영화 《밀양》이 제기하는 인간학적 성찰 -악의 현실과 구원의 방향성을 중심으로-

Abstract

The movie Secret Sunshine(Lee Chang-dong, 2007, Korea) is based on the novel The Story of Worms(Lee Choung-jun, 1985, Korea). But the film has much more abundant characters and episodes than the original work. The heroin Shin-ae had already had many sufferings such as unchastity and death of her husband and now had lost her only son by the vicious kidnap and murder. Surprisingly the kidnapper and murderer was one of the teachers of her son, who had also sufferings involved money or his daughter. After fierce sorrow and pain, Shin-ae entered into the Christianity and decided to forgive the murderer. When she heard the murderer say that he had already been saved by God, however, she was deeply plunged in despair. So she got angry with God, raised a turmoil, and eventually tried to kill herself. Fortunately she survived and got the energy from neighbours in marketplace. Especially jong-chan, who was one of the neighbours and had long been disregarded by Shin-ae because of his worldling-like character though he liked her, took care of her to the end. Why did Shin-ae have to go through such a sufferings? Why did her little son have to die? Where dose the evil(s) come from? I think the boy was an instrument which was arranged by God for Shin-ae's spiritual development. I conclude that from theodicy of Leibniz and Irenaeus, who thought the evil is useful for realizing God's will to complete the universal perfectness or the spiritual growth of human beings. According to the process theory where God is believed to be just the process of change, the evil in this situation was the failure of the harmonious flow of wills, that is, the frictions between wills: between the murderer's will and Shin-ae's will; between the murderer's good will and his bad will, etc. In the other hand, the T'ien-t'ai school(天台宗), one of the important sects of Buddhism, has taught the theory of 'Three Thousand Worlds in One Thought(一念三千說)'. It means that one human mind can include three thousand categories of existence. That is to say, it means the possibility of the various phenomenal appearances of the essence. According to the theory, Shin-ae had the badness on the ground of her bluster and dependence on money which she didn't have actually, whereas the murderer had the goodness or at least justification on the ground of the resemblance between his life and our own lives including many troubles. By the way, can the murderer's assertion be justified that he was saved by God? Is Shin-ae's anger toward God appropriate? I think there are two directions in salvation: one is the vertical one and the other is the horizontal one. The vertical one is what is build between God and human. The God-human channel is just for the one person, so no other people can interfere with the channel. On that point, Shin-ae was a loser because she dared evaluate the salvation channel between God and the murderer. Where in the world, however, can the salvation from God exist without human forgiveness and healing? If the murderer's assertion couldn't make Shin-ae agree, it was natural that his truth should be doubted. On that point, the murderer was a loser.