Ardor

Ardor (2002) is the first feature film by Byun Young-Joo, whose name is synonymous with feminist documentary filmmaking in Korea. Her documentary trilogy about “comfort women” – military sexual slaves forced into prostitution by the Japanese Imperial Army during the 1930s and 1940s – changed the conversation about military sexual slavery both inside and outside of the country by putting faces and names on anonymous victims of sexual violence from Korea’s colonial past. These documentaries also transformed the former comfort women into survivors, activists, and fighters for justice who still live through physical, psychological, emotional traumas in their sixties and seventies. After these internationally acclaimed documentaries, Byun now takes on the institution of marriage in Ardor and the film makes the bold statement that marriage violates basic human rights – to love and to be loved without confining moral codes and behavioral boundaries.

Based on a popular novel by a female author, Ardor (2002) focuses on a woman’s life after a traumatic experience that has left both physical and psychological wounds. Ardor’s protagonist is Lee Mi-Heun (Kim Yun-Jin), a college educated, married woman in her early thirties. She is a homemaker and a devoted wife and mother who lives in Seoul, Korea. Her family photo will be emblematic of an urban, middle-class, nuclear family, which contemporary Korean society constructs as a norm. However, Mi-Heun’s marriage is revealed to be nothing but a façade when her husband’s mistress pays a visit to their house and knocks Mi-Heun unconscious in a fit of passion and rage. The sanctity of her home is broken let alone her heart. Six months later, Mi-Heun and her husband are still together, but she still suffers from excruciating headaches that no painkiller or tranquilizer can quell completely. Her husband decides to relocate the family to the countryside in the hopes that the change in climate will aid her recovery.

Soon after moving to the countryside, Mi-Heun meets In-Kyu, a young, handsome doctor who proposes a new treatment for her psychosomatic headaches, which no other doctor has previously prescribed – a no strings attached sexual relationship with him for four months. However, the proposal for what In-Kyu calls a “game” has one rule. The game is over when one of the players says, “I love you.” Mi-Heun decides to enter into this unusual relationship in which a confession of love results in a break-up of a relationship.

Byun Young-Joo carefully stages the first sex scene between Mi-Heun and In-Kyu in an effort to convey Mi-Heun’s slowly awakening body and mind. Byun’s camera captures subtle movements of Mi-Heun’s muscles to focus on how her physical awakening leads to the awakening of her consciousness without objectifying her body but rather rendering her as a subject of this process. After the sex, Mi-Heun playfully asks In-Kyu if she was any good. In-Kyu replies he felt as if his whole body was being sucked into her. This is the exact same expression that Mi-Heun heard her husband’s mistress use when describing their illicit affair six months ago. Upon realizing the sexual power of female, Mi-Heun experiences something of a rebirth. Mi-Heun’s headaches disappear and her awakening is represented through the use of mise-en-scène. Her neutral-colored clothes give way to bright, colorful dresses (red, in particular), and her posture conveys a shift from a lifeless, depressed state to one in which she stands upright with her head raised, looking at the world with a new-found passion.

Unfortunately, however, Mi-Heun and In-Kyu’s game comes to an end as they fall in love and begin to take their relationship too seriously. Moreover, rumors about them spread widely in the town and Mi-Heun’s husband eventually finds out about his wife’s infidelity. Vilified and isolated, Mi-Heun and In-Kyu leave town in the hope of starting a new life together, but their escape is short-lived. The two lovers are involved in a car accident as they leave town and In-Kyu is killed.

Ardor is book-ended by Mi-Heun’s confession-like voice-over narration. The film begins with her introducing herself (“My name is Lee Mi-Heun”) and concludes with her describing just how much her life has changed. Mi-Heun now works a day-to-day job, lives alone in a one-room house, and cries every night. Yet, she proclaims that she is more alive presently than she ever was in the past. This confessional form of dialogue is mirrored by another female character in the film. A battered wife confesses to Mi-Heun that her husband was the first customer she slept with working as a barmaid. Before leaving the village in order to hide from her husband, she says to Mi-Heun, “my name is Eun-Yeon.” This confessional mode of address not only echoes a number of testimonies by former comfort women who came out and spoke about their experiences regardless of their personal shame, but it also functions to build a sense of alliance between these two female characters in the film: a middle-class, educated woman, Mi-Heun and a working-class former sexual worker, Eun-Yeon.

