"Love Will Tear Us Apart" Review: Hong Sangsoo's "Tale of Cinema"

Tale of Cinema (Geuk jang jeon). 2005. Written and directed by Hong Sangsoo. Produced by Hong Sangsoo and Marin Karmitz. Cinematography by Kim Hyung-koo. Edited by Hahm Sung-won. Music by Jeong Yong-jin. Sound by An Sang-ho.

Cast: Kim Sang-kyung (Kim Tong-su), Uhm Ji-won (Choi Young-shil), Lee Ki-woo (Jeon Sang-won).

Tale of Cinema, Hong’s sixth feature, is an incredibly witty and playful meditation on the confluence of life and cinema. Over the course of twelve films, Hong has created a unique and fascinating body of work, unabashedly auteurist and boldly inventive. From the start, Hong’s films existed in opposition to conventional methods of storytelling, and he makes use of a relatively limited set of character types and milieus (usually the filmmaking and academic worlds) to experiment with narrative structure in his films. Recurring patterns of human behavior, character and narrative mirroring, and repetition run throughout his films. Along with that, he offers funny, painful, awkward, and brutally honest depictions of male and female relationships. Tale of Cinema added some intriguing new wrinkles to his cinematic strategy: this time (as the English title makes clear), cinema itself is his main subject matter. Similarly to some of his other films (The Power of Kangwon Province [1998], Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors [2000], Turning Gate [2002], Woman on the Beach [2006]), Tale of Cinema makes use of a bifurcated structure with echoes and mirrors in each half. However, while the structures of these other films serve to complicate and deepen our understanding of the characters and their situations, in this film we are invited to reflect on its own status as a cinematic object. To this end, Hong introduced some visual elements that have become stylistic hallmarks of his subsequent films, most prominently the frequent use of the zoom lens. The first time I saw Tale of Cinema (at the 2005 New York Film Festival), I found this quite disorienting, since Hong’s visual style up to that point consisted of minimal camera movement and practically no optical effects. Also new for Hong was the use of a voiceover and much more liberal use of non-diegetic music. All of these elements, including quotes from, and echoes of, his earlier films in Tale of Cinema serve to enhance our awareness that we are indeed watching a film, making what happens to the main character perhaps a cautionary tale.

Tale of Cinema has a loose, improvisational, and comic feel that is quite charming. In the first part of the film, an aimless student (Lee Ki-woo) meets up with a young woman (Uhm Ji-won) he has known in the past, and convinces her to join him in his quest to kill himself. However, things don’t quite go according to plan, as they often do in Hong’s films. In the second half, Tong-su (Kim Sang-kyung), a failed filmmaker, has become convinced that his successful and celebrated film-school classmate has stolen his life story to make one of his films. After watching this film again at a retrospective devoted to the director, he spots the film’s lead actress (Uhm Ji-won again) outside the theater, and begins to doggedly pursue her. For those who haven’t yet seen Tale of Cinema, I won’t reveal the connection between these two halves, since that would lessen the sense of discovery that is at the heart of this film’s considerable charm. Those familiar with Hong’s previous films will sense a subtle optimism that doesn’t exist in his earlier films. Hong, as usual, elicits engaging performances from his leads, Lee Ki-woo a natural as the childish and self-involved suicidal young man, Kim Sang-kyung (who also starred in Turning Gate) quite funny as the bizarre (and possibly delusional) wannabe director, and especially the strikingly beautiful Uhm Ji-won, who deftly pulls off her tricky dual role.

Tale of Cinema screens March 8, 7pm as part of Japan Society’s film series “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”  For the rest of the screening schedule and ticket info, click here.

This post is my contribution to the 2012 Korean Cinema Blogathon, hosted this year by New Korean Cinema and cineAWESOME! You can read all the other entries here.

Best Korean Films of the 2000s: Roh Gyeong-tae, "Land of Scarecrows" (2008)

Land of Scarecrows (Heosuabideuleui ddang). 2008. Written and directed by Roh Gyeong-tae. Produced by Roh Gyeong-tae, Antonin Dedet, and Kim Jae-Chung. Cinematography by Choi Jung-soon. Edited by Choi Hyun-suk. Production design by Eum Jin-sun. Music by Lee Jaesin. Costume design by Choo Jung-hee.

Cast: Kim Sun-young (Jang Ji-young), Jung Duwon (Loi Tan), Bich Phuong Thi (Rain).

