Planet of Snail

Young-Chan has been deaf and blind since childhood. As he puts it himself, "In the beginning there was darkness and silence, and the darkness and silence were with god. And when 'I' arrived, they came to me." Young-Chan has no idea how to participate in the world until he meets Soon-Ho, who also has a physical handicap. He marries her and learns to communicate with the outside world through her. By softly tapping each other's finger, they can understand one another; it is sometimes as if they are tenderly playing a piano. This documentary follows the couple in the same gentle tempo as Young-Chan moves through his life. We see them replacing a lightbulb together, receiving friends, working on a theater piece, reading a book, and gliding on a sleigh down a mountain. These everyday scenes are accompanied by a poetic voice-over by Young-Chan, in which he reflects on his existence without sight and hearing. He feels like an astronaut, but that doesn't mean he is without a sense of beauty in the world. This becomes palpable when Young-Chan touches the bark of a tree, runs his hand through sand, or brushes raindrops on a window pane with his fingertips.