Sojunghan nare kkum

First of all, "Green Days" catches the eye with animation and style, realistic drawing of people and backgrounds. This is especially important for conveying the atmosphere of a small Korean town of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The backgrounds are very detailed - right down to the cracks in the old wood frames, peeling plaster and stains on the walls. The visual baton is complemented by sound - Korean music of the late 1970s (I guess the ballad 'Blue Days' performed by Kim Man Su), picked up by references to films popular with Korean teenage girls of those times (snotty 'Love Story' for the rustic main character and aesthetically decadent 'Elvira Madigan' for her vainly pompous beauty friend) and series featuring pop references like Linda Carter's Wonder Woman's spin-transformation. The narration, in its pursuit of realism, echoes the art - the film is full of everyday mini-scenes, reviving the era of South Korea, when it was just on the verge of its technological ascension. Authors of this ascension are depicted as a friend of the heroine and his uncle - enthusiastic techies stubbornly moving towards their goal ("... there are no special mountains under the sky. Any one can be conquered, climbing step by step"). The heroine herself, reciting this verse, does not believe in it and is in search of herself, striving to find a place in life where she can leave her mark (like that imaginary dinosaur to which the name deceptively refers). She prefers Robert Frost - she stepped on "The Road Not Taken", with its eternal doubts, regrets about any choice and missed opportunities. The "idea" of the film is reminiscent of Kondo Yoshifumi's "Whisper of the Heart" (there is even a reference to gems that can be found in the rock), but the narrative itself is as prosaic as possible and devoid of fairy-tale elements, however filled with a variety of cultural references and an immersive retro atmosphere that is hardly whether the cinema could achieve.