Long Long Night is the rare children’s animation that respects its audience enough to believe they are equipped to handle some of the hardest realities of adult life — the inevitability of loneliness and the loss of our dearest loved ones, not to mention the cold, uncaring nature of the cosmos. The film is also beautifully poignant in its depiction of how we can create meaning and forge loving connections despite the fundamental brutality of our existential plight. Not bad for a colorful road movie for kids featuring a gentle rhinoceros and a baby penguin.
The film marks the feature debut of Korean filmmaker Youm Kyu-bock, who spent two decades directing commercials, including campaigns for Samsung, BMW and Canon. A visual design graduate of Kookmin University, Youm worked as a producer at AlphaVille 44 and a director at Elvis Production before becoming CEO of GoogGoog Studio, an advertising and branded-content company now venturing into original features.
Independent animated features remain relatively uncommon in South Korea, and the production tested how far Youm could stretch a budget of about 5 billion won ($3.7 million). He estimates that the film took four-and-a-half years to make, including an 18-month pause when funding ran short. The animation team typically numbered about 60, rising to roughly 120 artists at the height of production.
Youm’s film is adapted from an award-winning children’s book of the same name that has sold more than 800,000 copies in South Korea. The story’s hero, Norden, is a White Boulder rhino who experiences the uniquely tragic plight of becoming the last living example of his species (the book’s author, Ru Ri, took inspiration from Sudan, the real-life last male northern white rhinoceros who died in captivity in 2018). Raised by caring elephants in an orphanage, Norden eventually ventures out on his own and finds a mate. They have a daughter, and for a brief while life is good. Then poachers kill his partner and child, leaving Norden badly wounded. He is rescued by conservationists but soon confined to a zoo. Later, a civil war breaks out, and rocket fire punctures the zoo’s fences; Norden escapes and falls in with a plucky penguin who is guarding an abandoned egg. The egg eventually passes into Norden’s care, and when it hatches, the rhino and the chick make their way across desert and savanna toward the sea. The orphan once taken in by elephants now finds himself raising a creature whose home is a place he will never be able to venture.
Made in 3D with Unreal Engine, the film gives Norden’s weathered hide and Africa’s endless grasslands and deserts an almost tactile detail. But Youm uses light and color to temper that realism, lending the animals’ experiences in the African landscape the warmth and wonder of a storybook illustration.
Long Long Night screened in competition at the Busan International Film Festival in October, drawing praise for the nuance of its storytelling and the painterly detail of its animation. It had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, making it the first Korean animated feature to debut at TIFF since Yeon Sang-ho’s The Fake in 2013.
GoogGoog Studio and Studio Eon produced the film, with The Contents On presenting. Seoul-based Finecut handles worldwide sales and will give the English-dubbed version its first market screening at AFM on Nov. 11.
The Hollywood Reporter recently connected with Youm in Seoul to discuss the creation of Long Long Night.
How did you first encounter Ru Ri’s book, and what made you want to turn it into a film?
I had originally been developing a horror thriller series, but it stalled when COVID-19 hit. That was when I remembered Long Long Night, a book I had read with my daughter some time before and been deeply moved by. We later got permission from the publisher, Munhakdongne, and from Ru Ri herself, and the film project began.
What drew me most to the original was the emotional bond between Norden the rhino and the baby penguin. I also loved its road-movie structure — two lonely souls who have each suffered great loss, leaning on one another as they make their way to the sea. The scene of Norden and the penguin crossing the harsh desert in particular made me feel a strong urge to bring it to the screen.
As Norden raises the baby penguin, love slowly heals the pain of his losses, and the penguin, nurtured by that love, grows into an independent being. That process was so tender, and it left my heart full. When Norden finally lets the penguin go into the sea, I couldn’t hide my tears in front of my daughter. It felt like watching our own lives play out in miniature. And with that story unfolding in a setting as captivating as Africa, I knew I had to make it into a film.
For a children’s story, both the book and the film are unusually frank about loss, human cruelty and death. How did you decide how far to go with those elements, particularly for younger viewers?
