The entire cast is stunning and natural. A big pop star in South Korea, Lee Min-ho is the charismatic Hansu, a Korean who works for a Japanese company and returns home as a broker at the fish market near Sunya’s village. Dressed in a white suit and fedora, he is attracted to the humble, trusting teenager Sunya, who, despite rumors of his ties to organized crime, is blinded by him. His life and hers intersect over the years.
US actor (Devs and Love Life) Jin Ha brings complicated shifts to Solomon, who goes to Tokyo to try and convince an elderly Korean woman to sell her house to make room for his company’s construction project do. His character is greatly enhanced and at times altered from the novel, allowing the screen version to emphasize the family’s generational differences and Solomon to make more difficult ethical choices. A scene in which he brings his grandmother Sunya to visit the elderly Korean woman is among the most touching.
Kogonada and Chon (Blue Bayou) each direct four episodes. Cameras consistently capture vistas that create an epic feel, looking out over the vast, glittering sea that separates Korea and Japan, or looking down at the skyscrapers of Tokyo. These views move in and out easily, resulting in close-ups that take us deep into the characters’ lives. Pachinko is the latest in Kogonada’s line of mind-bogglingly good works, including the films Columbus (2017) and the current After Yang, all made with intelligence and amazing visual style.
Among the many smart choices in pachinko, one of the best is the lively, upbeat opening sequence. Each of the main characters dances down the aisle of the pachinko parlor to the lively 1967 song “Let’s Live for Today.” They’re in costume but not in character as Hansu/Lee spins around and holds little Sunya/Yu-na in his arms, Solomon/Ha tosses his suit jacket in the air and a smiling Mozasu/Soji raises his arms in disco motions . Seeing the actors underscores the fictional quality of the story, but the sheer gaiety of the endlessly recurring scene signals the resilience of the family they play.
In the first episode, when Sunya is very young, her father tells her about the promise he made when she was just a week old, that “I would do anything to prevent the ugliness of the world from touching you “. Pachinko captures both the ugliness of a world that is bound to hurt her and the deep beauty of her father’s love that transcends generations and outweighs all else.
★★★★★
Pachinko launches March 25 on AppleTV+.
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