Eye Level
So, how was the movie?
The lights in the theater dimmed slowly, and the murmur of the crowd faded to nothing. The leader films from the production and distribution companies flashed by in quick succession, then the screen went black — and there it was, thump, thump, Oh In-soo warming up his drums, steady as a heartbeat.
What appeared next was Min Joon-young and Oh In-soo, fidgeting restlessly on stage. The supporting cast credits rolled across the screen.
(Where's Yoo Tae-hyuk?)
(No idea. He's not picking up.)
As the two of them whispered, an elegant piece of typography appeared beside them. Baek Do-kyung, Nam Chan-hee.
And then — bang! A door slammed open and Yoo Tae-hyuk stormed in. Before anyone could get a word in, the music began.
Wow, they really nailed the song selection.
Kang Chang-hoon had attended the press screening too, but having now witnessed Yoon Jae-i and Lee Young-chang together, he was not the kind of reporter to simply give up. He'd managed to get his hands on a ticket and tucked himself into a corner seat.
The sound is better than before. Is it just because this theater's different?
The press screening theater was one of the three largest in the country, and just a month earlier it had undergone a major acoustics renovation.
Which was odd, come to think of it — the place had only recently been remodeled in the first place. He remembered wondering why on earth they'd renovate the sound system yet again.
Don't tell me they did it for this movie...?
That was pushing it, surely. Reporter Kang Chang-hoon stole a glance at the back of Cho Youkyeong, seated two rows below him.
His guess was, in fact, correct. Cho Youkyeong had wanted to experience Yoon Jae-i's comeback film in the finest environment possible.
The man really is bursting with talent.
She knew he'd performed the music himself, but plenty of people watching wouldn't be aware of that.
Even so, his vocal skill alone made it abundantly clear that Yoon Jae-i's talent was anything but ordinary. Cho Youkyeong settled into the screen with a contented smile.
(Aaargh!)
As Jung Yi-hyun gazed at Yoo Tae-hyuk on stage with undisguised admiration, another piece of typography appeared beside him. Kang Ha-jun.
And when the performance ended and Yoo Tae-hyuk spun away irritably, Yoon Jae-i's name appeared beside him.
With the opening sequence over, the setting shifted to the alley behind the venue. Yoo Tae-hyuk bore down on Oh In-soo, and Min Joon-young announced he was quitting the band.
(Doesn't it bother your parents, seeing you live like this? You suddenly decide to start a band and they don't even try to stop you...)
(Why are my mom and dad suddenly part of this?)
Hm?
A few in the audience sensed something subtly off about that line. Why did only that line stand out? Was there some hidden reason behind it? The question found its answer in the latter half of the film, when Yoo Tae-hyuk's past came to light.
(What the hell is his problem again these days?)
(Isn't he just jealous of Jung Yi-hyun?)
(Him? Jealous? Please.)
The relationships between the characters were a joy to watch in their own right. The bullheaded Yoo Tae-hyuk; the prodigiously gifted Jung Yi-hyun, whose genius somehow made him difficult in all the wrong ways.
Min Joon-young meddled from the middle, arbitrating their simmering conflict until he wanted to tear his hair out, while Oh In-soo lounged through it all placidly munching on snacks — only to drop something dead-on the mark every so often.
(A goose father's tearful devotion for the sake of his prodigy son. But the son's skills only keep slipping, and the father, crushed by poverty, takes his own life.)
Before long, brief flashes of Yoo Tae-hyuk's past played across the screen. It was a heartbreaking history for a character so insufferably reckless that you'd wanted to punch him for the entire first act.
(Who cares about people's right to know — why the hell are you digging all the way back to this?)
(Seriously. Are you trying to rub salt in the wound? Get lost!)
And then came the reactions of Min Joon-young and Oh In-soo, who learned of it too late — along with the revelation of Jung Yi-hyun's family situation, hidden behind all that dazzling talent.
The misunderstandings and crossed wires between them untangled one by one, and the four slowly became a flawless team. And with that, the audience found themselves growing attached to Agitato.
A few of the moviegoers noticed something uncanny: Yoon Jae-i's sheer gravitas.
All four actors in Intermission were newcomers. Even Yoon Jae-i, the most recognizable of them, had debuted only recently.
There wasn't a single seasoned character actor or familiar veteran face among them.
And yet Yoon Jae-i, in his very first leading role, commanded the screen completely.
Even when he spat curses, there was something strange about it — it never read as vulgar. His self-loathing and anguish over the inferiority he felt toward Jung Yi-hyun landed with an ease that made it feel painfully real.
