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Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
Critic Consensus: No consensus yet.
All Critics (41) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (34) | Rotten (7)
It is quietly observant, with a detached eye for the telling moment, and the visual compositions are often exquisite.
[Chihwaseon] rushes through the life of its subject in nimble leaps and bounds, concentrating on the livelier and more spectacular parts and avoiding the dull historical and biographical stretches.
Another masterpiece from one of the world's more neglected great directors, a master artist who here reveals the soul of another.
The movie's attention to anthropological and historical detail means things are slow to come alive. But once they do, the nature of Jang's psychic torture is palpable and unmistakable.
A vividly entertaining portrait.
The film's sexy romanticism and its tragic sense of Korean history will thrill even those who have never set foot in an art gallery.
This South Korean film is one of the few authentic artist biopics ever created for the screen. It doesn't crudely guess at the source of the late 19th century painter Jang Seung-up's genius. It simply exhibits it.
In spite of these few moments of wonder, and even the dense, moving thematic content, the film ultimately doesn't leave a lasting taste.
[A]n elegant, painterly film...
The sturdy and goateed Choi Min-sik gives an extraordinary performance as the mercurial Ohwon whose moods fluctuate from sadness to rage, anguish, and depression.
For all its beauty and artistic ambition, the film remained stubbornly remote and soulless to me.
This Korean drama is a credible portrait of its main character, the revered 19th-century artist Oh Mon Jang Seung-up, and it looks beautiful enough to be a work of art itself.
Jang Seung-Up is an artist that just can't catch a break. His talent is noticed at first, but he is soon buried beneath an ever increasing number of art students. He is eventually noticed after making a perfect copy of a more established artists painting, after having just one look. This brings about attention, which is also his downfall. He is shunned for outclassing his own teacher, and soon becomes a drunken mess. There's a lot of redemption in this film, almost anyways. Jang is a man that can only excel whilst drinking. This leads to an obviously large amount of problems. Chihwaseon is a very breautiful film, in terms of the arts it presents, and the way it presents itself. The acting is highly emotive and believable, with Choi Min-Sik, carefully balancing the dependent Jang, with touches of hostility and openness. It's only drawback is the predictable nature of the biopic. Take an individual's life, and truncate it to 2 hours, and you're bound to run into similarities with other famous people of the past.
Super Reviewer
Up until recently,a number of films dedicated to the lives and times of exceptional painters,fine artists in a broader scope started emerging out of nowhere.Ladies,gents,I present you the unanimous masterpiece of them all,forget Pollocks and Fridas,Sung-up,a humongous legend in the Joseon dynasty in Korea,a fabulous poetic journey by the hands of an elderly Im Kwon-taek and yet profoundly young,Min-sik proves he is an Actor.
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