Mi-Heun also forms a rather strange alliance with another female character in the film. Despite the fact that they have never met, Mi-Heun is drawn to a woman whom she only sees in a photograph. After her car breaks down in the middle of the road, Mi-Heun enters a nearby abandoned house to seek help. Inside, Mi-Heun finds an old, broken picture frame lying on the floor. The frame contains a family photo of a husband and wife: the man is smiling and looking at the camera while the woman’s gaze is directed somewhere outside the frame. Later, Mi-Heun’s neighbor tells her about a violent incident that took place inside the now-empty house when the wife killed her father-in-law after he discovered that she was having an affair.

In-Kyu once tells Mi-Heun that he hates marriage because of its insurance-like quality. If marriage is a contractual arrangement between two individuals, the family photo serves as proof of that contract. The picture frame of the family photo, then, represents the institution of marriage, or the moral codes that define acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and confine human desires within a conventional form of marriage. Looking away, the woman’s gaze in the old, broken picture frame evades the camera and thus symbolizes her act of challenging or defying the moral codes and “rules” of marriage. In contrast, Mi-Heun smiles widely and looks directly at the camera when she has her “family” photo taken in the film’s final scene. In a typical family photo, the wife sits on a chair with her children and the husband stands behind them. Mi-Heun sits alone and the shot’s asymmetrical composition reinforces this absence. While she does shed tears, one gets the sense that her emotions result less from a yearning for her family, and more from her memories of In-Kyu. Mi-Heun wipes her tears and smiles for the camera. She looks younger, livelier, and more beautiful than ever before in the film. Unlike Eun-Yeon who is on the run away from her violent husband and the woman in the picture frame who is in prison for murder, Mi-Heun breaks away from the restraining boundaries of conventional marriage, or more correctly, her broken marriage. She has a room of her own, however shabby and small that room is.

Ardor received the Best Film and Best Actress awards at the seventh “Women Audience Awards” in 2002 in Korea. Based on popular votes by female moviegoers, this film was chosen as the best Korean film of the year and Kim Yun-Jin (familiar to American Audiences for her role in ABC’s Lost) was recognized as the best actress. However, Byun Young-Joo’s Ardor has not been without controversy – some critics and audiences champion it as a feminist text while others criticize it as a disappointing representation of female empowerment. I view Ardor as one of the most subversive feminist films that contemporary mainstream Korean cinema has ever produced; a film in which the director skillfully transforms potentially clichéd subject matter into such unconventional narrative and visual styles.

JaeYoon Park © 2009

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone

It is always a challenge to “translate” Tsai Ming-Liang’s cinematic language into a verbal form since his films rely on ambiguous audio-visual metaphors that defy concrete and rational explanation. Produced as part of a project celebrating Mozart’s 250^th birthday, I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone (2006) marks the eighth feature film by Tsai Ming-Liang, the youngest of the Taiwanese New Wave directors. From Tsai’s transcendental, abstract vision, inspired by “The Magic Flute,” comes a story of three drifters in Malaysia, the director’s native country.

Lee Kang-Sheng (Tsai’s main actor and frequent collaborator) plays a Chinese man – identified as Homeless Guy in the film’s credits – who wanders the streets of Kuala Lumpur. One day, he collapses on the street after being beaten by a gang of hooligans. Rawang, an immigrant worker from South Asia, carries him home and nurses him back to health. Homeless Guy then meets Coffee-shop Waitress (Chen Shiang-Chyi – another main actor in Tsai’s films) and begins to pursue her romantically.

