A moving film that grips your attention at just the right pace; not too insistently, just achingly poetic, enough to keep you flowing with the film.
Poems don't have to be chronological; they rarely are. This poem flows and intertwines with itself like a well connected web, leaving you with enough stamina to go through the different layers of meaning and connections. At no point did i want to pause or stop the film - something i was prepared to do at the start of the film, if it proved too artistic- by the time the credits rolled, i was grateful for having even thought of watching this 2004 film by Kim Ki-Duk.
It has surprisingly little dialogue; the male lead (acted by Jae Hee) never speaks at all - little wonder that no names sticks with you even after the film ends. Yet the little dialogue that surfaces bring illumination into the intentions of the main characters, giving dimensions to the mute character in a deeper way than i suspect mere dialogue can deliver.
(spoilers ahead. go watch the film before i spoil it for you.)
More accurately, there was monologue, not dialogue in the film.
(a) when there was direct confrontation of other people with the leads, always dotted with violence, by/to the male lead.
These sparing lines gave me the reassurance that i was reading the film correctly, but more importantly, i feel they broke up the peace and serenity penetrating throughout the film and defined the violence and turbulence against the backdrop of Zen Romance (coined by David) The violence didn't exist however to break up the momentum or to add variety to the mood; it was a vital part of the film, a vital part of the character's existence.
(b) Tae-suk's golf accident which implicated an innocent female rider and the male rider calls out to her, attempting to revive her.
(c) when the female speaks her only line in the entire film, indirectly to Tae-suk.
The simple 'Breakfast is ready" was a call of liberation, ringing out into the bright hope of a new morning. Liberation from the oppression of her husband as she realises that Tae-suk, love, has come back into her life. Her wait had been worth it. Honestly throughout the film i was half expecting Tae-suk to be a spirit or ghost or whatever- something a figment of a woman's imagination. Yet the very fact that he existed physically accentuated the surreality of the romance. Kim is a masterful storyteller.
Poems don't have to be chronological; they rarely are. This poem flows and intertwines with itself like a well connected web, leaving you with enough stamina to go through the different layers of meaning and connections. At no point did i want to pause or stop the film - something i was prepared to do at the start of the film, if it proved too artistic- by the time the credits rolled, i was grateful for having even thought of watching this 2004 film by Kim Ki-Duk.
It has surprisingly little dialogue; the male lead (acted by Jae Hee) never speaks at all - little wonder that no names sticks with you even after the film ends. Yet the little dialogue that surfaces bring illumination into the intentions of the main characters, giving dimensions to the mute character in a deeper way than i suspect mere dialogue can deliver.
(spoilers ahead. go watch the film before i spoil it for you.)
More accurately, there was monologue, not dialogue in the film.
(a) when there was direct confrontation of other people with the leads, always dotted with violence, by/to the male lead.
These sparing lines gave me the reassurance that i was reading the film correctly, but more importantly, i feel they broke up the peace and serenity penetrating throughout the film and defined the violence and turbulence against the backdrop of Zen Romance (coined by David) The violence didn't exist however to break up the momentum or to add variety to the mood; it was a vital part of the film, a vital part of the character's existence.
(b) Tae-suk's golf accident which implicated an innocent female rider and the male rider calls out to her, attempting to revive her.
(c) when the female speaks her only line in the entire film, indirectly to Tae-suk.
The simple 'Breakfast is ready" was a call of liberation, ringing out into the bright hope of a new morning. Liberation from the oppression of her husband as she realises that Tae-suk, love, has come back into her life. Her wait had been worth it. Honestly throughout the film i was half expecting Tae-suk to be a spirit or ghost or whatever- something a figment of a woman's imagination. Yet the very fact that he existed physically accentuated the surreality of the romance. Kim is a masterful storyteller.
The Prison cell scenes of Tae-suk mastering the art of disappearing was mastery in and of itself - removing his identity (shoes), inching towards the shadows, blind spots, ceiling and finally, metaphorically slipping under the skin of someone else (by imitating and anticipating the movements of the person he trails, making use of the blind area that our 180degrees vision bestows) Monologue comes into the picture as shouts of the warden as he confronts Tae-suk with the latter's intent to practice disappearing and not be found.
This metaphorical representation of Tae-suk taking on the persona of the people he comes across, starts right at the start of the film as he breaks into the first house with the family away on a vacation; taking photos with the family photos, bathing, changing into the clothes of the owner, making himself food, watching TV. The comfortness with which Tae-suk slips under the owner(s) skin is vaguely unsettling and brings to mind 2 questions - (a) are the lives of the owners that easily stolen in that few moments that Tae-suk becomes them (b) does not Tae-suk have an identity that is his core at all?
The ending waltzes in with an elegance as the 2 characters steps up on the symbolic weighing machine, but the director relents during the last few secs of the film and asks the question verbosely (awkwardly): Are we living a dream or a reality? The film's attempt to explain itself spoiled an otherwise perfect wordless poem for me. The few words appeared to be one too many. , perhaps giving us an inkling that words are really not the most comfortable language for the director.
He was asking the right question using the wrong words, in my humble opinion. The real tension was not simply reality vs dream, but lies in existentialism vs essence - do we exist to create our essence or does our essence define our existence?
Tae-suk appears to have no personality, apart from his helpful habit of repairing whatever was broken in the homes. He existed in the empty houses of strangers day by day, washing their clothes, watching the cable channels they subscribe to, looking at their family photos, (or photos the photographer took), eating what they ate. Yet did he have an essence of his own as he went about these mundane tasks that we're so accustomed to do without questioning the meaning, or lackthereof?
The prevalence of photos in every house he visited, including Tae-suk's own obsession with taking photos with the owners of the house symbolised our attempt to verify our existence by taking photos. The female lead had an essence that was abused and broken by an apparently bipolar husband , yet she didn't exist - staying the shadows and remaining undetected even by Tae-suk, the intruder in her own home. Her move to cut up her photo in the photographer's house and re-arranging it beyond recognition was another attempt to nullify her existence.
When the 2 characters meet however, existence met essence and they began to live. Tae-suk's eventual removal of the woman's photo in the photographer's house was liberation of the woman's painful existence in an abusive marriage. It set the pace for a more hopeful turn of events to the end. i liked the last scene especially - with the blurring of camera focus on the weighing machine set at zero with the 2 characters standing on it. Both characters had fixed the weighing machine twice in the whole film, a symbol of setting their world to an objective scale. When the needle returned to zero at the end of the film, there is a sense of completion and wholeness, that finally the weighing machine ain't broken no more.
This film proves that a good film does not have to be aided by flowery words; in fact, it was enhanced with the lackthereof, proving that silence speaks louder than words. A real cliche to any self respecting movie reviewer, but i would still say it's a real masterpiece.
Random rants:
It's kinda spooky when he starts re-entering the houses he broke into and everyone went "I feel weird, there's someone in the house". Somehow i thought it was a disjunct with the entire mood of the movie, a little too haunting for my taste.
I'd give it a 4 stars out of 5.
Other Reviewers of the same film:
KFCCinema
Canadian Cinephile
Reeling Reviews
Thoughts on Stuffs
Smart Popcorn
Qwipster