In this blog post, we explore how the love depicted in the movie ‘Oasis’ becomes beautiful as it navigates disconnection and connection, reality and fantasy.
Introduction
Director Lee Chang-dong’s film ‘Oasis’ tells the love story between a man with three prior convictions for attempted rape and a woman with severe cerebral palsy. In the room of Han Gong-ju, a disabled woman and one of the film’s main settings, hangs a cheap carpet. This carpet depicts a few palm trees, a well, a baby elephant, a young woman in Indian-style clothing, and a naked child. Beneath the image of this cheap carpet, the English word ‘OASIS’ is also visible. The film’s opening scene begins with the camera gazing at this cheap oasis carpet, its surface dappled with tree shadows.
The dictionary definition of ‘oasis’ is ‘a place in the middle of a desert where a spring flows and vegetation grows; a metaphor for a place that offers solace in life.’ A place that offers solace in life.‘ This definition reveals that the ‘oasis’ referenced in the film carries the meaning of ‘love’ or ‘happiness’ as expressed in the phrase ‘You are my oasis’. The protagonists, Hong Jong-doo and Han Gong-ju, carry the labels of ex-convict and disabled person. Their unlikely meeting tells a story of love and hope.
The reason I focus on the film ‘Oasis’ is that it demonstrates how a love story, which could easily be dismissed as a ‘common melodrama,’ can become a ‘masterpiece’ depending on how it is told. This film calmly portrays stories of reality and fantasy, disconnection and communication, pain and growth, freedom and tomorrow, all through the lens of love.
The Narrative of ‘Oasis’
The story begins with sunlight streaming onto the carpet in Han Gong-ju’s room. Hong Jong-du, released from prison, wanders lost, unable to find his family’s new address, and ends up stealing food. Jong-du is apprehended by the police station and, with his younger brother Jong-se’s help, reunites with his family. Jong-du’s older brother Jong-il gets him a job as a delivery boy for a Chinese restaurant, and Jong-du goes to Han Gong-ju’s house. On the day Jong-du arrives, Gong-ju’s older brother Han Sang-sik and his wife move to a new apartment, leaving Gong-ju behind. Gong-ju and Jong-du meet for the first time.
Jong-du delivers a bouquet to Gong-ju’s house. He visits again, gives her his brother’s auto shop number, and suddenly tries to rape her. When she faints, he leaves her in the bathroom and flees. Days later, Gong-ju calls Jong-du. They talk and gradually fall in love.
Despite being 29, Jong-do is childlike: he gets spanked by his brother for misbehaving, loves jajangmyeon most of all foods, and constantly shakes his legs. The Princess, who enjoys playing with mirrors, fears the tree shadows cast on the carpet, and dislikes bean rice, is also childlike. They haven’t grown up yet. Like children, they cannot communicate in the adult world. They lack the strength to protect themselves, and adults fail to understand them.
For these childlike beings, love is the truest emotion. On the day the Princess calls Jong-do over the phone and they meet at her house, she opens the door herself despite her discomfort. Jong-do struggles to crouch down, matching the Princess’s squatting posture. Their facial expressions gradually mirror each other, and within the princess’s imagination and Jong-doo’s dreams, their love becomes complete. The shadow of the oasis tree hanging on the wall vanishes with Jong-doo’s chant of ‘Suri Suri Masuri’, and the princess, her body now free, dances with Jong-doo and the figures within the oasis. For them, the illusion is no longer an illusion but reality.
The moment they whisper their love, adults see it as rape. Through adult eyes, the princess is not a woman, and Jong-du is merely a pervert. But when Jong-du escapes the police station and cuts down all the tree branches illuminating the princess’s oasis, the princess senses Jong-du and, with her weary body, turns up the volume on the radio. At this moment, their love is realized not just in fantasy, but within reality itself.
The film concludes in the princess’s light-filled home, where she sweeps the floor with a broom as Jong-du’s letter from prison is read aloud. Had this been remade in Hollywood, it would undoubtedly have ended with Jong-du’s emotional reunion with the princess after his release from prison. However, in director Lee Chang-dong’s ‘Oasis’, it remains unclear whether they reunite or marry. The only certainty is that they are currently in love and growing through that love.
Analysis of ‘Oasis’ Mise-en-scène
Key visual characteristics of ‘Oasis’ include hand-held camera techniques and long takes. Hand-held camera work and long takes are employed to pursue realism in film, enabling the director to effectively realize mise en scène within the visuals and construct meaning. From this perspective, I attempt to analyze the meaning embodied through the visuals.
Disconnection: Television and Reality
Jong-du and Gong-ju, figures of social alienation, are disconnected from everyone in the adult world. Within the film, the image of disconnection manifests through television, a medium of communication. Television transmits information unidirectionally from sender to receiver. The director deliberately chooses television’s non-communicative nature to construct the meaning of disconnection within the frame.