Rawang, Waitress, and Homeless Guy represent a part of the population of vagrants who freely and aimlessly roam around Kuala Lumpur. Rawang works at an abandoned construction site – an incomplete building whose lower levels have been flooded – and lives in a makeshift house along with other South Asian laborers. Waitress works at a nearby coffee shop and the film shows her delivering coffee and walking around the streets of Kuala Lumpur. The film utilizes an old mattress, retrieved from a dumpster, scrubbed, dried, and reused by Rawang, to draw a parallel to the nomadic status of Homeless Guy. Both are filthy, both have been discarded, and both move from place to place.

These three lonely, wandering souls are contrasted with another set of lonely yet “stationary” characters – Paralyzed Guy (also played by Lee Kang-Sheng) and his mother, Coffee-shop Lady Boss. Paralyzed Guy is literally fixed to his bed while being nursed by Waitress. Her dispassionate treatment of Paralyzed Guy, however, is nothing like the gentle and loving care that Rawang provides for Homeless Guy. Coffee-shop Lady Boss also appears unhappy and burdened by the fact that she has to look after her paralyzed son. Her character mostly occupies interior spaces such as her apartment and her coffee shop tendering to her son and her customers as if she is imprisoned by her circumstances.

Like in his previous films, the sense of loneliness and longing prevails throughout the film as Tsai continues to explore his central themes of urban isolation and unfulfilled desires. Tsai’s signature minimalist style is also at work in the film, which includes long static shots, the absence of dialogue, and the prominent use of ambient sound. The director’s preoccupation with water further facilitates an auteuristic approach to this film’s reading. Simply put, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone is organized around water’s (in)ability to flow. The image of water and liquid appears in a variety of forms – herbal syrup that Rawang gives to Homeless Guy, the water that Rawang uses to wash the mattress and clothes, water drops from a constantly leaking tap, a drink in a shopping bag that Rawang uses to reduce Homeless Guy’s fever, Homeless Guy’s urine that Rawang helps release, the water used by Rawang and Waitress to clean Homeless Guy and Paralyzed Guy’s bodies, respectively, and the surge of water along the river bank where Homeless Guy attempts to have sex with Waitress for the first time. Functioning as a central motif in this film, water circulates through human bodies and flows through the city of Kuala Lumpur while giving and renewing life and linking solitary people.

The notion of water is associated with unfulfilled human desires in Tsai Ming-Liang’s cinematic world. Water flows from one point to another, as do human desires. For instance, Rawang longs for Homeless Guy who, in turn, longs for Waitress. Both Waitress and Lady Boss long for Homeless Guy but fail to have sex with him (although Lady Boss is “serviced” by his hand). Stagnant water, on the other hand, also causes problems as it becomes polluted, which is visually represented by a pool of water at the bottom of the abandoned building. Paralyzed Guy and his mother, Lady Boss, are figuratively linked to this dark, stagnant body of water. These two “stationary” characters occupy lower-level spaces – both the coffee shop and the apartment in which they live are located downstairs – while the three vagrant characters (Rawang, Homeless Guy, and Waitress) live, or more correctly, sleep in upper-levels. Toward the film’s ending, Lady Boss even steps into a dark pool of water and ends up submerging half of her body after unsuccessfully following Homeless Guy and Waitress in the abandoned building.

Yet, the stagnant pool of water in the building may not be as lifeless as it appears. Neither is Paralyzed Guy. Perhaps, the film depicts Paralyzed Guy’s wandering mind in his daydream reflecting his desires of not wanting to sleep alone. The fact that Lee Kang-Sheng plays dual roles of Paralyzed Guy and Homeless Guy supports this reading. One of the most beautiful scenes in the film features Homeless Guy’s encounter with a butterfly. This scene hints at the life-giving possibilities of the water since Homeless Guy is holding a fishing rod into the pool. At the same time, this scene recalls the well-known parable of Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream where the ancient Chinese philosopher once dreamt he was a butterfly happily fluttering around but after waking up he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly still dreaming he was Zhuangzi. I am tempted to draw an analogy and read this film as Tsai Ming-Liang’s modern reinterpretation of Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream. The film ambiguously suggests that we do not know whether Paralyzed Guy is dreaming of being homeless, wandering through the city of Kuala Lumpur, or it’s in fact Homeless Guy who is dreaming that he is paralyzed and fixed in one place.

