Back to the Futureless Things

Looks can be deceiving, and Futureless Things (2014) is the epitome of this phrase. You would think from the start of this film that it would be similar to a sweet, romantic K-Drama, what with its bright coloring and happy characters. But as you get deeper into watching the movie, weirder events (that definitely wouldn’t happen in a Korean convenience store) start to take place that just confused the living heck out of me.

It may sound crazy to hear, but, to me, this movie felt even weirder than Steven Soderbergh’s Schizopolis (1996). Now don’t get me wrong, Schizopolis was a whole other oddity of its own, but the point of the movie is to be weird. Futureless Things is a film that one might think was normal at first, but will soon realize that it actually gets pretty messed up.

I couldn’t really follow the story when I first watched it. Everytime I thought I finally understood the plot of the film, another scene would come along and throw me off, back into a state of confusion. At first, I even figured the whole film was meant to be in a single day, but I found it weird that there’d be a lot of employees working within store hours, or that so much peculiar stuff could happen in a day.

The story is set in a convenience store, a place that would normally be viewed as static despite the variety of people who could come in at any time. Each scene featured a different clerk working behind the counter as they go about their shift. The constant change in character for every shift and the store’s visitors really showed diversity in the Korean culture as well as presented many issues these people face in their everyday lives. We see themes of racism and discrimination against North Koreans, the stigma of plastic surgery, the discrimination through language and illiteracy, and much more being tackled throughout the film. 

While watching the movie, I had actually forgotten the title so when ‘Futureless Things’ flashed across the screen at the very end, everything made sense. We see these clerks who are stuck in a rut, trying to find meaning and move forward in their lives such as when one of them was learning English through an audio tutorial or when the other was rehearsing for an audition. One of the clerks even drives a teenager away from applying for a job in the convenience store because he was pushing for him to continue his education instead. In this sense, we can really see the state of being ‘futureless.’

Then there’s the objectification of these employees done by both visitors and sometimes their boss. It is unfortunate to see these people being mistreated and it saddened me knowing that this is not just fiction for most people but a reality.

The film ends darker than anyone could have imagined walking into the cinema with the death of the store owner. It even features the teenager that was mentioned earlier as the next clerk working and (for some unknown reason) a dance number. I don’t think I was able to get the lesson of this film (if there was any at all), but it is definitely interesting and worth a second watch.