In the scene where Jong-du, who has committed theft, is brought to the police station, the most alien presence among the props occupying the background is the television. The television, turned on in the police officers’ workspace, receives no attention. None of the characters look at the television; it speaks alone.
In the scene where he takes his sister-in-law’s money to go on a date with the princess, the television appears again, turned on behind his dozing sister-in-law. Again, none of the characters composing the frame look at the television. The recurring ‘television left on’ symbolizes a breakdown in communication precisely because no one watches it.
In contrast, the television in the scene where he is kicked out of the restaurant he visited with the princess is being watched by the restaurant patrons. After being refused service at the restaurant because he is disabled, Jong-do repeatedly turns the television on and off while the customers are watching. In the restaurant, the television occupies the central position, drawing the gaze of all patrons. Within this space meant for communication, the television functions as an obstacle to the patrons’ interaction. Jong-du and the princess, rejected in this space, can only express their psychological state through Jong-du’s act of turning the television off and on.
The image of disconnection is repeated through the foreigner, the danger sign, and the telephone. After being released from prison, Jong-doo stands at a payphone booth trying to call to find the house he moved to. Lacking coins, he attempts to borrow some from two middle school girls. However, Jong-doo fails to borrow the coins, and instead, a foreigner approaches and makes a call. Jong-doo cannot borrow coins from the foreigner. Jong-doo doesn’t even try to speak to the foreigner, with whom he cannot communicate. Here, the foreigner represents the adults of the real world. To Jong-du, adults are like foreigners who speak the same language yet remain incomprehensible. The foreigner stands with his back to Jong-du, making a call elsewhere. An absolute disconnect exists between Jong-du and the foreigner.
There is a scene where Jong-du, failing to rape the princess and fleeing, kicks a danger sign erected at a construction site. The danger sign, by its very existence, already obstructs communication among passersby. The first danger sign Jong-do sees on his way to the princess’s house feels like nothing more than an obstacle blocking pedestrian communication. However, the danger sign Jong-do sees while fleeing and running signifies the disconnect between Jong-do and the princess. By kicking it with his foot, Jong-do expresses his desire for communication.
When Jong-du, who has sex with the princess, is falsely accused of rape and tension peaks, he escapes the police station, steals a passerby’s mobile phone, and calls the princess. Yet Jong-du cannot speak with her. When the mobile phone—symbolizing free personal communication—is given to Jong-du, it fails to fulfill its purpose. We feel the maximization of disconnection through the sight of even the mobile phone, the most powerful tool of communication, rendered powerless in the face of communication between Jong-du and the princess.
All the images of disconnection described so far exist within the reality of the film. The reality the film shows is one where everything blocks communication. Jong-du’s mental disconnection and the Princess’s physical disconnection occur within their respective lives. When Jong-du and the Princess fall in love, their individual disconnections merge into a greater disconnection. To everyone except Jong-du and the Princess, their love appears only as a pervert’s rape. Jong-du does not speak of his love to people like foreigners, and even if the Princess tries to speak of it, people do not understand. Their love is one that people can never comprehend.
Communication: Radio and Fantasy
When the Cheonggyecheon Overpass becomes gridlocked with cars, Jong-du and the Princess get out of their car and dance to the sound of radio music. This scene, one of the most meticulously crafted in the film alongside the Princess’s oasis fantasy, focuses on the stationary cars and the song playing on the radio. The Cheonggyecheon Overpass, packed with cars and unable to move, serves as a visual backdrop symbolizing the disconnect of reality. Amidst this life filled with separation, Jong-du and the Princess dance freely. The sound flowing at this moment is the song from the car radio, functioning as both foreground music and an auditory backdrop. When Jong-du and Princess are together, disconnection ceases to exist for them; even within a world saturated with separation, complete communication is possible. This contrast in imagery makes their love, symbolizing communication, feel all the more profound.
The radio’s role as a medium for their communication reappears at the film’s climax, when Princess turns up the volume on the radio for Jong-du as he cuts a tree branch. Princess, deprived of physical freedom, cannot see Jong-du cutting branches for her through the closed window, nor can she speak to him. Though unable to see Jong-du, she turns up the radio volume to prove they are communicating. The radio speaks for her, telling Jong-du, “I love you.” Though meaningless commercial jingles repeat endlessly, to Jong-do listening to the radio, they are whispers of love. Merely hearing the radio makes him dance and gives him strength. Thus, the radio acts as a medium of communication bridging their separation, enabling real-world communication within the film.