As a director, Tsai Ming-Liang himself is a vagrant, a homeless drifter in the world of international art cinema. Tsai was born in Malaysia and lived there for about twenty years before moving to Taiwan to attend college. He doesn’t own a home and has lived in different cities around the world – in his own words, he’s “a citizen of the world.” An image of the director comes to my mind: Tsai is listening to Mozart’s “Magic Flute” in a hotel room or in an apartment where he has a temporary lease; and he envisions a story of failed human interaction between drifting foreign laborers in Malaysia where he spent his childhood and teenage years. I wonder how much of Tsai’s diaporic identity (and his homosexuality, if I could stretch identity politics a little bit) plays into his imagining of this film. I wonder if I find this film poignantly beautiful because of my own diasporic subjectivity as a Korean-born US resident. The film ends with another beautiful image of the three drifters (Waitress, Homeless Guy, and Rawang) sleeping together on the old mattress that slowly floats on a pool of seemingly stagnant, lifeless water. They’ve finally found a shelter in each other’s arms, albeit temporarily. Perhaps, it’s the temporary quality that makes this image emotionally resonant with me. Shot in the director’s native Malaysia for the first time, I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone visualizes transient beauty, without being overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness, found in the midst of urban disconnection and repressed human desires.

JaeYoon Park © 2009

Forever the Moment

Inspired by a true story, Forever the Moment (2008) depicts a human drama surrounding the South Korean women’s handball team that won the silver at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Released in Korea in early 2008, this film was a huge box-office success. Yet, it is a mistake to read this film as a mere sports melodrama whose primary function is to lift national spirits.

A proper understanding of Forever the Moment requires knowledge about the director of this film, Yim Soonrye, and the status of handball as a sport in Korea. Yim Soonrye is one of the few female directors in the current Korean film industry and her previous films focus on disenfranchised groups of people in contemporary Korean society – e.g., three young men who face social prejudices after graduating high school in Three Friends (1996), four male musicians in a failing nightclub band in Waikiki Brothers (2001). In her third feature film, Forever the Moment, Yim chooses to look at a group of female athletes on the national handball team. Handball is not a popular sport in Korea and thus it constantly suffers from a minimal fan base and lack of financial support. Despite the fact that the women’s team has won gold medals at previous Olympic games, its players still receive little attention in contrast to other athletes who often become national celebrities after winning the gold. Director Yim’s continuous and conscious effort to make films about marginalized individuals in Korea culminates in one of the rare sports movies that focus on female athletes who excel at what they do yet are largely ignored by society.

The film centers around three veteran players – Mi-Sook, Hye-Kyung, and Jung-Ran – who are brought in to revive the national team, which has the worst record out of all the previous national teams. However, these women in their thirties are often looked down upon as “seniors” by the team’s younger players, thereby comprising a disenfranchised group within the already disenfranchised women’s handball team. To make things worse, they each have personal problems that interfere with their professional career.

Mi-Sook was the best player of her time and a significant factor in Korea’s gold medal win at previous Olympic games. Handball was, and still is, “a meal ticket” for her. Mi-Sook’s husband is on the run from debt collectors after being swindled by his business partner. She has no choice but to work at a supermarket selling fresh produce after the dissolution of her professional team. Mi-Sook decides to join the national team to pay back her husband’s debt and to support her family. Yet, she has to bring her son to the training camp, and his innocent soccer play often interrupts the national team’s training sessions.

