Concrete Utopia (Film Review)

Concrete Utopia is an epic assault of a movie that uses the premise of a world-ending earthquake to delve into tribalism, society, and cults of personality.

After a seemingly world-ending earthquake destroys Korea, and potentially the world outside, there is one lone standing high-rise building. The residents of the apartment block decide that the best way to survive is to form a council with the seemingly heroic Yeong-tak (Lee Byung-hun) as their leader. The group's first order of business is to eject all residents, who did not live there before the tragedy, from the building, dooming them to starvation, sub-zero temperatures, and ultimately death. From here, Concrete Utopia takes many twists and turns.

Concrete Utopia interrogates several intertwined themes, but the biggest revolves around survival and the best course of action for a collective. Does it make sense for a society to be open and welcoming, or does it make sense to close borders and cater to those who fit your arbitrary criteria?

The movie's two moral centrepieces, Myung-hwa (Park Bo-young) and her husband Min-sung (Park Seo-joon), represent these two sides to a certain extent. Myung-hwa is more empathetic, letting a mother and her son stay with them in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. But Min-sung, while not a bad person by any means, is hesitant to let these stragglers stay with him, even going as far as hiding a tin of peaches so he and his wife can enjoy them alone. This scene is a microcosm for the larger themes at play in Concrete Utopia.

There is a great deal to say about the collective and how the spoils are shared among “the workers,” which draws parallels to George Orwell's Animal Farm or simply references communism, potentially the North Korean kind. How deep this analogy might be is perhaps best left to those with a deeper understanding of Korean history, culture, and politics. But from a surface-level reading, Yeong-tak is the strongman leader, inspiring deity-like devotion while also committing some of the most brutal atrocities.

Others stand and stare, but don't act as long as it benefits the group and, ultimately, themselves. But to paraphrase Martin Niemöller's First They Came, once you have purged everyone else, eventually they come for you.

Concrete Utopia is brilliantly shot and immaculately paced. Its over-two-hour runtime flies by with amazing performances throughout. This is a must-watch, especially for fans of Korean films in general, a genre that continues to deliver some of the most interesting premises in entertainment.

Blue Finch Film Releasing presents Concrete Utopia on digital platforms out now