Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

gizmomogwai Secret Sunshine, a 2007 South Korean film, is above all else a tale of gaining and then losing faith. It revolves around a non-religious mother named Sin-ae whose son Jun is kidnapped, and then murdered when the kidnapper was dissatisfied with the ransom. Sin-ae, who already lost her husband, is in grief, until she takes comfort in Christianity and surprisingly achieves happiness. But when she visits the prison to forgive her son's killer, ("love your enemies") she is shaken to hear he has also turned to Christianity and believes God has already forgiven him.The movie doesn't appear to be anything special before the kidnapping. When Jun is kidnapped, I was surprised that when Sin-ae is on the phone with the kidnapper that the audience doesn't hear what he's saying. The movie starts getting more interesting as a tale of faith. I'd have to say I don't quite understand why after all she's been through she comes to think of God as a loving being. She'd have plenty of reason to doubt that. But I totally understand her frustration with her son's murderer being "forgiven" for his terrible crime, before she could have any say in the matter. Anger and frustration with God is, I think, a sympathetic subject, something that Ingmar Bergman explored to a degree, although his movies were less about anger than despair with the "silence of God." The movie doesn't seem to deny God's existence, and I'm not sure it really endorses Sin-ae's disillusionment, but it offers her perspective for consideration. For many, Secret Sunshine may be a hard film to take, but it shines a light on personal tragedy and a victim's relationship with God.

byungkeepark Secret Sunshine (2007) is famous for its awards at the Festival de Cannes in 2007 and other film festivals. Jeon-Do Yeon, who played the newly widowed Shin-ae, won the best actress trophy at the 60th Cannes festival. Secret Sunshine was also a winner of best feature film and Jeon-Do Yeon received a best actress nod from Asia Pacific Screen Awards. In addition, this movie won the best film awards in virtually all Korean film festivals. Masterfully written and directed, and uniquely photographed, Secret Sunshine expressed the hope and salvation that can be found when life is painful because of continuous tragedy. This film also talked about the forgiveness of God and people. Lee Chang Dong, director and writer of this movie, said in an interview, "In a vast sense, I wanted to express what love is and this movie could be a melodrama in a sense. Without love, we can't talk about hope and salvation." Lee acknowledged that Secret Sunshine had no apparent genre. This movie is not a movie about religion, but it drew attention from many Christians in Korea because there were a lot of Christian elements in the movie.The turning point in Secret Sunshine comes when Jun, Shin-ae's son, is kidnapped and killed. The kidnapper asks for money because he presumes that since she can buy land, she must be rich. Her lie causes much sorrow.Shin-ae becomes a church-goer and wants to forgive the murderer. She decides to visit her son's murderer in prison and forgive him. Jong-chan, Shin-ae's guy friend, says, "Just forgive in your heart. Do you have to go to the prison?" Her church fellows cheer for her and say they will pray for her. Her pastor agrees with what she wants to do. That is a sad moment because it is too early for her to do an action. The result of the meeting with the murderer is another turning point in Shin-ae's life. The murderer says with a peaceful smile that he has already been forgiven by God. This sparks anger in her toward God. She says, "How could You forgive the man before I forgive?" She begins to fight against God. She looks up to the sky and proclaims, "I won't lose to You." She becomes a snare, her heart is a trap, and her hands are chains. It is more bitter than death. She becomes crazier and crazier and is sent to a mental hospital. On the day Shin-ae is discharged from the hospital, she goes to a beauty shop and sees a familiar face. The daughter of her son's murderer works in the shop and cuts her hair. The murderer's daughter has helped kidnapped Shin-ae's son. While she cuts Shin-ae's hair, the protagonist can't understand what's going on and gets out of the shop quickly.It is difficult not to talk about Jong-chan in the movie. Jong-chan does his best to be by Shin-ae's side. Although Shin-ae doesn't care about him at all, he is beside her all the time. Shin-ae leaves church quickly, but Jong-chan, who started attending church because of Shin-ae, stays there because he feels peace with God. Lee Chang-dong, the director of Secret Sunshine, says that Jong-chan is like Milyang( secret sunshine), the rural city or vice versa. He seems to "be too secular and frivolous, but he is always two steps behind her and takes care of her. Milyang is like him." Mr. Lee adds, "Someone joked that Jong-chan could be an angel. I think that he could be the angel. Who knows? We can't say for sure that there is no angel." If there is a person like Jong-chan who forever accompanies his lover's twists and turns, we can defend ourselves against the overpowered. The life of Shin-ae is full of meaninglessness. Her husband died after he cheated on her, and her only son was killed cruelly by a murderer after she moved to her husband's hometown. And her soul was damaged because she learned Christianity in a wrong way—and that makes her crazy, literally. It is too easy to say that her life is filled with meaninglessness. Does she still have hope in her life? Can she find meaning in her life? The final scene gives us hope. Shin-ae tries to cut her hair by herself: we walk our life's journey by ourselves. She, however, realizes that it is hard to do it by herself, and we know that we can't do everything by ourselves. We see Jong-chan holding the mirror for her while she cuts her hair. That's her hope. She has Jong-chan beside her and he is willing to help her in whatever situation she is. As I mentioned earlier, Jong-chan is like an angel for her. If we feel that an angel is always beside and behind us, we can find joy in life even though we face adversity in our lives. Secret Sunshine was a hot topic of conversation in Korea. It is like Da Vinci Code. While Da Vinci Code helps us discuss the early church history, Secret Sunshine prompts us to deal with life's messiness and find meaning when life seems unbearable. With a shallow interpretation of the movie, people misunderstand Christianity and its theology. With a deeper interpretation, this movie will help us see beneath the surface. Some people say they quit attending church worship service after they watched Secret Sunshine, and Lee Chang-dong responds by saying, "They were already anti-Christ before they watched this movie. Secret Sunshine is a life story of a woman and we can interpret our life through Shin-ae's life.

