Dongwoo Kang in a scene from With Love, Charlie.
HOLLYWOOD,CA (LA ELEMENTS) 8/6/2024 – The Oscar Qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival returns this Thursday, August 8 at the TCL Theaters in Hollywood. With Love, Charlie is one of the standouts that you will want to catch. Keep checking back for our other selections.
Written and directed by Jaren Hayman and set in 1951 with the Korean War well underway, With Love Charlie opens with Jae (Dungwoo Kang) preparing to leave his pregnant wife Nuri (Abin Andrews) so that he might serve as an interpreter for the North Korean Army.
The film’s prologue explains that North Korea would force South Koreans into their military ranks if they had a special skill that was needed. Jae can speak English, and this is crucial as North Korea will be fighting American soldiers.
Nuri asks if there is any way of knowing when he will return. Jae has no answer as, “These aren’t my comrades Nuri, Not my brothers in arms.”
Meanwhile, over in the U.S another goodbye is being said between Charlie (Curran Walters) and his pregnant wife Anne (Ella Cannon) Like Jae, Charlie has no choice in fighting as he has been drafted. In sheer desperation, Anne pleads with her husband not to go and instead run away with her and their unborn child. Charlie refuses and promises that he will make it back home. Anne admonishes him by saying that’s a promise he can’t make, and he knows it. She hands Charlie a journal and makes him swear to write to her every week. Charlie agrees with a kiss and then leaves.
It is soon after saying goodbye that Charlie finds himself alone and face to face with Jae and his commanding officer (Jongman Kim) on the battlefield of North Korea under a torrential rain. Terrified, Charlie begs for his life saying that he has a family. Jae translates this information to his captain who wants to know where the rest of the soldiers in Charlie’s unit are. Charlie reveals that somehow, he became separated from his unit and has been lost for a few days with no idea where the rest of the soldiers are. The North Korean captain does not believe him and orders Jae to stab Charlie to get the truth out of him. Equally terrified, Jae carries out the order. Charlie doesn’t give any further information other than to panic and repeat what he has already said. The captain then orders that Charlie be taken prisoner. While he is being dragged away, the journal that Anne gave him to write to her is almost left behind. Jae picks it up and starts to read.
The next time we see Charlie, he is being held in a hellish prison under miserable conditions.
Walters’ performance as the titular character commands attention. He gives a deeply authentic portrayal of a young soldier spiraling into despair as he realizes that he may not make it through this ordeal as soon as he thought or even at all.
The film flashes forward to reveal that Jae has been honorably discharged and has made it back home. However, he is practically in a state of shell shock. Yuri is hurt and confused by the change in him. “Where is the husband I know?” she asks. Jae practically gasps out his reply, “You wouldn’t understand.”
Meanwhile, Anne clings to hope as the letters from Charlie continue to arrive just as he promised. She needs them as they are really the only thing that keeps her going while she is pregnant and alone.
As time goes on, the letters begin to reveal an almost sorrowful insight. The kind only a young man forced to leave his wife and unborn child to fight in a war not of his choosing would write.
“They don’t prepare you for the war. Not for what it’s really like anyway. They train us to surveil. To shoot. To surprise our enemy. But they don’t train us in how to kill. Or rather, how to live with killing.”
“The physical prison I am in pales in comparison to the mental cage I am trapped in.”
And perhaps that’s the biggest insight to come out of With Love Charlie. That there is no worse prison than the one you carry inside of you. Ironically, Charlie might be the POW. but it’s Jae who best exemplifies this revelation. Through Kang’s powerful performance, we feel every twist and turn of Jae’s journey. The same young man stoically going off to war because he believes that is best for his family, is far from the man who returns. A man who struggles to find some way to undo what can never be undone in this masterful tale of deceit, good intentions and the longing for redemption.
With Love, Charlie will screen at the HollyShorts Film Festival on August 8, at 7:30 and August 9 at12:30 am. For more information on how to get tickets please visit their site.
On our cover: Curran Walters in With Love, Charlie.
All images courtesy of HollyShorts Film Festival.
Follow LA ELEMENTS on Instagram and X. Like us on Facebook.
No Comments