Hwa-om-kyung

Jang Sun-Woo (1993): 'Obviously Hwa-om-kyung raises many social and political questions, but for me it centres on questions of fulfilment and the freedom of the individual. I wanted to adapt the novel because I felt dissatisfied with existing ways of evaluating the direction our society is moving in. I sensed that the prism of the sutra would provide a new perspective.'Ko Un's novel is the imaginary biography of the protagonist of a Buddhist sutra. Jang's film transposes the book's narrative from ancient India to present-day Korea. Sonje, abandoned as an infant, is raised by a thief. When his surrogate father dies, he begins a lifelong search for his mother. The search brings him into contact with many people and takes him all over the country, but Sonje never ages physically... because the real object of his quest is Buddha. Fantastically beautiful and immoderately moving, this is not a Buddhist film but a film about Buddhism and the modern world. Tony Rayns