One of the most original, boldly experimental, and beautiful works of Korean cinema this past decade, with indelible and haunting images that remain with me, is Roh Gyeong-tae's second feature Land of Scarecrows. An evocative tale of gender confusion, arranged marriage, adoption, and environmental devastation, Roh's film was largely dismissed and misunderstood by most critics, and notwithstanding its being awarded the New Currents prize at the 2008 Pusan International Film Festival, it didn't get the audiences or critical notices it deserved. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at Pusan.

For a jaded filmgoer and film festivalgoer like me, surprises can often be few and far between. Whether it is the latest Hollywood super-spectacle or the most obscure, experimental art film, most films nowadays are variations on the familiar and endlessly overdone. So it is quite a pleasure to come across such a film as Roh Gyeong-tae’s Land of Scarecrows, a true masterpiece whose elliptical, initially challenging style is nevertheless eminently accessible. Roh’s second feature, which shared the New Currents Award (for best first or second film) at this year’s Pusan International Film Festival, is one of the great discoveries one always hopes to find at a film festival, especially one with as vast a selection as Pusan’s.

Opening with a cryptic image of two mudang (Korean female shamans) performing an elaborate ritual dance, Land of Scarecrows alternates between two locales: Honghae, a rural area of South Korea, and the Philippines. The film follows a number of characters, the three most significant being Jang Ji-young (Kim Sun-young), an amateur installation artist who also happens to be a transgender woman living as a man; Rain (Bich Phuong Thi), a young Filipina who dreams of living in Korea; and Loi Tan (Jung Duwon), an ethnic Korean young man who was brought from the Philippines as a foster child. A beautiful and lyrical alchemy, not dissimilar to the artworks Ji-young creates, brings these characters together and unites their destinies into a tapestry that is mesmerizing to watch.

Land of Scarecrows melds humor, melancholy, and an ethereal sense of spirituality in a way that elevates it far above the sort of pretentious, self-consciously arty films that are far too prevalent at film festivals. The phenomenon of Korean men seeking arranged marriages with Southeastern Asian women is presented in a very humorous way, with repeated scenes of nervous potential brides being sized up by their suitors. Ji-young meets and marries Rain at one of these marriage agencies, of course with Rain initially being unaware that her new husband is a biological woman. Their relationship, however, isn’t played for laughs and in fact leads to some of the most poignant moments of the film. The film is also full of beautifully-rendered scenes that could stand alone as short films, such as Ji-young and Rain’s initial meeting, and a later scene in a karaoke bar where Ji-young belts out a plaintive, romantic song.

Roh Gyeong-tae, a former stockbroker who previously made a number of experimental short films and the feature The Last Dining Table, emerges as a major talent with Land of Scarecrows, which has a richly textured look and an unusual approach to storytelling that yields great rewards. This makes it all the more gratifying that the New Currents jury, headed by French New Wave icon Anna Karina, recognized this extraordinary work.

Land of Scarecrows is available on DVD from YesAsia.com.

Best Korean Films of the 2000s: Song Il-gon, "The Magicians" (2005)

The Magicians (Mabeopsadul). 2005. Written and directed by Song Il-gon. Produced by Lee Young-ju. Cinematography by Park Young-jun. Edited by Choi Jae-kun. Music by Song Il-gon and Loveholic.

Cast: Jung Woong-in, Jang Hyun-sung, Lee Seung-bee, Kang Kyung-hun, Kim Hak-sun.

A major trend of the past decade in film is the ever increasing prevalence of digital technology. Song Il-gon's The Magicians, a 95 minute film shot in a single take, is one of the finest films in this medium. Song, one of Korea's most interesting filmmakers, was educated at Lodz Film School in Poland, whose alumni include Kryzstof Kieslowski and Roman Polanski, and this undoubtedly contributes to his very distinctive style of filmmaking. Song previously made two digital features, Flower Island and Git (Feathers in the Wind), in both cases exploring the unique creative possibilities inherent in the medium. The Magicians was originally a 40 minute short, titled "Magician(s)," included in the omnibus "Digital Shorts By Three Filmmakers," an annual project of the Jeonju International Film Festival, in which three filmmakers are invited to make short films using digital technology. The 40 minute version, while impressive technically, never quite shook the sense of being a show-offy stunt. However, as a feature, it gains much depth and emotional resonance, transforming into a moving and, despite its somber subject matter, ultimately uplifting meditation on memory, spirituality, and the coexistence of the past and present.

