House Invaders

As mentioned last week, Tony Rayns (writing in Film Comment) accused Kim Ki-duk of plagiarizing Tsai Ming-liang's Vive L'Amour for his latest film 3-Iron (Bin Jip). This is on par with saying it steals from Caddyshack because both films feature golf clubs. A ludicrous charge that has Filmbrain convinced Rayns' article was rooted in some deep personal gripe he has with the director. So be it. While 3-Iron isn't a great film, it does herald the arrival (for the time being, at least) of a slightly more mature Kim Ki-duk. Far more restrained than his previous films, 3-Iron can almost be classified as lighthearted, with a dry sense of humor that works quite well. Though there is some nastiness to it (usually involving a golf ball), it never approaches the sexual/violent extremes of The Isle, Bad Guy, Address Unknown, etc. That said, the film is still a bit too simplistic (naive?), and Kim's metaphors (freedom vs. imprisonment - of both the literal and domestic kinds) are about as subtle as being hit in the head with the titular iron. Still, the story is very original, and if you're willing to look past a few of Kim's conceits, it's a pleasurable ninety-minutes with a payoff that is as clever as it is creepy. (Unfortunately, Kim throws up a line of text on the screen at the end that is entirely unnecessary, and nearly spoils the effect.) Tae-suk is a young (homeless?) man who drives around on his BMW motorcycle looking for houses/apartments where the owners are away. (The literal translation of the film's title is Empty House - another of Kim's blatantly obvious metaphors.) Breaking in to these homes, he makes a wonderful meal for himself, takes a relaxing bath, and then proceeds to repair broken items and carefully hand wash the owner's laundry. He tends to favor luxurious houses, and in one of them he discovers that he's not alone. Former model (naturally) and abused housewife Sun-hwa spies on Tae-suk for a whole day before making her presence known. Her husband is a golf-playing BMW-driving businessman who seems to enjoy hurling verbal and physical abuse at her. Seeing Tae-suk as a means of escape, she becomes his partner in crime, and the two of them enjoy a successful run on several homes without ever exchanging a single word. When their luck runs out, the film takes an unexpected turn and leads to a surprising but satisfactory conclusion. The non-verbal communication between the two leads is more of a conceit by Kim than anything else. That's not to say it doesn't work to good effect, but seeing 3-Iron on the heels of Vive L'Amour made Filmbrain appreciate Tsai that much more. Tsai's characters are silent mostly due to an absence of somebody to talk to, or a complete inability to connect on even the simplest level. Several critics have praised Kim for the extended silence, and how he skillfully manages to get the point across. However, the point itself isn't that challenging or compelling. This is where a comparison between Tsai and Kim is valid -- both 3-Iron and several of Tsai's films deal with alienation, yet Kim is far more superficial about it. This isn't necessarily a strike against it, but results in a film that requires (and demands) less interpretation, or reflection. 3-Iron comes off as smarter and deeper than it actually is, but it's still a worthwhile experience. With wonderful cinematography by newcomer Jang Seong-back, 3-Iron is a visual treat that will no doubt be as appealing to Western audiences as Kim's previous outing, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring. The film is having its US premiere at Sundance this week, and Sony Classics has picked it up for distribution.

Comments

[Will Echols]

Is it just me, or would it not have made more sense in the first place fore Rayns to accuse Kim Ki-Duk of plagiarizing "Fallen Angels"? Not that I can imagine one of his films having any real similarity to one of Wong Kar Wai's, but Tae-Suk seems vaguely reminiscent of the Takeshi Kaneshiro character in that wonderful piece of bliss.

[Andrew]

As usual, I find myself reading between the lines of a filmbrain review. What do you mean by the phrase "heralding a more mature Kim Ki Duk?" If Korean cinema were "mature" (your choice of words, not mine), would filmbrain still be as ga-ga for all movies Korean?

The indispensible Roger Ebert has nailed Korean cinema.

"The new South Korean cinema is transgressive and disturbing, open to forms of behavior that are almost never seen in the films of the West. It can be about urgent, undisciplined, perverse needs; it can have the graphic detail of pornography yet show no hint of an erotic purpose; it can accept extreme characters and make no attempt to soften them or make them likable. There's something stunning and even inspiring in its indifference to popular taste. ...[I]t is unconventional to the point of aggression."

No need really to say anything else about the Korean new wave.