Hye-Kyung, after the Korean national team hires her as the interim coach, quickly embarks on recruiting older players like Mi-Sook and Jung-Ran to compensate for the presence of inexperienced younger players on the team. Hye-Kyung persuades Mi-Sook, her former rival, to join the national team by arranging a cash advance. Unfortunately, Hye-Kyung is soon replaced by a new male coach, Ahn Seung-Pil, who is her former fiancé. The Chairman of the Handball Association explains that a divorced female coach like Hye-Kyung is not appropriate for such a public position as the national team’s coach. Hye-Kyung then unwillingly joins the team as a player under the leadership of her former fiancé. The ambitious and arrogant Coach Ahn, who only cares about winning the gold in Athens, adopts a scientific, European training system and puts a lot of pressure on the players both physically and emotionally. He even humiliates Hye-Kyung in front of other players when she arrives late to training as a result of her daughter’s illness.

Jung-Ran is happily married to a restaurateur who willingly supports her career as a handball player. However, she struggles with infertility resulting from hormonal pills that she took over the course of her career in order to control her menstrual cycles. Jung-Ran often finds herself in the middle of conflicts with the younger players at the beginning, but she ultimately wins them over by looking out for them like their older sister.

In fact, all the women on the team look out for each other as the film progresses. The “senior” players are attentive to other players’ personal issues and they also give encouragement and advice to the younger players. This inspires the younger players - and even the insolent Coach Ahn - and their compassion functions to truly unite the team. Hye-Kyung’s comment toward Coach Ahn in response to his lack of empathy – “after having a kid and coaching players I learned to be compassionate.” – particularly stands out as an example of “difference feminism,” which asserts the virtue of femininity (in this case, motherhood) as well as the superiority of female leadership that is based on compassion and personal relationships. Coach Ahn begins to change and becomes a better person that eventually leads the team to the finals at the Athens Olympics.

Mi-Sook is the character with which I identify the most. Her husband attempts suicide the night before the finals, which forces her to consider returning to Korea. However, she decides to play in the team’s final game against Denmark. Shots featuring Mi-Sook rejoining the team are juxtaposed with shots in which Mi-Sook calls her husband. She tells her husband, “I’m not going to give up. I’m going to see this through. So, don’t give up. You can’t give up.” It was as if I was on the other end of that line nodding and crying, “Yes, Mi-Sook. I will not give up.”

The finals go into overtime and then into a penalty shootout. Mi-Sook is the last one to shoot among the Korean players. Echoing the dynamic of Mi-Sook’s life outside of the stadium, the pressure for success is all on her shoulders. Whether or not Korea wins the gold depends solely on Mi-Sook’s final shot. The fact that this film is based on a true event, in which Korea won the silver, may make your viewing experience less climactic. Yet, winning or losing is not an important matter in this film’s context. History may be written by the victors, but the female handball players who competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics will never be forgotten. They will be remembered as fighters and survivors thanks to Forever the Moment.

JaeYoon Park © 2009

Sukiyaki Western Django

Once upon a time in Japan, a nameless gunman comes to a remote town where two clans feud over the control of the town’s hidden treasure of gold. The gunman helps the locals – more specifically, a beautiful young widow, her son, and his grandmother – fight the two warring clans to restore order to the town and then rides away.

The above summarizes the basic plotline of Sukiyaki Western Django (2007), which resembles the seminal spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964). Sukiyaki Western Django is also derived from another spaghetti western classic, Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966), which is evident from its use of similar images such as a machinegun hidden in a coffin and a cemetery filled with freshly made graves topped with crosses. The film’s director, Miike Takashi, who is best known for gory scenes and extreme violence in his films, creates a Japanese-style western – hence, a “sukiyaki” western – by combining conventions of the western genre with visual elements of the samurai film. Miike replaces the two rival clans of Americans and Mexicans from the original Django with the Genjis (also known as the Whites) and the Heikes (or the Reds) and transposes their battle into feudal Japanese history.

There are several markers of “Japan-ness” in the film including Buddhist imagery, a samurai sword and bushido used by the Genji gang’s leader, and a torii gate that marks the entrance to the town. The cultural and generic blending of the American/European western with the samurai film seems natural given that A Fistful of Dollars is a remake of Kurosawa Akira’s samurai film, Yojimbo (1961) and John Sturges’ western, The Magnificent Seven (1960) is an adaptation of Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954). In fact, Sukiyaki Western Django ultimately serves as a prequel to the original Django by accounting for Django’s cultural heritage.

