Exploiting a story that is not new with a cast that is not a big name, but Doctor Cha still scored a full score in the audience’s heart.
Doctor Cha is currently a very popular movie with a record high rating and continuously tops Netflix in many countries, including Vietnam. The film revolves around the journey of redoing the life of a nearly 50-year-old woman after overcoming the door of death and realizing that she has missed too many precious things during the past 20 years of her life. A work with a not-so-new theme without a famous young or popular star cast, Doctor Cha still easily became a hit work, why?
The funniest affair on Korean screens
Adultery is not a new topic for Korean TV viewers. Even JTBC’s own blockbuster, The World of the Married, exploits this topic. And more coincidentally, the female lead in the World of the Married is also a doctor who has a close relationship with a younger, more talented male colleague than her husband. However, the story in Doctor Cha deviated from the trajectory with movies of the same genre. A topic “as old as Diem”, but the development of the story by Jung Yeo Rang, a rookie in the Korean screenwriter village, blew into that story a very new breeze.
Still the sneaky dating story of a lousy husband; a mistress who has all sorts of excuses to justify her wrongdoing; a wife of 20 years does not realize she is “cuckold” but that story is packed with humorous details with the main setting being at the hospital where the characters work. Through that humorous lens, the character In Ho, the man who twice betrayed the two women next to him, becomes the main laughing character in the whole movie. Although they hate it, the audience still wants to see the scenes of hiding their heads and tails, being jealous for no reason, or the times when In Ho was criticized by his children for treason. Perhaps also because In Ho is a coward who always tries to be patriarchal and powerful, his adultery and jealous ways are also very… cowardly. That “cowardice” resonates with actor Kim Byung Chul’s entertaining face that doesn’t need to do anything and makes the audience laugh in an extremely difficult situation of the character.
And the stories of people near the age of 50
Korean movies in recent years prefer the main character in the age group U40, U50. However, in other films, age is just one of the character identification factors, not to be deepened or mentioned too much. As for Doctor Cha, age is the key issue that makes up the main story in the film.
Cha Jung Sook (Uhm Jung Hwa), a nearly 50-year-old woman begins to rebuild her life after passing the door of death and realizes that the sacrifices for her husband over the years are meaningless. That husband’s hand, when he saw that his wife had to fight for her life with her increasingly weak liver, trembled, scared, and did not dare to donate her liver to his wife. At the age of U50, Jung Sook once again worked as a resident doctor after nearly 20 years of leaving the profession, becoming the “junior” of the girl who is in love with her son. Being a doctor has been hard work, now a person is almost 50 years old, has just had a liver transplant surgery and is taking medication for treatment, but chooses to plunge into this hard work, living like an ambitious girl in her twenties.
Simple things like going out to eat with colleagues after work, sitting on a motorbike watching the night view,… made Jung Sook cry because over the years, she’d missed out on so much. Not only for her children, she also forced herself to live like a person in the house, standing in the corner of the kitchen working hard to watch the whole family happily at the dinner table because of her inferiority complex. She always blamed herself for the “incident” that year, thinking that she was indebted to In Ho when he agreed to give up his first love to marry her. The thoughts that have been clinging to her for nearly 30 years have been erased when Jung Sook was nearly 50 years old. For the first time, Jung Sook dared to argue with her husband, dared to stand up for her daughter’s dream, dared to write a letter to her child, hoping that she would sympathize with her dream or simply buy a few expensive items. money and live true to the life of the “wife” of a hospital professor. Over 40 years old is not too late to start, but perhaps this is the last and only opportunity that if Jung Sook does not take advantage, she will never be able to escape the circle of her life.
Seung Hi – In Ho’s regretful first love and 20-year lover also had a big turning point at the age of nearly 50. After many years of being “a person in the dark”, at the age of nearly fifty, never before Seung Hi yearning for such a title. She even cruelly wished that Jung Sook would die from a serious illness, because she didn’t have a suitable liver or because the surgery didn’t go well. She dared to go to the church to pray on the day Jung Sook was on the operating table, to a place where people give each other blessings to pray that the wife of her lover will have bad things, so that she can have a righteous path in the hospital. In Ho’s side. Seung Hi was a victim of both In Ho and Jung Sook, but she chose to turn herself into a villain. And now, at the age of nearly fifty, that villain is more callous and desirous than ever. Like Jung Sook, Seung Hi also wanted to push the button to redo her life, but she never thought about letting go of her secret love so that she could live a dignified life.
There is no shortage of quiet moments
Even though the name of the movie is Doctor Cha, if you’re looking for a genuine medical movie, then this is not what you need, because the film spends most of its time reflecting on the two issues mentioned above. However, the film still has quiet moments about the story of those who stand on the line of life and death. The opening is when Jung Sook has to face the “death sentence”, when her mother begs a relative to save her daughter, so that she doesn’t have to suffer the sight of the gray-headed man seeing the green-headed one, the scene of losing her precious child. most of life. Or the cases that Jung Sook received in the first days of work evoked many lessons for the audience, and many quiet moments.
After 20 years of giving up on her dream, Jung Sook from the second best student in medical school is no longer good at her job, clumsy at everything, even with basic knowledge she can’t remember. Of course, she is not responsible for serious cases, instead, she is a companion, healing the patients’ psychology with her tenderness and honesty. An eccentric old man who likes to eat and drink indiscriminately and play loud music in the VIP room, always shouting, cursing and determined to change hospitals when he hears that he will have to use an colostomy; a prisoner who refuses to live, refuses to undergo surgery, longs to see his daughter again before he dies; a boy who wants to give up everything in the face of illness, afraid of becoming a burden on his wife,… Jung Sook can’t stand surgery, save them from Death or help them get a life normally, but Jung Sook silently stayed by his side, doing everything to make them appreciate his life.
With that rich old man, only Jung Sook is the only one who really cares about him without regard to money. She was the only one who broke down when she received the news that he did not have to use an artificial anus, while his children just wanted their father to die quickly and leave a huge fortune. With the prisoner who refused to live, Jung Sook was not afraid but treated her as a normal patient, even going to find her daughter to help her to understand the deep reason behind the prison sentence that year. For the boy who wanted to refuse life, Jung Sook was the only one who gave him an idea for psychological treatment because she recognized the patient’s problem. When he threw himself to find liberation, Jung Sook unconsciously jumped along, fortunately the rescue team was able to save the two in time. The sincerity of a doctor who is not good at his job has touched and inspired the patient’s instinct to live and be happy. It is this that has made Doctor Cha a work that is not only entertaining but also sends many messages behind it.
Ending
From medical stories to adultery, family conflicts and parenting, these are not portrayed in too specific and detailed ways in Doctor Cha. Each issue becomes a very special breaking point on the journey to remake the life of Cha Jung Sook, a woman who deserves more happiness like that. Up to the present time, Doctor Cha is really a work worth watching, funny enough, close enough and also enough humanistic lessons for all audiences to reflect in it.
Image source: JTBC