What truly made the audience grasp the weight he carried, though, was the scene where Yoo Tae-hyuk faced the violin.
What... is this?
The band's sound had been crashing gloriously, shaking listeners to the core, and the story had surged through its provocative beats — fights, jealousy, condemnation from the press. Then, out of nowhere, came this still, quiet scene. It would have been perfectly natural for the audience's attention to drift.
But strangely, no one's focus wavered. They couldn't tear their eyes from the screen.
What the violin meant to Yoo Tae-hyuk had already been hinted at in earlier scenes.
(...All right.)
That was the only line of dialogue. It was a brutally difficult scene — Yoo Tae-hyuk had to convince the audience, through nothing but his eyes and the rhythm of his breathing, that he was finally ready to let the violin go.
Yoon Jae-i pulled it off with almost casual ease. The director's craft, of course, played its part too.
This is...
Lee Young-chang's eyes went wide. It reminded him of that performance in Moon Village — the one that made people weep for no reason they could name.
So Tae-hyuk's circumstances within the story mirror Jay's own. Uncannily so.
Lee Young-chang had come to see this film because of Yoon Jae-i. But what increasingly held his attention was the direction itself.
Yoo Tae-hyuk's backstory, so eerily close to Yoon Jae-i's own past. The violin as a symbol of that past. The olive-green violin case that appeared on screen whenever Tae-hyuk wrestled with his music.
And the eye level.
The first time Jung Yi-hyun faced Yoo Tae-hyuk, it was in a tiny indie venue. Yi-hyun looked up at Tae-hyuk from below the stage.
As he joined Agitato and learned his instrument, Jung Yi-hyun was always shown looking up at Yoo Tae-hyuk — and Tae-hyuk looking down at him.
It wasn't simply a matter of height. The disparity was engineered through blocking — whether a character sat or stood, the shifts in their movement across the frame.
(Is Jung Yi-hyun seriously new to music?)
(He's insane, right?)
But once Yi-hyun's confidence in his music began to grow — after Yoo Tae-hyuk hammered out his fury on the drums and his inferiority complex toward Yi-hyun came boiling to the surface — the eye level inverted.
And whenever Yi-hyun unveiled his brilliant talent, the gap between their eyes grew even wider.
(...You think I live like this because I want to?)
(So what.)
(I was jealous of you, hyung.)
And then, in the scene where Tae-hyuk visits Yi-hyun's home — admitting his inferiority and hearing Yi-hyun's true feelings — Yoo Tae-hyuk, who had been sitting down, slowly rises to his feet.
Yoon Jae-i stands 190 centimeters tall; Kang Ha-jun is 178. Standing face to face, their eyes would never line up. But Yoo Tae-hyuk is leaning against the wall — and suddenly their gazes meet on perfectly level ground.
For the first time in the entire film, no one is looking up, no one is looking down. Their eyes meet along a single, equal, straight line.
So they're finally standing at the same height.
Before long, Yoo Tae-hyuk slips out through the window, and the other three wait below, looking up, for Yi-hyun to come out.
It echoes the flag someone waved at the final performance — the banner that read, Falling Is Rock and Roll Too.
The eye level between him and Jung Yi-hyun may have shifted back and forth, but Yoo Tae-hyuk was always the one above. The man whose demonic talent dominated Agitato and the entire indie scene, the man who always stood on the stage.
But not this time.
(Yi-hyun, you closed the window?)
(Hey, you can't just stay up there!)
(Let's wait.)
The composition mirrored the scene early in the film when Jung Yi-hyun watched Agitato perform — the only difference being that the two of them had traded places.
Yoo Tae-hyuk, together with Oh In-soo and Min Joon-young, willingly waits below — waiting for Yi-hyun's descent. For his freedom.
(Aaagh, son of a—!)
(What the—?!)
And Jung Yi-hyun smashes through the window and hurls himself down to the ground, to join them.
At the end, Yoo Tae-hyuk and Jung Yi-hyun — their conflict resolved — walk shoulder to shoulder with Oh In-soo and Min Joon-young.
They cast off the past that was the violin and finally climb astride the future. All four of them, not one left behind.
And down the long, open road stretches the future Yoo Tae-hyuk built — as a car speeds along it.
What a way to throw down the gauntlet.
Lee Young-chang had seen Shin Ji-won's directorial debut. Back then it hadn't left much of an impression. He'd had no idea the man would distill his own life story into his work and stage his formal debut not as a violinist, but as a director.
(Ready?)
(Okay.)
And then the meticulously crafted final performance — a scene of staggering complexity, a scene that, beyond any question of acting, fulfilled the fundamental duty of a music film.
