[Unstagram] 'Banya Ajeossi' and Beyond Words

In the film Drive My Car (directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi), Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya is performed as a stage play. The play conveys that no matter how despairing conflicts and agonies may seem, once they pass, they simply become part of everyday life, and the current crisis will soon be a past one. People experience conflicts, fights, even shootings, farewells... and yet, they must continue living. The seemingly ordinary lives of individuals fill and move the world, and their accumulation forms the river of the era. It is not about teaching a lesson or moral. Through what is shown and told, the audience and individuals will reflect on their own lives and draw out thoughts. This is not an attempt to discuss the play as a work itself, but rather to talk about the profound layers of language found in a single scene framed within the film.

Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2016

In the play within the film, the actress playing Sonya (played by Park Yu-rim) is hearing-impaired and uses sign language. Outside the play, the actress herself uses her own language within the play as well. The actors in the film’s play come from different nationalities and speak different languages, including Japanese, Chinese, German, and Korean. Multiple languages are spoken in conversations taking place in the same space; the audience sees translated lines as subtitles, while the actors deliver their parts in their respective languages. Here, language exists as an essential function, and the differences seem to carry no particular meaning. Viewers do not find the multilingual dialogue of the actors unfamiliar or distracting. Among these, Sonya’s sign language stands out. The Korean actress portraying Sonya in the play uses Korean sign language. Although I do not know sign language, I felt a dignified grace of a language in the movements of her hands, facial expressions, and body posture. Just as spoken words and actions have dignity and level, I realized through this actress that such a world concretely exists in sign language as well. Whether it is due to the actress’s skill, the majesty of human gestures creating empathy, or both, it is hard to tell. I speak here simply as a recipient (audience) interested in language.

After a commotion, at the end of the play, Sonya speaks to Uncle Vanya. Sonya, sitting behind Uncle Vanya who is seated in a chair, bends her body as if embracing him and communicates through hand movements, facial expressions, and gestures. She says, “Still, we must live.” Because Sonya is behind him, Uncle Vanya perceives her words more through his body than by seeing them. It is as if his whole body becomes an ear in the world of spoken language. In fact, even in the use of ordinary language rather than sign language, we accept all that is revealed from a person?the gestures and facial expressions?as part of language expression. Sonya wraps Uncle Vanya’s hand with her own or strokes his head. “But what can we do? We must live. Uncle, we must live. We live through the long, long days and nights until the end. We endure the trials fate sends us...”

Vladivostok, 2016

In that gentle conversation, when she speaks words like ‘happiness,’ ‘unhappiness,’ ‘thought,’ or ‘endurance’ (or perhaps other meanings), she gently taps Uncle Vanya’s head with the fingertips of her five fingers curved into a circle. If one does not watch closely, or only sees it once, it is difficult to grasp the exact word. The warmth in my heart came from the mere guesswork surrounding that ambiguous word. One could inquire with someone who knows sign language or look it up online to find the meaning of that word, but I did not want to do so. The moment of their relationship and empathy was important; the meaning of the word was secondary. In the play, touching or stroking the head of the ‘listener’ is done behind Uncle Vanya, who faces forward, so that he can ‘hear’ through feeling. When facing each other, the sign language expression is probably the speaker tapping their own head. All of Sonya’s words were spoken in a posture that allowed Uncle Vanya to ‘hear’ with his body even without seeing them. Sonya’s words were those of ‘I becoming you,’ a conversation where the second person becomes the first person. Even those who do not know sign language would feel that the expressions of that language touch their bodies and communicate to their hearts. It was the true touch of words of comfort. It was not segmented spoken language but continuous bodily language, and the touch, gestures, and energy surrounding the words became one with the words, conveyed through the senses of the whole body. The speaker’s gestures sounded like a voice, a dialogue without separation between ‘I’ and ‘you,’ a monologue and dialogue combined, where sound, gesture, touch, and the tactile sensation of the cheek formed a single utterance. The small sounds at various pitches harmonized quietly like music filling the stage. It was the vast and deep world of all human language that words alone cannot fully express. It was not seen but was visible. Sonya’s actions were calm and quiet.

Experiencing the difference between the language, gestures, and background scenes imagined in the mind and those realized and shown through a completely different visual language was astonishing. Outside language, there are countless images, expressions, and existences that cannot be explained by words. In the human world, language and non-language coexist, but it is difficult to speak of their boundaries and realities, and what we say or do not say is filled with vague and complex relationships. Outside language, there exists a larger and more diverse world than the one language shows, and sometimes parts of it reveal themselves hand in hand with language. Upon reflection, both inside and outside of words are language.

To this day, I do not know the meaning of that ‘word.’ It is okay not to know. Mark Twain wrote in his essay My Autodidact Italian that ‘a single word of uncertain meaning can cast a hazy golden veil of uncertainty over an entire paragraph of cold, practical certainty’ (from Slowly Seeping, Bomnal Books). I decided to leave that word hazy.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.