Directed by Tae-hwa Eom
Written by Tae-hwa Eom, Lee Shin-ji, Kim Soong-nyung

Survivors from a massive earthquake struggle for a new life in Seoul. (IMDB)

Concrete Utopia opens with a series of images and voiceovers proclaiming the wonders of high-rise living; the ultimate social community revolving around a “concrete utopia.” Before the viewer has a chance to consider whether this is a good or bad thing, the mother of all earthquakes ravages the landscape and razes this paradise to the ground, leaving just one apartment building standing in the centre of all the devastation. This building becomes the new “concrete utopia”, an oasis in the middle of a desert of rubble, dust, and death as the residents band together to rebuild a functioning society out of all the chaos.

Min-sung (Park Seo-Joon) and Myung-Hwa (Park Bo-young) live together in the block, him, a civil servant and she a nurse. Their lives are fairly ordinary until the earthquake literally shakes everything up around them. As the survivors come to terms with their predicament and try to retain some sort of order in this new world, the residents nominate Yeong-tak (Lee Byung-hun) as their representative after he shows his courage by fighting an apartment fire. Reluctant at first, he soon changes from the quiet, unassuming resident living with his ill mother, to a violent, dictatorial leader, hell bent on protecting their new concrete utopia and his true identity.

And this is what the film is all about; a post-disaster community trying to retain the norms of society by instilling rules, regulations, and leaders. But, where true law has broken down, ideals and personal agendas bubble up to the surface and the new society breaks down. It’s not a question of if but when? Non-residents are turfed out of the building to conserve food, search parties raid supposedly deserted stores with increasingly violent outcomes, rations create tension and division among residents, and not everyone is quite what they seem – there is something rotten at the heart of Utopia.

Amongst all this, Min-sung and Myung-hwa fight to retain their own identities as well as their relationship. While she risks everything to protect the weak and vulnerable who have been cast out by the residents, he finds himself caught up in the dubious behaviour of the search parties, led by representaive Yeong-tak, attracted by the contrast to his old, dull day job. Their diverging pathways firmly drive a wedge ebtween them. Physical survival is just one part of the equation.

Concrete Utopia tells a story that is predictable and familiar. We have been here before in a cycle of disaster, panic, rebuilding society, people get greedy/power-hungry, society fails… again. However, Concrete Utopia does it in a way that is fresh and interesting. Well it was for me, anyway. I didn’t feel the two hours plus runtime and was drawn into the story and the characters from the off. You can see most of the story coming, so there are no great surprises here (although there were still a couple) but it is a delight to watch the actors do their thing and to see it play out anyway. And the actors all do an excellent job easily conveying the fragility of their existence and the tension of the new world order.

The movie looks good too. Colours are muted to convey the hopeless situation and the scenes of devastation work well on both a grand scale, but also in the smaller locations as people scrabble around in the wreckage of buildings looking for food. It would have been interesting to know how widespread the earthquake had been and whether it was just Korea that was affected. The lack of emergency services flying in to save the day, and the ending of the movie, suggest it was on a wider scale, but we never find out the true extent of the devastation – although the occasional glimpses we do get of the landscape beyond the Concrete Utopia suggest things aren’t getting better soon.

Concrete Utopia is a story about society, how society functions and how quickly it will break down without rules and laws to govern it. Issues of class and status still raise their ugly heads through all the destruction, despite the earthquake literally levelling the playing field. It’s impossible to escape the old functions and foibles of a ‘civilised’ society and desperation pushes people to extremes of behaviour when given the slightest opportunity to govern their own lives.

So the movie isn’t an original idea, it’s likely you will have seen a number of similar films before, but I found this to be a fresh enough take to keep me interested and involved throughout the run time.

Blue Finch Film Releasing presents Concrete Utopia on digital platforms 1 April.