But what happens when you remove the agression, the masochism, the sadism and rape from South Korean movies. Does filmbrain tune out? (Remember how he worked himself into a near convulsion in anticipation of the screening of A Petal.)

[bluebeardnz]

And yet Ebert has been mezzo-mezzo on most Korean films he sees. I don't think he particularly likes the type of film he describes above....

Anyway, as with any foreign cinema, what most people see in America of Korean film is pretty much looking through a keyhole...you get the well-crafted, critcally admired films and pretty much none of the dreck, of which there is a lot, as with all countries (Korea does not do comedy very well AT ALL, for example).

It's wrong to characterise Korean films as particularly disturbing, because, on the whole, it produces many more safe conventional melodramas (THE CLASSIC, AN ERASER IN MY MEMORY, LOVER'S CONCERTO) and totally ridiculous physical comedy (SAVING MY HUBBY, MARRIED TO THE MAFIA, OH LA LA SISTERS) than OASIS's, OLDBOY's and MEMORIES OF MURDER.

Still, back to the case in hand, Kim Ki-Duk NEEDED to mature, as his films before SPRING, SUMMER....were sophomoric and brutally bad.

[Filmbrain]

Andrew -- I don't understand what Kim's maturity (or lack thereof) has to do with my overall excitement about Korean cinema. Kim likes to push buttons -- his "sexual terrorism" (Rayns expression) is effective, but there is a sort of immaturity to it -- a case of arrested development, perhaps. However, he's good at what he does. He's just not interested in addressing social/sexual issues the manner of other directors, and that's fine.

You'll forgive me if I don't consider Roger Ebert an expert on Korean cinema. (Nor do I find him "indispensable" as a critic. He ceased being relevant for me years ago.) My guess is that his opinion was formed by the tiny handful of films that have been released in the states. I doubt he's seen (m)any films by Hong Sang-soo, Im Sang-soo, Jeong Ji-woo, Park Ki-yong, etc. I believe he hated Oldboy at Cannes, though I could be mistaken.

Yes, I was excited to see A Petal - a powerful film that openly dealt with a horrifying event in South Korea's history. But I don't see what that has to do with Kim Ki-duk, or my own interest in Korean cinema. The films I've reacted the strongest to are hardly aggressive, masochistic, sadistic, etc. Anyway, that's a very limited view of the "new wave".

[Andrew]

I am not buying it, filmbrain. I am not moralizing. I just expect a bit more introspection from critics.

Admit it filmbrain. You are turned on by the violence and sadism of Korean films. I am not judging you. Nothing wrong with a little depravity. But hypocrisy and intellectual laziness are evil.

I love how you chide Ebert for painting Korean cinema in a false light and you then cite Im Sang-soo as a case in point as a classy Korean director who doesn't need to rely on excess to get attention.

Again, I like Im Sang-soo. All his films have gone to places few movies --American or Korean-- do. Girl's Night Out was a brave and honest and rare look at Korean women as sexual agents rather than objects. But the Seoul critics who accused him of equal parts exploitatin were not Ashcroftian prudes. They had a point.

I would bet a month's wages that if Eternal Empire, a Choson Dynasty royal court mystery, (which Im co-wrote, I believe) and Tears, Im's paen to 15 year old prostitutes were both playing on the same night for one night only that Filmbrain would catch all three showings of the teen hookers before he even checked the time for that historical stuff.

To make the movie Im spent a year living above a Seoul brothel and befriending teenage working girls. Anything for his art.

Again, nothing wrong with a little vice. But drop the patron of Korean arts bs. And don't get offended at Ebert for nailing it, nailing Im and nailing you.

And as I recall, wasn't the Power of Kangwon Province your favorite Hong movie? That ends with an underage girl getting raped I think? You'll forgive me, but some Korean movies I don't want to remember.

And again, the money quote: "The films I've reacted the strongest to are hardly aggressive, masochistic, sadistic, etc. Anyway, that's a very limited view of the "new wave".

To prove his purity, he further cites the director of "Happy End." Irony this thick really belongs in a Korean movie.

[Filmbrain]

Admit it filmbrain. You are turned on by the violence and sadism of Korean films.
Filmbrain would catch all three showings of the teen hookers before he even checked the time for that historical stuff.

Andrew - I'm not interested in these type exchanges on my blog. Facts, opinions, or reactions to films (and what I write about them) are always welcome. Provocations such as the above are not.

