5. Park Chan-wook's Venegeance Trilogy
March 27th-April 9th
Sunday April 5th Sympathy For Mr. Vengenace (2002)
Ryu a young deaf man, concocts a plan with his girlfriend Cha Yeong-mi to kidnap his old boss’s daughter for ransom in order to pay for life-saving kidney transplant for his sister. Just when their plan is on the verge of success, everythhing that can go wrong does. Both the sister and the little girl wind up dead, and now the boss Park (played by Song Kang-ho from Parasite) is out for revenge.
The film is incredibly violent. One minor character bleeds out lying in his own blood and excrement. Another is tortured with electricty in her apartment. This is all depicted unflichingly by the camera. Yet it’s the context surrounding the violence that makes the film unnerving. Fate is depcited early on in the film as ultimately cruel and abitrary, sucking the characters into a vortex and destroying them. The circumstances under which Ryu resorts to kidnapping are particularly tragic as he is exploited by condescending doctors and ruthless organ harvesters, oh, and he gets fired from his low-paying job. Although he is mute, it’s plain to read the simmering bitterness that drives this character.
I couldn’t write about this film without mentioning Bae Doona’s performance as Yeong-mi. She’s kind of a brilliant character. A textbook edgy leftist, we see her fruitlessly hand out leaflets while sloganeering. There’s this intriguing micro narrative where we wonder how much of her professed politics is just for show. Supremely self-confident, Yeong-mi is the one who works out the mechanics of the actual kidnapping before finding herself hoplessly out of her depth.
Monday April 6th Oldboy (2003)
Pretty sure a lot of people reading this have seen Oldboy already and I’m not sure if there’s much more that can be said about it.
This was the first South Korean film I ever saw, back when I was 16. It was 2010, I was very spotty (still am tbh) and Oldboy was the shit. I also thought that Danny Boyle was the greatest living auteur and that American Beauty was highbrow art.
Luckily, Oldboy holds up ten years later, for the most part. Yeah, the incest stuff was pretty shocking for someone who was gradually being allowed to watch 18 rated films but now that whole part of the story feels overwrought. Even though there’s a heightened reality to the whole film, the plausbility of hypnosis as a plot mechanic really stretched the limits of believability for me. I don’t mean that the portrayal of hypnosis in itself was unbeliebvable. Rather, it’s like hypnosis was a crutch to keep all the narrative plates spinning and so the the illusion was kind of dented for me on this rewatch.
There’s also a liberal tossing of literary allusions in Oldboy. Some work, others made the literature student in me roll my eyes. The female character who commits suicide is introduced reading Sylvia Plath. I mean, seriously?
In his later films (Lady Veneance being one of them) Park is able to weave references to other mediums in a more elegant way than here in Oldboy.
Tuesday April 7th Lady Vengeance (2005)
Film good. You want to know more? Then tune into Screen 25’s stream of Lady Vengeance April 15th. I’ve recorded a breif intro to the film, but I’m more interested to hear your thoughts.
Screen 25 are a community cinema based in South Norwood, London. They do great stuff, screening unique films for the local area. Now more than ever is a great time to support them, so why not donate something?
Sorry for bailing on the last newsletter. I was pretty depressed. Lockdown has meant my acne has gotten worse, I’m living even more like trash than usual, and there was a point where I hated watching films. It was pretty grim. Hope everyone is doing a bit better, that you are in contact with loved ones wherever they may be and most importantly are in a saf environment.
Will have a new newsletter ready for next Friday!