Recently, my good friend Theresa forwarded me a link to a short but remarkably well-made Egyptian film, “The Other Pair.” This short film, which won an award at the Luxor Egyptian and European Film Festival, was directed by an extraordinarily gifted 20-year-old woman named Sarah Rozik. The film stirred my soul so profoundly that I remained mesmerized long after I had watched it.

The film, which lasts only four minutes, begins with a down-and-out boy loitering at a train station, wearing a broken and irreparable slipper. Presumably an orphan, the boy looks around and happens to see a rich boy nearby, wearing glistening black shoes. The poor boy intensely stares at the rich boy’s radiant shoes for a long time, and then looks down at his shabby, torn slippers.

The train arrives. While the rich boy boards the train with his parent in a crowd, he loses one of his shoes. As the train departs before the rich boy can retrieve his shoe, the poor boy rushes toward the shiny shoe. For a moment, I thought the poor boy would take the shoe. Instead, the poor boy picks it up and runs to the rich boy who is standing at the doorstep of the departing train and reaching out for the shoe. 

But the train is too fast for the poor boy to catch up. As a last resort, the poor boy flings the shoe toward the train. When I saw the shoe flying toward the rich boy leaning out of the train, I momentarily thought the rich boy would catch it, But it does not reach him and falls to the ground. Both boys are crestfallen.

I thought that was the end of it. But then came a surprise ending. The boy in the train takes off his remaining shoe and throws it toward the poor boy, smiling at him. If separated, the shoes would become useless. Now the pair of shoes becomes worthwhile. The film helps us to realize that the poor and underprivileged should not blindly hate the rich, whereas, the rich and privileged should care about the poor and underprivileged.

The film’s ending credit states that it is “based on a situation of Ghandi’s life.” While riding a train, Gandhi found he had lost one of his shoes. Then he took off the other shoe and left it on the train before he got off barefoot so that the person who would find the pair of shoes could wear them. 

In the film, Director Rozik beautifully renders Gandhi’s episode into a deeply moving piece of art. In that sense, “The Other Pair” could be a good example of what artists should do in times of conflict or crisis. Surely, it would be wrong if the artists made a film or painting that instigates hatred and antagonism.

Watching the powerful film, I brooded on the regrettable predicament of my country that is plagued by jealousy, hatred and violence. In our society, we are jealous of those who are better, richer or more privileged than us. We cannot tolerate those who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths. And we hate rich people who wear expensive, glittering brand new shoes. Sadly, it occurred to me that perhaps a poor Korean would never try to pick up the shoe and return it to a rich man. Likewise, a rich Korean would never be thoughtful enough to take off his shoe and give it to a poor man. Watching the two boys try to help each other despite their disparate backgrounds, I was ashamed of our society where we antagonize each other, being unable to embrace or reconcile with others.

Perhaps the scene the film depicts is possible only when we are young and innocent, just like a beautiful but evanescent dream we forget as soon as we wake up. As we grow up and become adults, we lose our innocence and become hateful and resentful. But should we not become mature as we grow old? On the contrary, we become stubborn and childish, or biased and rancorous, when we become adults.

Lamenting racial prejudice in American society, Leslie Fiedler once wrote: “In each generation we play out the impossible mythos, and we live to see our children play it: The white boy and the black we can discover wrestling affectionately on any American sidewalk, along which they will walk in adulthood, eyes averted from each other, unwilling to touch even by accident. The Dream recedes; the immaculate passion and the astonishing reconciliation becomes a memory, and less, a regret, at last the unrecognized motifs of a child’s book.”

When God created humans and animals, he used symmetry, presumably in order to teach us the importance of balance between left and right or a pair of eyes, wings, arms and legs. A shoe becomes useless unless it comes with the other one in the pair. Why then do we not realize the simple, obvious truth?

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By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and the president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. He can be reached at sukim@snu.ac.kr. -- Ed.