Summary
A fly-on-the-wall documentary about a performance troupe trying to make it big outside Korea, with a strong emphasis on the bond between its members.
When Ongals performed at some Australian comedy festivals a few years ago, much of press concentrated on them being one of the biggest acts you’ve never heard of. If you’re up to this sentence, you have now heard of them.
The nonverbal comedy team has travelled the world since 2007, but their biggest goal is to have their own show in Las Vegas. Cha In-pyo and Jeon Hae-lim’s documentary traces the group’s attempts to get there, chronicling one team member’s battle with cancer and the addition of a foreigner who doesn’t quite gel with the unit along the way.
The film begins with the roar of a crowd, followed by four grown men dressed as babies stepping onto a stage. If you aren’t already familiar with the group, you kind of get a sense of what their act is about through osmosis: beat boxing, juggling, and fart jokes seem to play some role in their brand of comedy. We never see any of it for long, but that’s not really where Cha and Jeon want us to concentrate.
What emerges is a family saga about a tight knit group from the perspective of outsiders. The main person in the latter camp is Tyler, an American performer who doesn’t quite seem to have the same devotion to the cause as the rest of the troupe. While language doesn’t prove to be a barrier, given the physical nature of their performance, Tyler is depicted as being less interested in being an Ongal than he does in furthering his career as an actor. Everybody hates a tourist, Tyler.
The rest of the content is considered with a light touch, including Ongal member Suwon’s ongoing battle with cancer. The filmmakers randomly cut back to him for updates, mostly so that there is more of an emotional impact to the kind of resolution that emerges in the end. It’s here that we get more of a sense of how much these guys have sacrificed to get where they are. “We had nothing to lose,” comments one member. “So we had nothing to fear.”
ONGALS (옹알스) is a bit like the act itself, or at least the little we see of it. It never gets terribly deep, but it has a broad appeal and a genuine heart in its soft. While there isn’t really a conclusion to the story, that is a positive outcome for this ragtag group. As we watch the hospitalised Suwon and his fellow Ongals performing for sick kids in a hospital, we realise this is not just the story of a comedy act, but a group of nice people who will never stop fighting.
2019 | South Korea | DIRECTOR: Cha In-pyo and Jeon Hae-lim | WRITERS: Cha In-pyo, Jeon Hae-lim | CAST: Chae Kyung-sun, Cho Jun-woo, Tyler Dash White | DISTRIBUTOR: Korean Film Festival in Australia 2019 (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 85 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 22 August – 12 September 2019 (KOFFIA)
