Christmas in August (1998) Review

I truly envy those of you living in more temperate climates. It never gets freezing cold in winter or blazing hot in summer. For those who do experience a brutal winter, I’m not sure about you, but I’m starting to get sick of the bitterly cold weather. So why not reminisce about warmer times? But alas, if there’s something I’ll be missing, it’s having Christmas in December. Hey, I know! Why don’t we simply have…Christmas in August?! At least, that’s what I was expecting when I stepped into a screening of Hur Jin-ho’s 1998 film. But what I got in return was something far greater.

Jung-won (played by Han Suk-kyu) is a middle-aged man working at a photography store where he takes and edits pictures of various people. While he seems like an ordinary person, he harbors a deep secret: he’s terminally ill. Jung-won spends his last remaining days reconnecting with old friends and drinking with them until the wee hours of the night. One day a young female traffic officer named Da-rim (played by Shim Eun-ha) walks into his shop. Despite initial coldness, she slowly becomes infatuated with him. The two begin spending more time together, but just when it looks like Jung-won has found love and happiness, tragedy strikes.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that we all, at some point, feel trapped in our own lives. Whether that be in our job, our relationships, or even our fate. And in Jung-won’s case, it’s all of the above. This is further represented by his profession. As the owner of a photography shop, he’s in charge of not only taking pictures of others but also developing them. He does his best to make them look as beautiful as possible to capture the best side of themselves. We see this when he captures a funeral portrait for an elderly woman. You can see how depressed she is when she walks in. Yet Jung-won takes time to make her look her absolute best in her final documented moment. This comes full circle near the film’s third act, when he takes his own funeral portrait.

Similarly, we see his detachment from those around him through the motif of windows. While some others have commented that the window frame resembles a picture frame, thereby making the window a “living picture,” I’d like to add something else to this sentiment. Throughout the film, we see Jung-won constantly separated from Da-rim and his childhood friends by a window. Almost as if the window were a veil between the living and the dead. He’s always looking at others’ lives through a lens, but never lives it himself because he knows he doesn’t have long to live. Despite putting on a cheerful and brave face along with a chipper disposition, he knows he can’t run from his fate. However, rather than tell his loved ones directly, he opts to use photography as an indirect form of communication.

This all echoes the film’s final line, where Jung-won voices over his final thoughts as he frames a picture of Da-rim in front of his store moments before his death. He says how “love will be nothing more than a memory, like the pictures framed on his wall.” After coming to terms with his death, he cuts off all communication with Da-rim. She visits his store every day, but to no avail. One day, she throws a rock at his store’s window in frustration before slowly moving on. Now you’d think that this is a rather selfish move on Jung-won’s behalf, as I initially did. But upon closer look, I realized that’s the beauty of the ending. He also adds that it was “her love that remained a part of him.” Jung-won didn’t want to stain the memories they shared with his illness, hence why he never told her the truth.

Going off of the photography motif, the entire film incorporates an abundance of still shots to resemble photographs (and I don’t mean just wide shots). This is an intentional creative choice to allow the audience to fully appreciate every detail in every shot. There’s a reason why the phrase “a picture paints a thousand words” is so popular. But there’s something else I truly miss about movies from the late 1990s and early 2000s: film grain. It may seem like an unnoticeable element, even an imperfection to some, but seeing film grain not only adds to the indie atmosphere but also makes the film feel like a time capsule. A small reminder of the adventures we had in simpler times. Much like the people we meet in life, sometimes, imperfections are our anchor to what makes life worth living for.

I walked into this movie fully expecting a lighthearted, fun, and wholesome romantic comedy about appreciating the little things in life. But I came out with a far more complex and introspective view on cinema and life itself. There are so few movies that seem so liminal and empty on a surface level, yet are profoundly deep when you take the time to analyze them. It just shows that good movies should truly transcend the realm of mindless entertainment and escapism. Should you check out Christmas in August (it’s free on YouTube), I hope you can learn a bit more about yourself.

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