DICK STEEL Initially, I would have thought that Secret Sunshine had something critical to say of religion (and here being Christianity), and wondered if it would be something of a rant against the ills of blind faith, or the manipulative power of those who are supposedly holier than thou. Surprisingly, it was none of the sort and was largely non-judgemental, putting in place events as a matter of fact, and allowing the audience to draw their own judgement and conclusion.And I can't help but to chuckle at the role of Song Kang-ho, a man who's taken a liking for widower Shin-ae (Jeong Do-yeon), and starts going to church when she does. The reasons for church going are many I suppose, either to find inner peace, to seek help, being afraid of eternal damnation in the fires of Hell, to reaffirm faith, or even things like wanting to get married in a church, or to skirt chase (I kid you not). But to each his own reasons for turning up in church every Sunday and participating in prayer groups for fellowship, what is indeed dangerous, is when the underlying ulterior motives, do not get satisfied, and that's when frustration sets in. Or when you discover how hypocritical man can be, portraying one face inside the house of God, and displaying yet another outside.Shin-ae and her son Jun moves to the town of Miryang, which is the birthplace of her deceased husband. Wanting to start life anew, she opens up a piano shop to give lessons, though in discovering her new found freedom and in a moment's lack of good judgement, has another tragedy befall her. And that takes one hour to get to. Secret Sunshine really took its time to get to this point, where things then begin to get slightly more interesting with Shin-ae now taking to embracing religion to deal with and accept her current state, reveling in the comfort that religion, and fellow believers, can offer.What began as crying out for sympathy turns into acceptance and belief that religion offers that silver bullet to solve the ills of all mankind, and sometimes you wonder if it's because of your personal myopic view of what the almighty is doing for you, that you begin to adopt a somewhat selfish opinion that everything's good going your way, and in Shin-ae's case, her magnanimous attitude in wanting to forgive others who had trespassed against her, forgetting something very fundamental that it the feeling can cut both ways too.The last act is probably the most fun of the lot as it says plenty, where most of us can identify with - why me, and why not someone else, as we rage against our faith and start questioning, unfortunately, with no hard and fast answers available. It is then either we fall by the wayside, or continue with destructive deeds so rebelliously. But somehow the plug gets carefully pulled in Secret Sunshine so as not to offend, and what could have been an ugly character mouthpiece, got muted.If you bite into the hype this movie is generating, then perhaps you'll realize only Jeong Do- yeon's excellent portrayal is worth mentioning, as she totally owns her role as the widow Shin-ae who is probably the most unluckiest person on Earth in having to deal with that many tragedies over a short period of time, and if you look at it carefully, most of which are of her own doing. Watching her transformation, is worth the ticket price, and despite having my personal favourite Korean actor Song Kang-ho in the movie, this is something he just breezed right through.

Bhuiyan Muhaimeen I did not intend to write this review, but having read the default review that shows up on this movie's URL, I felt compelled to write a rebuttal. The movie in a word is superlative. It does not deserve the slanderous review that the writer has written. I think the writer has totally missed the point of the movie to a large extent. In fact, I too was turned off by the excessive show of Evangelist devotions that occupied the middle of the movie to a large extent. However, I must beg to differ with the reviewer in that, this movie in the end is not a propaganda piece for evangelist action. I think, what the director has shown is that how religion is not enough to find all the answers, how religion is to a large extent incapable of providing answers to basic, simple questions that one may ask and all that religion has to offer is sometimes just banal platitudes of one kind or another. This does not demonstrate a value judgment on religion as we have to remember that religion is transmuted and expressed by ordinary, mostly well meaning, basically good people and they usually have no monopoly on truth and thus religion can not in the end provide the ultimate answers to some questions in life. Ultimately, it is a matter of faith. You have to take it on faith and that's all. And if you are given to faith, then you can appreciate any show of faith. And if you are not given to faith then any show of faith is tiresome. It is thus at the same time, instructive to note the reviewer reaction to the movie. In any case, the director shows us that one can choose not to accept the religious interpretation of events and answers to questions and in spite of that life goes on and there are 'secret sunshine' in this world that awaits all wounded souls, regardless of their religious orientation. And that's just the core message of the film! Please note the last scene of the movie, if you don't get this! In the end, the movie is a great one and very thought provoking and confronts you - the viewer with questions that you have to answer for yourself. Thus it is a work of art that is challenging to you personally. I do agree with the reviewer in that, the Evangelical stuff was a bit too much. However, given the above interpretation of religion as shown in the movie, I think the director was trying to balance the act whereby he might not be called an Evangelist – basher! The actor Kang-ho Song was great as always. He's so balanced and just perfect that he's just amazing. He's my favorite Korean actor no doubt. I know the actress Do-yeon Jeon got the Cannes award for best actress for this movie. However, I did not find any specialty in her acting. It seems that to get awards you just have to act really convincingly in crying and hysterical scenes and all… All in all a great movie. If you don't like it – please watch it again and see if you get it! If it leaves you dissatisfied or uncomfortable or asking questions then think, if that was not what the director was actually aiming at through this movie in the first place!