Moving

Going to Moving on Wednesday afternoon was an impulse move to help use up Ian's second 10 trip ticket. It featured a Korean Immigrant couple, Jung and Lee whose two Korean restaurants are in what's now the red zone in Central Christchurch. Unlike most of the television you've seen about victims of the Christchurch earthquake, the focus wasn't really on the impact that the earthquake had had, because the back story was so much more incredible.

Moving alternates between filming Jung and Lee talking and footage of the red zone post earthquake. The earthquake footage is sombre with falling leaves and bulldozers methodically demolishing buildings.

Jung and Lee had lived and worked in New Zealand prior to immigrating. A failed business venture in Korea meant that when they finally immigrated they had almost no money. And so they recount how by a colossal amount of hard work and determination and a timely loan from a fellow Korean immigrant they haul themselves away from the poverty line and into relative prosperity. And then the February earthquake struck, but they are not too downcast by this particular adversity because it doesn't seem all that dreadful compared to what they've been through.

You couldn't help but like Jung and Lee because they were so hard-working and had a complete lack of self pity. They admitted to being depressed by their circumstances early on. And there was the insight that it wasn't all bad working so had because there's not that much to do in New Zealand "Of course you can play golf, but not every day"

Moving wasn't really like watching a film, it was more like actually meeting some pretty interesting and likeable people, who told you an incredible amount about themselves in a short space of time. The only downside was that to listen to the same people talk for 90 minutes with only short interruptions for earthquake footage required rather more concentration than I'm used to.

Anne's rating 2.5/5