The Magicians is set in and around a bar in a wooded area far from the city, where the three surviving members of the rock band Magician gather, as they do each year, for a memorial for their female guitarist Jae-eun (Lee Seung-bi), who committed suicide three years earlier. The bar is run by her boyfriend Jae-sung (Jung Woong-in), who created this remote retreat as a way to deal with his grief. The bass player (Jang Hyun-sung) and female vocalist (Kang Kyung-heon) also reminisce and are still shaken by the loss. Jae-un herself appears as a ghostly presence, hovering unseen among her living friends. Within the film's single take, flashbacks before Jae-eun's suicide and the circumstances leading up to it are handled with boldly theatrical techniques: music cues, lighting changes, and a character's movement out of the bar or up a staircase takes us back into the past. The natural setting, and the presence in the film of a fifth character, a monk leaving his monastery and looking for a snowboard he left at the bar, suggest the spiritual presence suggested by the title of the piece. By using the digital medium to evoke the past, The Magicians shares similarities to another groundbreaking digital film, Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, which traveled through centuries of Russian history. Song's film is much more intimate, observing the connections between a small group of people who will never escape their past, and we are left with the suggestion that this is not necessarily a bad thing. For better or worse, our relations with others, whether happy or tragic, are part of who we are, and it is folly to attempt to hide or run from it.

Best Korean Films of the 2000s: Lee Myung-se, "Duelist" (2005)

Duelist (Hyeongsa). 2005. Produced, directed and production designed by Lee Myung-se. Written by Lee Myung-se and Lee Hae-gyeong, based on the comic book "Damo" by Bang Hak-gi. Cinematography by Ki S. Hwang. Edited by Go Im-pyo. Art direction by Lee Hyeong-ju and Jo Geun-hyeon. Costume design by Jeong Gyeong-heui. Sound by Park Jun-oh. Special effects by Jang Sung-ho. Martial arts choreography by Jeon Mun-shik.

Cast: Ha Ji-won (Nam-soon), Kang Dong-won (Sad Eyes), Ahn Sung-ki (Ahn), Song Yeong-chang (Song).

One of cinema's supreme visual stylists is Lee Myung-se, whose films have the vibrancy and kineticism of action painting, and who seemingly reinvents movies with each new film. Lee is an exacting and precise artist, with painstaking attention to detail, colors and mood, so much so that he has made only two films this decade, each one an art film in the truest and greatest sense. The first is his 2005 film Duelist, the latest incarnation of a story that first began life as a popular manhwa (Korean comic book) entitled Damo, which was subsequently turned into a hit television series of the same name. Both the film and the TV drama featured the same actress, Ha Ji-won, as the central female detective. Below is what I wrote on this film when it screened at the 2006 New York Asian Film Festival.

The most gorgeous of this year's selections is Lee Myung-se's masterpiece Duelist. Lee is best known in the U.S. for his 1999 film Nowhere to Hide, which enlivened its cops-and-criminals story with a wall-to-wall visual arsenal of silhouettes, impossibly vibrant color and kineticism, and the elemental forces of wind and rain. In Duelist, released six years after Nowhere to Hide, Lee ups the ante considerably, reducing narrative to a bare minimum, concentrating on exquisite color, balletic swordplay, wind, rain, and leaves, and the pursuit of its lovers/antagonists throughout the film. Like Nowhere to Hide, Duelist is also a detective story, set this time in late 19th century Korea. The detective Nam-soon (Ha Ji-won) and her older partner Ahn (Ahn Sung-ki) are in dogged pursuit of Sad Eyes (Kang Dong-won), an elusive, androgynous figure who is the henchman of Minister of Defense Song (Song Yeong-chang), who is amassing power by counterfeiting currency. That's about it as far as plot goes. However, most of the negative public and critical reaction to the film, contributing to its meager box office, which generally ran along the lines of the lament "There's no story!", seem to me to be beyond missing the point. The film's press materials contain this statement by Lee, which point to the proper way to approach this film: "I thought of two words - movement and rhythm, and two paintings - 'Dance' by Matisse and 'Manhattan' by Mondrian." (Lee is most likely referring in the latter case to "Broadway Boogie-Woogie," Mondrian's most famous painting.)