Yet, Sukiyaki Western Django has no intention of offering a serious reflection on the cultural legacy of Japanese filmmaking or a tribute to Kurosawa Akira’s films. The film relies on empty spectacle and playful pastiche while utilizing anachronistic props and cross-cultural references. Although the film is set in feudal Japan, dynamite, shotguns, and a machinegun are juxtaposed with samurai swords and crossbows. Furthermore, the Heike gang’s leader identifies himself with Henry VI after reading William Shakespeare’s book and often delivers Shakespearian lines like “Confess thy error. This time, we win!” It should come as no surprise then that the film features Quentin Tarantino, who is a huge fan of Miike’s and who is notorious for his pastiche films, as a sukiyaki-eating gunslinger who provides the film’s backstory. The film’s anachronistic qualities reach their peak with the aging Tarantino’s character reminiscing about his son Akira, whom he named after the Japanese anime, Akira (1988) because he was “an anime otaku [or obsessive fan] at heart.”

I think that Tarantino had much more fun in this cameo role than most of the audience watching the film. It is difficult to identify with any of the characters because they portray specific archetypes rather than well-motivated characters with three-dimensional depth. The narrative’s use of flashbacks accompanied by excessive voice-over narration also reinforces a sense of detachment from the characters. Moreover, Miike’s decision to have the Japanese cast speak in English is another odd choice given the actors’ difficulties with the language, which makes the use of subtitles obligatory. This choice shifts the audience’s attention away from what they are saying to how they deliver their lines in awkward English.

I find it very interesting that the director seems most enamored with the sheriff who suffers from a split personality, given the large amount of screen time dedicated to this comical yet inessential character. Just like the sheriff who hears two conflicting voices, Sukiyaki Western Django becomes a schizophrenic film spilt between East and West and filled with contradictory source material. It is entertaining to some extent to discover intertexual references, but I am not sure what kind of subversive meaning those references carry in this film. The representation of women demonstrates conflicting notions of a feminine role as well. It is intriguing that the film represents the legendary gunfighter called “the Bloody Benten” as a female. However, this presumably strong female character is not enough to compensate for the extremely disturbing violence against the beautiful widow-turned prostitute, who isn’t even given a name and is treated like a sexual toy by both gangs in the film.

JaeYoon Park © 2009

Achilles and the Tortoise

A few days have passed since I watched Achilles and the Tortoise (2008) but I still think about its meaning and what the director Kitano Takeshi is trying to say. The film’s images lingered with me and I would wake up and jot down my thoughts on the film in the middle of the night. To me, that’s an indicator of a good movie.

Achilles and the Tortoise is the third installment in this Japanese director’s self-referential trilogy about creativity. I haven’t seen the first two of the trilogy – Takeshi’s (2005) and Glory to the Filmmaker (2007) – which received mediocre responses from critics, but I still anticipate watching them as a fan of Kitano's deadpan and often bizarre sense of humor.

The film starts with a short animation that describes the “Achilles and the Tortoise” paradox by an ancient Greek philosopher, Zeno, in the form of a “kōan” that consists of a series of questions and answers between a Zen master and his student to resolve a riddle or a paradox. In this paradox, a fast runner named Achilles runs a race with a tortoise, in which he allows the tortoise to start nine meters ahead of him. With contrary to our rational thinking, however, this paradox suggests that Achilles can never overtake the tortoise since the pursuer will always have to reach the point where the pursued has already been. Thus, the race goes on indefinitely while the slow tortoise will always be one step ahead of Achilles.

