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:

They Lost It at the Movies

Gagman. 1988. Directed by Lee Myung-se. Written by Lee Myung-se and Bae Chang-ho. Produced by Lee Tae-won. Cinematography by Yoo Young-kil. Edited by Kim Hyun. Art direction by To Yon-gu. Music by Kim Su-cheol. Sound by Lee Young-gil.

Cast: Ahn Sung-ki (Lee Jong-sae), Hwang Shin-hye (Oh Seon-yeong), Bae Chang-ho (Moon Do-seok).

“We live in an age without masterpieces.” So laments Lee Jong-sae (Ahn Sung-ki), the stand-up comedian and aspiring film director who is the central figure of Gagman, the debut film from Lee Myung-se. Jong-sae has spent his life channeling Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp, down to the signature mustache. He has a grand dream to make a film, and at one point insinuates himself on a movie set, where he collars the director to give him a script, and tells an TV interview crew that he will make his next film with this director. He enlists his barber Do-seok (Bae Chang-ho) to be his lead actor. Do-seok immediately takes to the idea, selling his barbershop to fund the enterprise, trading his business for loud Hawaiian shirts, shades (“Do I look like Jack Nicholson?”), and eyelid surgery. They are soon joined by Seon-yeong (Hwang Shin-hye), who Jong-sae meets when she sits next to him in a movie theater, kissing him with feigned passion in order to hide from some gangsters who are chasing her. Seon-yeong moves in with Jong-sae, and after she finds the machine gun Jong-sae has hidden in his guitar case, conspires with the two men to rob banks to raise the money for their film.

Although Lee’s prodigious visual talents would come to their full flower in later films, especially First Love (1993), and his recent masterpieces Nowhere to Hide (1999) and Duelist (2005), Gagman is a tremendously impressive debut, and Lee's dizzying mixture of dreams, fantasy, pathos, satire, and canny appropriation of film references proved him to be a unique talent right out of the gate. The characters of Jong-sae and Do-seok, according to an interview Lee gave to critic Tony Rayns, were inspired by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Although Jong-sae, this odd, and perhaps mentally ill, third-rate cabaret comedian tilting at cinematic windmills at first blush seems to be merely a figure of ridicule, this character also elicits sympathy as someone wanting desperately to make a name for himself and matter to the world. This is conveyed by both the witty screenplay by Lee and Bae Chang-ho (a great director in his own right for whom Lee was an assistant), and the mesmerizing performance by Ahn Sung-ki, one of Korea’s finest actors, who truly embodies a character, rather than being simply a collection of quirks and bizarre behavior. His two co-stars are also quite impressive and ably match Ahn note for note. Bae, as Jong-sae’s dimwitted sidekick, and Hwang Shin-hye, as the sexy, devious femme fatale, transform what would be, in lesser hands, merely stock characters into people much deeper and more interesting. All these elements are melded with an arsenal’s worth of cinematic allusions, combining wicked parodies of Korean films (a TV interviewer speaks to an actress who is “known for acting in bed,” and a director who claims his formulaic film as social realism), and appropriations of Hollywood screwball comedy, westerns, and gangster films. Jong-sae evokes not only Charlie Chaplin’s mustache and Little Tramp duck-walk, but in his grasping at fame, Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese’s The King of Comedy. As the three set out to prove Godard’s axiom that all you need to make a film is a girl and a gun, Lee Myung-se uses these materials, and much more, to deliver a great love letter to the movies.

And if you’re in the New York City area, I urge you to see this film on screen at the Imaginasian Theater, where it will screen on January 24, as part of the series “Chungmuro Express: Classic Korean Cinema.” This film series, organized by Korean Cultural Service, will begin with a four-film tribute to actor Ahn Sung-ki. The series’ curator, and my good friend, Hyun-Ock Im, will introduce these screenings and conduct a Q&A afterward. The next screening, on February 28, will be Jeong Ji-young’s Vietnam War drama White Badge. All screenings are free admission and you can RSVP at (212) 759-9550. For more information about Gagman and the film series, see the press release.