Same shop, different everything.

While I normally prefer not to judge films by their titles, Futureless Things seemed to give my mind an image of something dark or dystopian. While the first few chapters of the film seemed to reject my initial impression based on the title, the final portion does add to this darkness that the theme was apparently [and seemingly] trying to portray throughout the film.
For the most part, despite the film being set in Korea and away from a culture that I’m more aware of [like the Philippines and even western, at least based on films and the cultures I’ve encountered through them], the setting of a convenience store seemed to give off a more global culture. Even the scene involving the North Korean woman seemed familiar given how people really discriminate those of different background.
Despite the ease of understanding the general context of the film due to the relatively global culture provided by a convenience store, the lack of background context per story/chapter was a bit frustrating. This was most apparent during the first shift from the beginning to the second chapter; the lack of a context of how and who those characters were and then being immediately forgotten upon the entry of the new character and scenario was bit difficult to overcome in the beginning. Though throughout the film, I found myself more prepared to transition from one story to the other, and open to the idea that these were truly independent stories and needed not one another.
This episodal treatment of the movie was definitely the most interesting aspect of it. While we were made aware that there have been movies made similarly to this, I have personally never encountered one. Additionally, the clock being seemingly a motif provided points of reflection for me; for me, this clock brings me back to thinking about the title being Futureless Things, a title that relates itself to time. Despite my obsession with “time” in the film, I didn’t really find anything to relate all scenes to “time” and instead just ended up concluding that the only things that all the scenes share are the setting and consequently, the owner of the convenience store.
Often, we read, hear, and see stories and are often only exposed to parts that are supplemental to the overall conclusion or climax. In this film though, we encounter a lot of, if not all, chapters that do not really add up to the conclusion. I initially thought that all the characters/employees were incompetent that then resulted into the poor financial performance the store was having, but looking back, some of the employees seemed decent and were only bothered by external forces as opposed to their own faults. These were scenes and moments that did not seem to add up to a central plot, and perhaps a number would argue that there really is no central plot. The closest to something central in the film would be the conclusion and how the owner of the store, and again these seemingly unrelated or barely related chapters being separated from the conclusion made the film a complicated but also interesting watch.
The director challenges the usual storytelling we encounter every day. We see chapters that do not give us background context and true conclusions that make it very different from stories that rely heavily on such background context or conclusions. The movie even strays farther away from conventional films like this by including realistic scenarios but also mixing in supernatural scenarios such as the one with the DJ store clerk and the mysterious woman. The film’s approach of being seemingly lighthearted at first while seemingly address the horrific capitalistic climax was not new, but how the film was shown through the various stories that did not contribute largely to the conclusion but still left the viewers engaged and anticipating for the conclusion was something new.