After this short animated sequence, the film follows Machisu Kuramochi’s life-long and unsuccessful quest for art and fame spanning from his childhood to the days of his youth and to his middle-age years. The director Kitano Takeshi himself stars as the aging artist and two other actors play Machisu as a child and as a young man. Kitano also painted all the artwork featured in the film. In this fable-like story, it is pretty obvious that Machisu is the Achilles trying to catch up with talented and revered artists before him such as Picasso, Mondrian, Miro, and Basquiat. He wants to become rich and famous and to be accepted by the art world but he seems to constantly miss the mark. His obsession with art and fame only leads to a poor and ridiculed life. However unappreciated his paintings may be, Machisu has a loving and loyal wife, Sachiko, who stands by him. Sachiko makes a living during the day so that her husband can focus on his art and devotes herself to helping him paint by night.

Throughout my viewing, I couldn’t help but wonder, “aren’t we all in a constant state of running trying to overtake the “tortoise”?” Whatever that “tortoise” means for each individual, we all desperately pursue something abstract that seems to run a little farther away as we make progress in our lives. In the process, we get frustrated, we are criticized, we lose our running mates, our friends and family members die, relationships fall apart, and yet the race continues.

Kitano paints (pun intended) his film with sad and gloomy stories about a failed artist to the point where this artist’s quest becomes morbid. The film then ends rather abruptly when Machisu’s wife, who has left him after finding his insane quest unbearable, returns to him and takes him home. And then a brief yet hopeful title appears on the screen: “And so Achilles did catch up with the tortoise.” Huh? Is this another paradox or a riddle, Master Kitano? So, all I have to do is find someone who understands my passion or even my obsession? Someone who accepts me as who I am? Not that I think it’s easy to find that person. But what about the tortoise? The tortoise I am chasing is just an illusion?

I have come to a conclusion that Achilles and the Tortoise is a film about “perception” – that is, the perception of art or the perception of what is perceived as art, the perception of creativity, the perception of success, the perception of the tortoise, etc. I’m struck by the notion that I may never reach an understanding of what a particular film is truly about. I guess I have to keep running and chasing in the hope that I will resolve this kōan by Kitano someday.

Postscript: Where did all the paintings go? I would like to buy one, particularly “Black Continent.”

JaeYoon Park © 2009

The Good, The Bad, and The Weird

Have you ever seen a Korean western? From its title, Kim Ji-Woon’s The Good, The Bad, and The Weird (2008) definitely evokes Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966). Its narrative structure (civilization versus wilderness and law versus lawless binaries), settings (a mythical space filled with rampant outlaws), iconography (guns, horses, cowboy hats, cigarettes, endless horizons), and soundtrack à la Ennio Morricone all confirm that this film heavily relies on the generic conventions of the western. Yet, the film is also a hybrid blending elements of action, adventure, and comedy. The director, Kim Ji-Woon is known for his experimentation with different genres and is particularly good at alternating between moments of tension and comedic situations.

The story is set in 1930s Manchuria during the Japanese occupation and revolves around three Korean “bastards” – the film’s original Korean title is translated as “the good bastard, the bad bastard, and the weird bastard” – who are each looking for a mysterious map.

What, then, are the motives of these three “bastards”? Money. Apparently, this motive links the three. Yet, the Good (Park Do-Won) is hired by the Korean Independence Army and therefore pursues “good” money. He is a tall and good-looking bounty hunter and wears a cowboy hat. Although he kills people, he does so with elegance and precision. His mission is to obtain the map before the Japanese Imperial Army thereby securing money to support Korea’s independence movement.

The Bad (Park Chang-Yi) is hired by a rich pro-Japanese Korean who “sold out his own country” and therefore pursues “bad” money. He is a ruthless killer who is motivated by greed and the desire to become a legend. His facial scars, asymmetrical hairstyle, and black wardrobe signify his evil nature.

The Weird (Yoon Tae-Goo) is a train robber who happens to obtain the map and becomes the target chased not only by the Good and the Bad but also by the Japanese Imperial Army and the Chinese Ghost Market Gang who are after the treasure’s untold riches. He is a petty thief who abides by his own rules and dreams of owning land in Korea. But might his rustic appearance and comedic demeanor mask a far darker side?

