When most people talk about plagiarism, it’s as a concept in academia where one person passes of the work or research of another as his/her own. Now you would think in the land of extremely vague if altogether nonexistent copyright laws would have no problem with this concept. And indeed it’s gone on for years under the guise of Confucian ideology of the older guys get their way…up to and including younger guys’ research. And it was that way for a long time.
However, most recently, South Korea’s outstanding educational reputation has become tarnished by not only allegations of plagiarism, but well-documented cases of professor outright stealing undergraduate’s work. And the country as a whole is getting tired of it. Enter Best Seller. A thriller based on a story about a female writer who is very popular for many years. Her reputation is spotless until she writes a thrilling best seller and is accused of plagiarism from someone who wrote a book in a contest where she was a judge.
The accusation tarnishes her reputation and she takes a two-year hiatus. She decides it’s time to write again, so she takes her daughter to the countryside where she rents a cabin that was built by a missionary as a school for orphans that is now abandoned. She finds her inspiration from a story her daughter tells her that a friend told to her. Her friend just happens to be a ghost! She finishes the book and it gets published to great success only to have another claim it’s plagiarized again.
That’s the nuts and bolts of the set up. I’m not going to tell you any of the rest because there’s some major twists and turns in this film and to revel more would spoil it. Suffice it to say that this narrative takes you places you do not expect and the ending is both comical and horrifying. Is it a ghost story of revenge or the tale of one woman’s slow drift into insanity? Give it a look see and enjoy the ride.
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