Stories may be universal, but story-telling, as a performance art, just doesn't travel well. Kabuki is universally known among the educated in the West, at least by name, while rakugo remains obscure to all but scholars and a handful of devotees. This is an unfortunate, but seemingly intractable position. Narration in English to foreigners wearing headphones works fine for kabuki, but even the most fluent, dulcet-toned interpreter would find it hard, if not impossible, to get across the punch line of a rakugo story.
One great thing about Im Kwon Taek's new film "Chunhyang" is the ease and fluency with which it bridges the gap between pansori -- a Korean form of recitation akin to Japanese joruri -- and a non-Korean-speaking audience. A staple of the pansori repertoire for centuries, "Chunhyang," a story of virtuous young lovers triumphing over evil, is as central to Korean national identity as "Chushingura" is to Japan's. It had been filmed 16 times before Im made yet another version last year.
A prolific director, with more than 90 films to his credit, more than a few of them award winners, Im hadn't been satisfied with any of the previous films because, he said in a program interview, "none fully acknowledged their pansori origins." In making "Chunhyang" he incorporated a performance by Cho Sang Hyun, considered one of the masters of the form.