Ironically, part of why the original book is so popular is because it confronts those themes head-on. But young audiences are very important to us, so we put a lot of effort into keeping the tragic beauty and emotional mood of the original to a certain degree, while making sure it never came across as gruesome or shocking.
For the brutal poaching scenes, we tried to imply them through sound and the mood of the lighting, and for the deaths of the supporting characters, we avoided showing them directly as much as possible, pulling back the angle and creating some distance so that viewers could understand what happened through the context of the story. Still, even after all of this, the world of Long Long Night is indeed not a film coated in the fairy-tale beauty of conventional children’s films, and that was never what we were aiming for.
After everything Norden has lost, he finds an unexpected modicum of solace in taking responsibility for another vulnerable life. What interested you about that response to grief?
I believe that those who have been deeply wounded recognize the wounds of others more easily, and that is why they cannot turn away.
There is a Korean saying that goes, “The bond of raising a child is more fearsome than the bond of giving birth.” “Fearsome” here doesn’t mean scary or frightening; it means that the love built up through living together is that much deeper and stronger. Norden and the baby penguin are not related by blood, nor are they even the same species, but through countless long long nights together they gradually become each other’s family. It’s also the kind of salvation story I personally love. But what makes it all the more meaningful is that it isn’t a typical Hollywood hero story; it’s a story about “ordinary heroes,” fragile beings who stand together, heal one another and, in the end, come to realize the true meaning of love.
Was communicating an environmentalist message — or more care for animals and the natural world — something that was important to you with this project?
Personally, the scene that hurts me the most is when the humans at the zoo cut off Norden’s horn after he has already lost his friend Angabu to horn poachers. Having lost both his friend and his horn, Norden is in shock and sunk in grief, while the human visitors walk right past him, laughing and chattering away. That scene was meant to show how easily an animal’s life can be damaged or cast aside by human indifference.
Behind the deaths of Norden’s family and the supporting characters, there are almost always traces of human violence — poaching and war. These are the villains. They are shown in shadow and silhouette. But there are also humans who do their best to protect the lives of the animals. These I showed in bright light and in close-up. I directed it so as to show the audience — and especially younger viewers — that there are broadly two kinds of people with regard to animals and to ask them where they would want to stand. Although, to be honest, it’s framed as a question, I’m quite clearly gently nudging them towards the answer: “The kind humans are better, aren’t they?” (Laughs.)
I found the film’s animation style to be quite beautiful and emotionally affecting. How would you describe your style and what were some of your inspirations?
I guess I would describe my broader intentions as something like, “Telling an existential story in the language of a fairy tale.” I’m drawn to such stories because this world is not so simple that it can be told as a fairy tale. And when the characters are delivering their lines, I think my camera tends to focus on the mood of the space around them. I think it comes from my background as a commercial director, and I also seem to favor scene transitions, close-ups and building a mood without dialogue. A phrase I tend to use often with my team is “the color temperature of the air.” I’m obsessive about varying the color of the lighting depending on the situation the characters are in. I also tend to shoot tragic scenes boldly, in a documentary-like way, while giving emotional scenes a fairy-tale palette and plenty of time.
As for inspirations, Steven Spielberg is a director I deeply admire, and I picked up tips from E.T. on how to portray humans according to a storytelling binary of good and evil. In composing what functions as a war scene in Long Long Night, I even quoted a specific shot from Saving Private Ryan.
For me, what matters more than the mechanics of how events unfold is the time emotion is allowed to linger. My obsession with this idea is probably what produced the style of Long Long Night more than anything else.
How would you describe the film’s existential worldview — and what do you hope the film leaves young viewers thinking about?
The world is cruel and indifferent. Our existence is finite and fragile. There are many people living lives without purpose. But I believe that even if life comes with no given meaning, as long as you have the heart to love and protect someone, you can create meaning in your life. And if there were one message I’d want to leave with the audience, it would be something like. … Even if you feel worn down and insignificant right now, please don’t forget that just by being born, you were already a radiant joy to someone.
Original Article on Hollywood Reporter