‘REVENGE - I COULD MAKE TEN FILMS ABOUT IT'
A Korea of violence
Paul Dale meets PARK CHAN WOOK — currently the most important Asian filmmaker — and asks him about his remarkable new revenge thriller OLD BOY.
()ne l-‘ine Spring l)a_\‘ about how he can tnake a film without a murder scene.‘ The Korean filmmaker l’ark (‘han-wook (inset) laughs a calculated. cold laugh. He knows that. thanks to his last two lilms and the euphoric endorsement ol' Quentin 'l‘arantino at this year‘s (‘annes l‘ilm l’estiyal. the world‘s lilm press haye him pegged as the new South liast Asian enl'ant terrible (against some incredibly still competition). ‘I don't tisc screen \"ltiiL‘llL‘L‘ jllsl becatise I enjoy expressing yiolence on screen.‘ he says. ‘I l‘ind it
‘ I often joke to my friend llur jin—ho. who made
painful but it has something to do with the morality ol‘
yiolence in a scene. I don‘t think the pain of others in an act of yiolence is something to be enjoyed. I think it should giye pain to both the Viewer and the one who makes the lilm.'
The small. slightly chubby 4l-year-old with a youthful demeanour still exudes the air of the philosophy graduate he once was. He‘s not a man to be rushed into anything and indeed his ascendancy to the top of the South Korean cinema heap has not been a last one. After graduating in 1088 he was employed by mainstream filmmaker (iwak .lae-young as assistant director for xi Ski'lt'lt (if-(l Rainy Day. But poetic ambitions enticed him away from such mediocre l‘are and in 1002 he debuted with an odd gangster table called Moon is . . . The Sun's Dream. That and his subsequent box office miss. the 1997 comedy Trio. suggested a brilliant. il' obscene. talent.
\Vook finally got his dues in 2()()() with superb .l.S'.-l: Joint Security Area. a mysterious thriller set along the North/South Korean border. It remains the biggest grossing film in South Korean history and critics adored it too. He l‘ollowed this two years later with the brilliant. harrowing Sympathy for .llr \engeanee. a blackly comic thriller about kidney theft and terrorist cells. And now we haye Old Bay which. with the
46 THE LIST Cc‘. SSS-1
possible exception oil-\ndrei '/.\'yagintsey's The Return. is the linest film you will see this year. The nasty. gory. bewildering tale of a businessman's kidnap. imprisonment and subsequent bid l'or reyenge is both inyentiye and generic: it conl'ounds when it should
coml‘ort and yice yersa. it is the work (ii a master
auteur.
‘My personal taste is goy'erned by the l‘act that l belieye the driying power behind human society and relationships within society is Violence. 1 like the stories in which yiolence is combined with humour and the injustice that springs out of that to create a surreal atmosphere.‘
like in the lilms ol' l)a\'id Lynch." I weakly contend.
'1 like him but I prefer Sam l’eckinpah. Bring Me the
Head all-\llrerlu (iareia is one of my l‘ayourite lilms ol
all time. But you know it is comics and literature that influence me more than anything. ()/(I Bay is based on an original manga and. apart from a l‘ew little known Korean writers. I am greatly influenced by Dostoy'eysky. Kal‘ka. Zola. Shakespeare and Kurt Vonnegut. I am yery attracted to his humour. ‘
Much has been made of the fact that Old Boy is the second part of a reyenge trilogy that started with Sy'ni/nilliy' for .llr l’engeant'e and will end with the Sympathy for /.(l(/_\' Vengeance (working title). He eyentually comes clean on this.
'When Old Boy came out in Korea I was in this press conference and the journalists were all asking me why I had made a second reyenge moyie. so I said that the Vengeance theme was yery interesting and that I could make ten films about it. And before I knew what I was saying I announced that l was gonna make another reyenge film and that is how it became a trilogy.‘ What the hell. it's the magic number after all.
Old Boy is on selected release from Fri 15 Oct.
Hit >l<
THE BEST FILM & DVD RELEASES
* Old Boy Park Chan Wook‘s brilliant festival award scooping revenge thriller about Dae-su. a businessman who is kidnapped in front of his house in 1988 and returned to his family in 2003. But now he wants answers. whatever it takes. A masterwork. See preview (left) and review. Selected release. * Kontroll Deep in the bowels of the Hungarian underground. a ticket inspector is coming to terms with a rival ticket inspection team and a mysterious killer. Likeable comedy thriller. See interview and review. GFT, Glasgow.
* Boo, Zino and Snurks (pictured) Ingenious. existential feature animation that's too good for the under eights it’s aimed at. See review. General release.
* Taxi Driver Scorsese's 1976 reactionary classic on the big screen. Miss at your peril. CCA, Glasgow (Thu 7 and Sat 9 Oct only).
* Black History Month Superb selection of black history themed documentaries and films from around the world. Highlights include Mystery of the Black Mummy and Look at Me in the Whirlwind — The Marcus Garvey Story. G12, Glasgow. * Red Lights Marital discord disseminated in this sly adaptation of Georges Simenon's gripping novel. GFf, Glasgow.
* Switchblade Romance Excellent heart attack-inducing French slasher flick. Selected release.
* Hero ‘Mummy. look at the flying swordsmen and all the trippy colours.’ General release. at: Dead Man’s Shoes Shane Meadows’ seamless revenge thriller starring the mighty Paddy Considine.
* La Dolce Vita (Nouveau Pictures) Fellini's paparazzo masterpiece re-released on DVD. See Film DVD. Retail.