Bovine bond to fame

The stampede to see South Korea's most reluctant celebrities starts early, often before they are out of bed.

On many weekends, hordes of tourists appear at the tumbledown homestead of 82-year-old farmer Choi Won-kyun and his loving but nagging wife, Lee Sam-sun.

They are the unlikely stars of Old Partner, a documentary that chronicles two years in the lives of the hard-working couple as they await the death of the cow that has served them faithfully for 40 years.

The film shattered box-office records in the country for an independent film, becoming an instant low-budget classic, a fable about love, loyalty and rural Korean values — and also a touching, sometimes funny, tale of a wife's jealousy over the bond between husband and bovine.

Since the film's January premiere, a near-daily invasion of curious visitors has threatened the tranquil life of the illiterate couple.

The boldest intruders have barged into the house uninvited. “I'm gratified that people are interested in my parents,'' says the eldest of the couple's nine children, also named Choi Won-kyun.

“If only they would have a sip of coffee and leave, but they stay. What can my parents do? Hospitality is part of rural life.''
The project brought first-time director Lee Chung-ryul overnight success and a hard lesson in filmmaking.

Fantasy on screen

“From the start, I promised I would protect this couple,'' he says. “But this film has become more successful than I ever imagined. It has taken on a life of its own.''

Lee wanted to make a documentary about the beauty of simple things.

To tell the story, he chose a farmer who preferred his devoted old cow to any modern tractor.

He was inspired by his own rural childhood and by novelist Pearl S. Buck, who nearly a century ago wrote of a farmer and cow she saw on a trip to Korea.

“She said it was the most beautiful scene she had ever witnessed,'' says Lee, 42. “Now the cow's status has changed. They're no longer family members but seen as pieces of meat.''

For five years, he searched for the right relationship between man and beast. In 2002, he was introduced to Choi, who recently had been informed that his old cow's days were numbered. It already had lived far longer than most.

The pair's similarities astounded him: Nearly deaf and with a malformed leg, the limping farmer often was forced to crawl across his rice fields; the staggering brown cow, never given a name, was no better off.

Choi often groomed the skinny animal's diseased hide and fed him special gruel to keep his strength up.

To Lee, the pair seemed to have a secret pact: Keep working together, or we will both die.

In 2005, he began shooting what he saw as an intimate chronicle of the cow's final year.

Problems arose from Day 1.

Choi resisted any intrusion he felt would interrupt his chores. Every time Lee approached with his camera, Choi and his wife stopped talking or stared as if posing for a snapshot.

So the director affixed microphones to the couple's clothes and filmed from a distance with a zoom lens. What his camera captured was a poignant real-life drama, as the woman constantly berated her husband for not exchanging his old partner for a tractor.

“We work so hard,'' she tells the cow one day. “We both met the wrong man.''

Choi finally relents and takes the cow to sell at a market but he sagely asks for so much money that the cattle buyers laugh in his face.

“This cow is better than a human,'' he says. “When it dies, I'll be its chief mourner — and I'll follow. I'm alive because of this cow.''

Later, Choi sits forlornly with his head in his arms as his wife gripes that he loves the cow more than he loves her.

He doesn't react, but when the animal lows, his head jerks up.

“It was a romantic triangle,'' Lee says. “The old woman was jealous because her husband gave the cow more attention.'' The farmer endured both wife and filmmaker.

“There were two things that got him upset,'' Lee says: “When his wife started nagging and when he saw me coming.''

A year into the project, Lee found that the old cow was ignoring its stage cue: It refused to die.

Because he was making the film with borrowed money, he fought with his producer over the financing and deadline.

“At one point, I told the cow, `Could you please die faster?' I feel bad about that now,'' Lee says.

As the animal grows weaker, the couple and cow seem to know the end is near. In one sequence, Lee shows a tear in the eye of the farmer, then his wife, then the cow.

In one of their last days together, the animal struggles during a trip to collect firewood, prompting the farmer to stop the cart.
He unloads some of the wood, straps it to his own back and walks alongside his old partner.

Death and a beginning

Lee, who eventually parted ways with his producer and was dealing with a budget of less than $1 million, couldn't be there for every poignant moment.

He wasn't there when the cow finally fell over, unable to rise.
Alerted by the farmer's eldest son, he made the three-hour journey from Seoul to find Choi weeping as he implored the cow to get up.

When the animal finally dies, even the wife is moved.

Finally, Lee had his ending. Success was immediate. The film won an award at the Busan International Film Festival.

South Korea's previous box-office record for an independent documentary was 120,000 tickets, Lee says. His film has surpassed 3 million.

Even President Lee Myung-bak wanted to meet the director.

But with fame came a nagging question: How much is an old couple's privacy worth? Since the film's release, Choi's health has worsened.

His younger cow gives him fits, making it impossible to rest. Then there are the crowds.

Choi's son says the family doesn't blame Lee. The director recently made a nationwide appeal to South Koreans to respect the couple's privacy. But the hordes keep coming.

He holds himself accountable: “I put so much stress on the cow and the old man, their health worsened because of me.''
In this farming community of 35,000, residents are divided over the movie.

Some say it makes rural life look too glamorous; others fault the family for allowing the old couple to work so hard.

And people are starting to gossip: The couple was paid millions for the film, according to one rumour. The children are squabbling over the spoils, goes another.