The painstakingly chosen songs, the escalating tempo, even the improvised passages played at breakneck speed.
(Waaaah!)
Fast, fierce, and feverish — just as the name Agitato promises. The dazzling finale of Intermission.
Wow... damn.
I might have to come back and do a sing-along screening.
Yoon Jae-i glanced back over his shoulder. He could see the audience, completely absorbed, their focus unbroken — heads swaying, feet tapping, lost in the music.
That was exactly why he'd taken the front row.
So this is what it feels like.
He hadn't felt it during the re-release of The Child. That film was already more than twenty years old, and his days as Yoon Jae-hee had never been something he looked back on fondly.
He'd been too young to do any of this before. The promotional appearances for the film, the screenings watched together with an audience — all of it was a first.
Yoon Jae-i couldn't tell whether the pleasant flutter in his chest came from the music, or from something else entirely.
"Wow, that was so much fun."
"I absolutely loved it."
In truth, at yesterday's press screening, several reporters had already predicted a smash hit.
Handsome, distinctive characters and the chemistry between them. Yoon Jae-i's performance, which anchored the screen with real gravitas despite it being his first lead role. And music that stuck to the genre's guns and wound itself around your ears.
"This one's going to be a genuine crowd-pleaser, I think."
"I'd say so. Forget people in their twenties and thirties — the middle-aged and older crowd grew up on rock."
And the cruel words Jung Yi-hyun endured from his parents, along with the image of him shattering the window and climbing over the wall, carried a message of comfort for a younger generation quietly carrying struggles of their own.
"Haaah..."
Shin Ji-won let out a long, slow breath. He still couldn't tell whether the applause rolling through the theater was mere courtesy or a genuine verdict that the film was good.
The effects of his heartburn medicine long worn off, Shin Ji-won rose unsteadily to his feet and headed for the exit.
"That was fantastic!"
"Director. The film really turned out beautifully."
The encouragement and cheers of people filing out of the theater brightened Shin Ji-won's face.
"Director Shin."
"D-Director Lee Young-chang, sir."
Shin Ji-won wiped his sweat-damp palm against his trousers, then respectfully took Lee Young-chang's hand.
"I thoroughly enjoyed your film. What a spectacular way to throw down the gauntlet."
"Th-thank you."
"I look forward to your next work."
It was praise from Lee Young-chang, a living master of cinema. And they'd even exchanged phone numbers — Shin Ji-won, still not knowing where to put himself, turned at the sound of a familiar voice.
"Ji-won."
"...Professor."
Shin Ji-won whirled around, startled, to find his old teacher — Professor Park Heeseon.
"Professor, what are you doing here...?"
"I was invited. By that young man over there."
Shin Ji-won followed the tip of his teacher's cane to where Yoon Jae-i stood talking with Lee Young-chang.
It was Yoon Jae-i who had given her the premiere ticket — but the choice to actually come here had been Professor Park's own.
"...How was the film?"
Professor Park studied the fidgeting Shin Ji-won for a long, quiet moment. She was not a frequent moviegoer; she didn't have the trained eye to catch every directorial device.
"You're giving up the violin over some pathetic little slump?!"
"You'd run an academy out in the sticks and drag the family name through it?"
"What? You're going to make films? At your age, chasing some late-in-life whim?"
But the things Jung Yi-hyun heard from his parents in the film, and the revelation of Yoo Tae-hyuk's past — the story of a man mocked online — bore a striking resemblance to the words a student had once heard while holed up in her room, paralyzed by a slump and too ashamed to show her face.
The dialogue had probably been written with exactly that in mind.
"It's been a hard road, hasn't it?"
"...!"
"I'm sorry the film world stole you from me. But I'll be watching every single one of your films from now on. It was truly wonderful."
"Th-thank you."
"Until next time, Director Shin."
Professor Park patted him on the shoulder and walked out of the theater. Shin Ji-won stared after her retreating figure for a long while, then murmured:
"...She called me Director."
From the old teacher who had insisted he must never abandon the violin — who had sneered that challenging a new field at his age could never amount to anything — came acknowledgment of the beginning he'd chosen for himself.
Shin Ji-won dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve as the cheers and encouragement of those around him washed over him.
Lee Young-chang studied Yoon Jae-i carefully as the young man watched Shin Ji-won and Professor Park.
Yoon Jae-i was composed to a fault, his expression unchanging — yet there was something in his eyes that looked, somehow, almost envious of the two of them.
"Jay."
"Yes, Director."
"Are you free this evening?"
Yoon Jae-i nodded at Lee Young-chang's suggestion.