Those who insist that films should be all about narrative and character development are blinding themselves to the thrilling experience of pure cinema that Lee offers in Duelist. In much the same way that Matisse and Mondrian sought to liberate painting by using their materials to portray pure movement and color without insisting on verisimilitude, Lee utilizes the plasticity of the film medium - sound, color, music, motion - to liberate cinema from the shackles of 19th century notions of narrative derived from literature and drama, highlighting the reasons cinema is indeed a distinct art from either.

The ultimate theme of Duelist is transcendence and transgression, of boundaries, borders, and gender roles - Nam-soon is as tough and violent, if not tougher, than her male colleagues, at one point going undercover in male drag, while Sad Eyes is all flowing robes, long hair, and soft features. Duelist is in essence avant-garde cinema thinly disguised as genre cinema, and given the emphasis he puts on color, the physicality of its nature, and its relation to the material of film itself, Lee seems to be positioning himself as Korea's answer to Stan Brakhage.

Duelist trailer:

Scenes from the TV drama Damo:

The Best Korean and Japanese Films of the 2000s: Inaugural Post

Yesterday I received an email from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), a Korean government-supported, quasi-independent organization that funds, supports and promotes Korean films domestically and abroad. If you have even the smallest amount of interest in Korean cinema, I highly recommend checking out their website, where you will find a wealth of material on both current and older Korean films. You should especially explore their "Publications" section, where you will find PDFs that you can download of their published material on Korean film history, films, and directors, and their periodicals on the Korean film industry. This is an invaluable source of information, and one which I refer to frequently.

KOFIC's newest publication is Korean Cinema Today, a bimonthly periodical with articles, reviews, and interviews concerning the current state of the Korean film industry, and especially Korean films that have been selected for major film festivals. Their next issue will be a special one that will look back on this past decade, the first of the 21st century, and included in this issue will be a reader's poll of the 10 best Korean films of the decade. The email I received was in reference to this, asking me to choose the best 5 films of the decade. If you would like to participate in this survey, you can do so here. (Click the button at the bottom to send your message.) If you include your name, nationality, and mailing address, your name will be included in the printed list of participants, and they will send you a copy of the published issue.

KOFIC's project has inspired me to do something similar for this blog. So for the next several months or so, I will be posting periodically on my picks for the best Korean films of the 2000s. Since Japanese films are also a major presence on this blog, I will be doing the same for Japanese cinema. Some of the posts will be republished here from elsewhere, others will be original posts. These will exclude films that have already been reviewed on this blog, or that I have written for other sites that I have chosen not to republish here. Of course, there are far more than five films that are worthy of inclusion on my list for the best of the decade. There will be no rankings or evaluations of which ones are better than other films. I'll leave it to you readers to decide that for yourselves.

Here are links to my reviews of my first best-of-2000s selections:

Korean Films

Radio Star (Lee Joon-ik, 2006)

Our School (Kim Myung-joon, 2006)

Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)

Voice of a Murderer (Park Jin-pyo, 2007)

Ad-Lib Night (Lee Yoon-ki, 2006)

The Happy Life (Lee Joon-ik, 2007)

Forever the Moment (Yim Soon-rye, 2007)

Epitaph (Jung Bum-sik and Jung Sik, 2007)

Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim, 2008)

Old Partner (Lee Chung-ryoul, 2008)

Breathless (Yang Ik-june, 2008)

Joint Security Area (Park Chan-wook, 2000)

Japanese Films

I Just Didn't Do It (Masayuki Suo, 2006)

Memories of Matsuko (Tetsuya Nakashima, 2006)

Sway (Miwa Nishikawa, 2006)

Dear Pyongyang (Yonghi Yang, 2005)

Matsugane Potshot Affair (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2006)

The Mourning Forest (Naomi Kawase, 2007)

All Around Us (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 2008)

Confessions of a Dog (Gen Takahashi, 2006)

Halfway (Eriko Kitagawa, 2009)

Dainipponjin (Big Man Japan) (Hitoshi Matsumoto, 2007)

Yasukuni (Li Ying, 2007)

For the record, these are the Korean films I chose for the KOFIC poll:

Turning Gate (Hong Sang-soo, 2002) -- the above still is from this film.

A Good Lawyer's Wife (Im Sang-soo, 2003)

Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2005)

Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong, 2007)

Certainly I could have picked five completely different films that would have been just as good, but I'm fairly satisfied with the above list as representative of the best Korean films of the decade, within the limited parameters of KOFIC's survey. What are your picks for the best Korean and/or Japanese films of the 2000s? You can submit your responses in the comments below.