Portrait of a Family (Bi Gwang): A Long-Awaited Release and the Irony of Survival
The movie Portrait of a Family (original title Bi Gwang) opens heavily by explaining the true meaning hidden in the illustration of the 'Bi Gwang' card, commonly used in the traditional Korean card game Hwatu. If you look closely at the image on the card, it depicts a frog continuously jumping toward a weeping willow amidst pouring rain. This serves as a metaphor for desperate survival—enduring and surviving to the very end without giving up, despite numerous failures and hardships. Although the Bi Gwang card clearly carries the glamorous title of 'Gwang' (Light), it has a unique and ironic fate where its sub-card, the seemingly insignificant 'Ssang-pi' (Double Pi), is often much more valuable and useful in actual gameplay than the title itself. Recalling the rules of Go-Stop makes the peculiar position of Bi Gwang even clearer. Generally, in Go-Stop, the first to score 3 points wins. If you collect three of the other Gwang cards, it is immediately recognized as...