Alone, the princess plays with mirrors, creating doves and butterflies with light. Both pigeons and butterflies are winged creatures, possessing the ability to fly freely. For the physically disabled princess, her disconnection from the world stems from a body that cannot be free. Thus, she dreams of freedom, drawing pigeons with light. Even if the mirror slips from her unsteady hands and shatters into pieces, she still dreams of freedom through the mirror and light. The princess, confined to crawling, dreams beyond the dove to the form of a butterfly. A butterfly is born when a caterpillar, hatched from an egg, becomes a cocoon and gains wings. In this scene, the princess is the caterpillar, and the butterfly existing in her fantasy is the form she dreams of becoming. She dreams of physical freedom and also dreams of communicating with others.
Jong-du, whom she met while playing with a mirror, immediately appeared to the princess as an image of freedom. Through her fantasy, the princess gains freedom and communicates through that freedom. The fantasy of seeing ordinary lovers on the subway and mimicking their actions, and the fantasy of playing pranks on Jong-du, crying and laughing at Jong-il’s (Jong-du’s brother) car repair shop, are simply the ordinary appearance of lovers. The princess’s fantasies are not fantastical at all; rather, they come across as realistically relatable to us. Through unadorned screen composition and the absence of sentimental background music, the film depicts a reality that is impossible for the princess but utterly ordinary for the average person, presenting it as her fantasy.
oasis’s dream is the scene where Jong-du’s dream of dancing with the figures on the oasis carpet is realized within the princess’s fantasy. This connects to the dance on the Cheonggyecheon elevated highway in the film’s reality. If in reality Jong-du danced with the princess in his arms on a road filled with cars, in the fantasy, Jong-du, the princess, the baby elephant, the child, and the Indian woman all dance together, holding hands. This is also the only scene in the film accompanied by background music. This fantasy exists purely as fantasy, embodying the very essence of the fantastical, distinct from the realism of previous fantasies. Set to Indian music and falling flower petals, the fantasy scene unfolding within the princess’s home interlocks dialectically with the Cheonggyecheon Overpass scene, imbuing the fantasy with a sense of reality. Within Jong-doo and the Princess’s love, this fantasy is accepted as natural.
Jong-doo and the Princess, unwelcome at Jong-doo’s mother’s birthday banquet, leave and go to a karaoke bar. Though the Princess couldn’t sing at the karaoke bar, at the subway station where they missed the last train, she rises from her wheelchair and sings the pop song ‘If I Were’ to Jong-doo. She then seats Jong-du in her wheelchair and strokes his hair. This scene, like Jong-du washing her hair and doing her laundry, represents the Princess’s desire to give love. Singing a song (If I Were) about becoming anything for the one she loves, she dreams of freedom for another, not herself. After singing that song, Jong-du and the Princess share a bed. Their intimacy exists not as a sexual expression but as perfect communication. The film’s gaze upon it is equally unobscene and matter-of-fact.
The image of communication presented thus far exists only within fantasy in the film’s early stages. However, as the plot progresses and Jong-du and the Princess’s love deepens, the image of communication shifts from fantasy to reality, and from reality to fantasy. By the end, fantasy no longer exists for them; the image of communication is realized within reality. The final image of communication appears through Jong-du’s letter, and the broom held in the Princess’s hand signifies that she has gained the ability to protect their love or communication. The princess is not a passive, immobile being, but an active presence defending her own space.
Love Leading to Growth
While this film depicts a love story, within it lies the trajectory of a coming-of-age film. It features two imperfect individuals who influence each other and grow through their relationship. This trajectory can also be understood within the context of the hero’s journey, where one becomes a hero through hardship.
The princess gains freedom through her love with Jong-doo. In the scene where she first ventures outside with Jong-doo, the frame emphasizes the image of the sky by placing Jong-doo lying on his right side. To the princess, Jong-doo represents the image of freedom, like the sky. Through their love, the princess can break free from physical constraints and achieve mental liberation.
Jong-doo gains the ability to act through his love with the princess. Jong-du, who believed the only thing he could do for the princess was to recite a spell to remove the shadow cast on the carpet, realizes that cutting the tree branch creating the shadow solves the problem. His act of escaping the police station and cutting down the tree branch in front of the princess’s house signifies his active engagement in reality.
The Authenticity of Daily Life
Everyone dreams of love, believing it will make them a more complete being. Of course, love that fosters growth exists, and many believe they have grown through love. Even if those moments of love are painful and hard to endure, love becomes the force that drives growth. This film chose as its protagonists those hidden at the bottom of society, aiming to approach reality more closely through the intersection of reality and fantasy.
Disconnection, communication, and growth in the film ‘Oasis’ are not separate entities. Even seemingly insignificant props in the film’s portrayal of real life carry meaning for us. The film’s realistic expression techniques and the realism within its fantasy also exist to show the weight of everyday life. In other words, even within a common love story, one can find the truth of life.