The pursuit of the map also becomes personal as the Good seeks the bounty on the Bad’s neck and the Bad pursues the Weird because of a personal grudge. There are three action sequences in the film that particularly stand out for their spectacle of violence. The first is in the train where the Weird stumbles onto the map and flees with it in his possession. The second is at the Ghost Market where the Good and the Weird team up and fight against the Bad and the Ghost Market Gang. Finally, the third chase scene takes place in an open field nearby the Russian border where the Japanese Imperial Army joins the race with its unmatchable firearms and forces.

What, then, does the map lead to? The map’s treasure is the film’s biggest twists and simultaneously represents the promise of modern civilization and the corrupting force that rips civilizations apart. I won’t reveal the treasure here in order to not spoil your future viewing experience, but it is definitely something that could have changed the modern history of Korea if only the Korean nation had had the power and skills to have access to it.

While the treasure in the film is something of a mystery, the film’s true treasure is Song Kang-Ho’s performance as the Weird. He appeared in Kim Ji-Woon’s films twice before starring in such black comedies as The Foul King (2000) and The Quiet Family (1998). Song’s acting prowess, which is evident in both his verbal delivery and physical performance, makes me say without doubt that he is one of the best actors and comics currently in Korean cinema.

JaeYoon Park © 2009

24 City

I saw Jia Zhang Ke’s recent film, 24 City (2008), at the Athens International Film and Video Festival in Ohio in late April. Before starting to write about this film, I have to admit that a month or so has passed since I watched it and it was the very first Jia Zhang Ke’s film I’ve ever watched.

With my laziness being shamefully acknowledged, I can say that I really enjoyed watching 24 City. I had very little knowledge about the movie and its director except that Jia was one of the Chinese Sixth Generation directors, who were known for their underground filmmaking produced outside of the state government’s support. To be honest, I was more familiar with Zhang Yuan and Wang Xiaoshuai among the Sixth Generation directors.

24 City focuses on the story of former workers and their children at Factory 420 – a state-owned factory established in the1950s to provide military aircraft. The city of Chengdu, where Factory 420 used to be, has now transformed into a state-planned urban center, called 24 City, filled with high-rise apartment complexes and five-star hotels. The film mostly consists of a series of talking-head style interviews with the former and present residents of Chengdu – diverse in terms of their gender, age, and social mobility – while they recount their life experiences in the last 50 years or so.

At the beginning of the film I thought that it would be a very long and depressing two hours. However, as time went by, I felt that the film was not a conventional documentary whose primary purpose was a faithful documentation of real events and people. At one point I began to realize some of the interviewees were performing their roles and their actions were apparently staged. My suspicion about the fictional components of the film came to be certain with the appearance of the actress Joan Chen playing a former middle-aged female worker. According to this character’s own account, her nickname was “Little Flower” because of her physical resemblance to Joan Chen – Little Flower (1980) is a Chinese film in which Joan Chen starred. One of the interviewees, a personal shopper and former factory worker’s daughter who purchases luxury goods from Hong Kong for the rich in China, also looked familiar to me. I searched this actress’ name on the Internet Movie Database and found out that she was also an actress who had starred in a few films by Jia Zhang Ke.

I think that it’s a clever choice on the part of the filmmaker to fictionalize parts of the film blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. The film generally evokes sympathy with previous and present residents of Chengdu and nostalgic feelings toward the good-old days in pre-industrialized China. However, fictional interview footage functions to pull the audience out of the nostalgic, melodramatic identification with the subject by creating a critical distance between the subject and the audience. This postmodernist interplay between nostalgia and irony is the strongest aspect of the film.

The life stories that the interviewees (both real people and actors) told the audience are in fact very sad, but I don’t think the director wants us to remain sorrowful for what has happened to the residents and the city of Chengdu since the 1950s. I think that the film invites us to critically examine, rather than romantically identifying with, the disconnection and disorientation experienced by Chinese people in the past few decades in the midst of fast urbanization and industrialization. This type of anti-romantic view is what distinguishes the Sixth Generation directors from their predecessors, Fifth Generation directors, such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.

JaeYoon Park © 2009