Movie Review: Masquerade (2012)

Grade: B-

We’re spoiled when it comes to male leads these days: Korean dramas are filled with flawed, nuanced characters that change and grow as their stories progress, from Oh Soo in That Winter, the Wind Blows to Kang Ma Ru in Nice Guy.

Korean movies? Not so much, at least based on last year’s hugely popular film Masquerade. A spare, unidealized take on life in the palace, Masquerade offers a bawdy peek into what it might really have been like to be king during Korea’s Joseon dynasty. But unlike Ma Ru, its male lead actually is a nice guy—which is the movie’s biggest problem.

(Spoilers ahead)

Ha Sun starts off as a performer in a gisaeng house, making a living with his goofy impersonation of king Gwanghae. Kindhearted and silly, he seems to be the exact opposite of the self-important king. But there’s one way these two characters aren’t so different: they look exactly alike. When their physical similarities become known to the king’s closest advisors, Ha Sun is brought into the palace to take on the role of king while Gwanghae recovers from a mysterious attempt on his life.

Lee Byung Hun, soon to appear on American screens in GI Joe 2, does a fine job playing both the role of Ha-Sun and the role of Gwanghae. His body language alone is enough to distinguish between the characters: as the first, he’s loose-limbed and fidgety, and as the second he’s stiff and upright.

Masquerade is at its finest as it follows Ha Sun’s adjustment to living as king. It quickly becomes clear that being Joseon’s ruler is not the dream job we may imagine: there’s no such thing as privacy (leading to some pretty funny bathroom jokes), and it’s all but impossible for him to actually do anything—between his staff of babysitters and the corrupt infighting of the court, the king is frozen in place doing what other people want him to do.

After years on the throne, Gwanghae reacted to this lifestyle by becoming paranoid and nasty. He treats his servants as something distinctly less than human and spends most of his time with his favorite concubine, plotting ways to make her queen. So when Ha Sun steps into the role of king, it’s not long before people notice the difference—he takes an interest in the lives of his servants, bristles at the constant invasions of his privacy, and even tries to cheer up Gwanghae’s discarded queen.

And here’s where things went wrong, as far as I’m concerned: Instead of exploring how a real human being might have behaved when tempted with power, money, and status, Masquerade is content to tell the story of a nice guy trying to do nice things. When he eventually sails off into the sunset, Ha Sun is the same regular Joe he was when we met him, having turned down the throne because he didn’t want  to hurt anyone.

Ultimately, the real meat of the story was elsewhere. Masquerade closes by saying that Gwanghae ruled for three years after his experiences with Ha Sun, and then gives a list of achievements of the real-life king. Most of them have their roots in Ha Sun’s time on the throne, but Gwanghae himself must have carried on his impostor’s policies, including standing up to the all-powerful Ming dynasty. Otherwise, wouldn’t Ha Sun’s one-time actions just be footnotes to all the things Gwanghae did himself?

The movie never bothers to tell us how Gwanghae changed from a distracted, fearful playboy to a king who would speak out against the Ming dynasty for the sake of his people. Instead, it merely implies that reports of Ha Sun’s goodness were the catalyst for his personality change, prompting Gwanghae to re-examine his life and responsibilities as king.

Masquerade is an easy, engaging watch and an interesting exercise in historical fiction: According to its press materials, the script was inspired by fifteen days that are really missing from the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty during the reign of King Gwanghae. The screenwriter chose to fill these blanks with the doings of the invented Ha Sun, but I’m not sure why: in this case, I get the feeling the real thing might have been a lot more interesting.