[Andrew]

Filmbrain, sorry. I was a bit excessive in making what I believe is a valid point --namely that new Korean cinema blends violence and pornography and art in a disturbing mix that makes one uneasy as it enthralls.

Can you give us a paragraph summing up what attracts you to the kind of Korean movies that you go in for?

You are not the only one I challenge on this point. I remember when the brilliant Eternal Empire came out. No reaction from the global film types. Then Im makes his teen hooker movie and Time Asia does a feature story on him, their first article on Korean cinema in a decade.

Basically, the message I am getting, and which Rayns seems to be implying in his articla on Kim Ki-duk, is that Korean cinema is only worth the time of Americans when a woman is getting abused, or there is lots and lots of sex. Happy End opens with a fifteen minute borderline gratuitous sex scene.

Again, all this is not to moralize, but to get to the heart of the matter.

[Adam Campbell]

It seems tired to drag up Orientalism, but I'll nod in the direction of Edward Said anyway. There's something to be said about the recent fascination with Korean cinema, which in turn seems to have altered the output. In many cases the interest seems confined to the violent, the sexual and the generally exotic. Of course nothing is true across the board. For whatever reason, I've enjoyed films such as Oldboy (or even My Sassy Girl) but there are others that are best left alone and you only have to take a trip to the Korean section of a Japanese video shop to see some of the worst shit committed to film (the selection there somewhat skewed by that particular audience's interest in anything featuring the cast of popular soap operas such as Winter Sonata)

Around the start of the boom, people called South Korea the new Hong Kong and I don't think that could be more true in the sense of a few gems being hidden between a wealth of tat aimed at Western money. Through the critical adulation of films that are of questionable merit, audiences can find some things worth watching, like like HK. However those supporting almost everything and anything Korean seem to echo the critics or audiences determined to defend some of Takashi Miike's poorer efforts, for example

[Greg Samsa]

I don't find the violence and sex in Korean films excessive. I think we are so accustomed to our American moralizing puritanical standards of decency that when violence and sex are finally depicted in an unashamed, realistic way somehow we think they are the ones who are off their rockers and not us.

There was a time when American films dealt more frankly with these themes, but over the last twenty years we've seen the emergence of in Pauline Kael's words an 'infantile' popular cinema which celebrates violence without consequence and sex as something forbidden and pornographic.

Certainly in Hong Sang Soo's films the nudity seems less about titillation and more about representing all aspects of relationships, yes even the sexual, in a realistic way. Hong's sex scenes are as revealing about the characters and their relationships as the dialogue scenes.

[Greg Samsa]

The other thing I would add is that Ebert’s comments on Korean cinema seem myopic and ill informed. His views seem totally devoid of any sense of context and how the current Korean cinema is an outgrowth of their past. The Nov/Dec Film Comment points this out in several excellent articles. As they say in one peice, impressions of Korean cinema can vary greatly depending on the films you choose to see. There is such a variety of work being done, that my Korean cinema isn't necessarily yours and vice versa.

http://filmlinc.com/fcm/11-12-2004/koreaintro.htm

[Matt]

Just for the record, the "Matt" who's been using my name and e-mail address to comment isn't the real me.

[Filmbrain]

Matt (the real one) -- The posts have been deleted. It's pretty sad that somebody has to hide behind somebody else's name.

[Filmbrain]

Andrew – If you want to know what type of Korean films I like, and why, I suggest you go through my blog. (If I had, as you accuse me of, a proclivity for violence and sadism, I'd watch The Passion of the Christ. If I wanted art-porn I'd watch a Catherine Breillat film.)

I’m having trouble with your blanket generalization – calling Korean cinema violent or sadistic is just naïve. You’ve thrown my defense of Happy End against me several times. Do you see that as simply a sex & violence film? Do you not see it is a piece of social criticism -- one that questions gender roles, traditional viewpoints towards marriage and adultery, the changes that occurred during the economic slump of the late 90’s, issues of emasculation etc? (I highly recommend reading Kyung Hyun-kim’s The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema – there’s a wonderful chapter on this film alone.)

I've not much cared for the straight-up erotic films I've seen out of Korea. I found Lies rather shallow, and I was no fan of either Ardor or Hypnotized.

I don't consider Tears to be a “paean to teenage prostitutes”, but rather a film about the street youth (male and female) in the Garibong-dong district.

As regular readers of the blog know (all too well), my favorite Hong Sang-soo film is Turning Gate, not Power of Kangwon Province. Regardless, none of Hong's films feature underage girls getting raped.

