Drama Digest:
Living with Allan, a foreign worker at a tiny glass plant, is Yoo Na, who had nowhere else to go. Eun Ji, whom the factory owner funds, is given responsibility for the factory’s bookkeeping in the meantime. Yoo Na is perplexed as she thinks back to her earlier recollections as she looks at Eun Ji and Allan. Allan is bullied by President Kim, the factory’s powerful leader, and the boss tries to rape Yoo Na. Yoo Na and Allan, who are both going through a difficult and lonely period, become close to one another, and new things happen involving Allan’s one and only collection of knives, the Sarasen knife.
The Feel-Good Part:
The filming is a lot of fun and intriguing. As the tale went on, things began to make sense and go beyond the apparent.
The Disappointing Factor:
Except for the fact that it functions as a rather complicated metaphor, none of this has much to do with the “Sword of Sarasen” story’s main conflict. With more exciting turns, it may have remained interesting. Although it’s entertaining, you probably won’t want to watch it again because the story doesn’t go along very quickly and the characters aren’t very memorable.
In-Depth Analysis:
We see many flashbacks of Yoon-ah (Shin Ji-soo), who was a little girl with a troubled connection with her mother (played by Park Myung-shin). However, Yoon-ah only works at a glass factory now, where sexual and labor abuse both take place in very significant amounts. This realism surprised me given how the camel story frames “Sword of Sarasen” and the ultimately dark turns the story takes with the sword always being a supporting character. Yoon-ah, her coworker Alan (Gambhir Man Shrestha), who is also of foreign descent, and the accountant Eun-ji (Sung Hwa-yeon), who is also of foreign descent, are all weakened by bullying and the conviction that their employers are in charge. They live without hope since there is no worker solidarity in the glass industry.
Star Power:
In the Lim Jae-young-directed film “Sword of Sarasen,” Shin Ji-soo, Gambhir Man Shrestha, Park Myung-shin, Kim Feel, Park Song-tech, and Sung Hwa-yeon all appear. The past tense relationship between Yoon-ah and her mother receives so much attention in the film that I frequently wondered what the other characters were doing there at all. Alan and Eun-ji ought to take the primary roles in this story, by all rights. They are the characters who require inspiration the most. Why do they not simply leave? I have a lot of valid arguments, but “Sword of Sarasen” doesn’t seem to want to provide any textual support for them, so they come out as tacked on.
Overall Opinion:
The result is that “Sword of Sarasen” meanders quite a bit before plunging into a horrific finale that ended so swiftly I was convinced I’d missed something. Yoon-ah herself only really has enough personal narrative for a short film at best. “Sword of Sarasen” is an excellent representation of how a person might psychologically break seemingly out of nowhere, which is the kindest recommendation I can give it. However, there isn’t much here in terms of a story with true narrative logic as opposed to just dream logic.
