself, I realized that rhythm is quite colorful. I learned from this movie that gukak (Korean classical music) is more diverse than I thought and that it flows with the line,” he said, “I wanted to learn it properly for at least a little while so I asked the director and Bong Geun, and they tried to introduce me to the masters in Jeonju. I felt embarrassed and didn’t want to cause any inconvenience. Then, I found out that there was a person who teaches pansori in Nakwon shopping mall, so I visited him. Thanks to him, I got a lot of help.”