How and where did you get this impression of Korean cinema? Sure, there is sex and violence, but it's rarely gratuitous. Oldboy is a violent film, but it's also one of the most brilliant, intelligent films of its kind -- as good as DePalma or Hitchcock. Turning Gate has a few sex scenes, but only a fool would call it pornographic.

I also point you two the two posts left by Greg earlier today – I couldn’t agree more with what he said.

Now I throw it back to you: please qualify your sentence, "...new Korean cinema blends violence and pornography and art in a disturbing mix that makes one uneasy as it enthralls".

[Andrew]

I do not have a limited view of Korean films -- YOU DO. That was my whole point. The only use you --and so many Americans-- seem to have for Korean movies are for those select recent films by directors who pepper their films with sex and violence. (Im's new movie, by the way, about the former President Park has people protesting theaters in Seoul. Good for him. But his act has gotten more than a little de riguer.)

I don't mean to throw anything in your face. And I do respect your honest and admirable passion for Korean films. But you need to come down off several high horses. Of course Happy End had the themes you mention. But you seem to imply in your review that Happy End was a rare Korean movie with the guts to embrace such themes. Just about every single Korean soap opera to sitcom of the time dealt with those same subjects. The only difference was that Happy End had explicit sex and a violent ending.

And don't ask me why I have a problem with violence. Ask yourself why you have a problem with nonviolent Korean movies.

Every single filmbrain review of a Korean movie mentions how the film comments on a Korean vice or social problem that needs to be "addressed." Not once do you mention how a film gave us insights on a Korean virtue.

In the middle of watching Bad Guy, I got up and walked out of the theater at the point the sweet young college girl gets sold to a brothel. I am not a prude. I am not squemish. I had just had enough. Kim Ki-duk is a hack. Rayns is right.

Park Ki-hyung, Im Sang-soo, Kim Ki-Duk and Chang Jin-woo are all minor talents. That is my opinion. You disagree. I respect your opinion.

Here is a list of some of my favorite Korean movies:

1. The Terrorist, a brilliant action movie starring Choi Min-su, the Korean Eastwood. A real metaphor for the crony capitalism that built Korea at the expense of many Koreans. But, get this, the hero actually has courage and honor and is not some brooding pervert. Made in the decade supposedly before Korean cineman was emasculated.
2. Cheong (or a Heart), explains a Korean concept of love many Koreans thought was inscrutable.
3. A Hot Roof (aka Dog Day Afternoon, sitcomish, melodramatic, tragic, silly and serious -- maybe the best feminist comedy since Lisystrada.
4. Whore, one of Im Kwon Taek's best. The history of modern Korea as seen through the eyes of a sex slave. What separates this from Tears? Im Kwon Taek is a freakin' genius.
5. Chilsoo and Mansoo, again made during Korean cinema's supposed emasculated era. I guess they didn't beat up any women. They only showed honor and courage in the face of hopeless odds.
6. Kum Ho-ah, My Love, the biopic of Yi Sang, Korea's foremost modernist poet.
7. Aimless Bullet. That goes without saying.
8. Eternal Empire. Ang Sung-ki has enough testosterone in this movie to power a viagra factory.
9. Christmas in August.
10. I Send Myself to You. Chang Sun-woo. I know. But I never said I was a saint. Yeo Kyun Dong is hillarious. And no list is complete with a movie by Moon Son-kuen.

[Steve]

Andrew, you seem to think that if a film contains sex and violence, that must be the only reason people - and Filmbrain, in particular - like it. This is reductive at best and insulting at worst. Also, pointing out problems and vices - in any society - is generally more interesting than celebrating virtues. Don't we have the PAX network and Hallmark channel for that?

[Darren]

I've seen far too little Korean film to have an educated opinion about this debate, but I do appreciate Andrew's comments, in general. I think it's important for those of us in the West who actively promote non-western cinema to recalibrate our critical sensibilities on occasion.

For example, I have real biases against certain genres (Low Life was my only walk-out at TIFF this year because I can't stand gangster pics) and am always drawn to films that I can describe as "alienating," "meticulously paced," and "formal." That's not an accident, I think. Like many film lovers in the States, I came of age watching filmmakers like Bergman, Bresson, Antonioni, and Godard, and, as much as I try to fight it, I still naturally consider that Modern, formal style the hallmark of great cinema. I am much more likely to enjoy and to write about non-Western films that appeal to that bias.