Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance 2002 | dir. Park Chan-wook

Memories of Murder (2003)

21 FILMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY Snowpiercer (2013) dir. Bong Joon-ho

Thirst (2009)

Dir.  Park Chan-wook

Broker (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2022)

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

복수는 나의 것 (2002)

MAG 110, is that you?

[ID: A screenshot of a post in r/movies on Reddit. The title reads: "First Image of Song Kang-Ho in 'COBWEB' - centers around an obsessive director who wants to recut a film he made in the 70s to perfect the ending | A film by Kim Jee-woon ('I Saw the Devil')". End title. Then there is said image of the movie. It shows a group of people including actor Song Kang-ho huddled together in a room with what looks like a concrete ceiling. They all look at something that is not in the frame. A person on the left of the image is holding a movie camera. In the right bottom corner there are a couple of white serger cone threads. There are dark strings hanging from the ceiling. End ID]

@a-mag-a-day (perfect timing, isn’t it?)

복수는 나의 것 // Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)

Broker (2022), dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda

Happy birthday, Taeju-ssi.

— Thirst (2009), dir. Park Chan-Wook

Cobweb

directed by Kim Jee-woon, 2023

Joint Security Area [공동경비구역 JSA] (2000)

A picture really does say a thousand words. The final image of Park Chan-wook’s DMZ character study perfectly sums up the relationship between its four central characters as well as the overall tone that it sets in examining the human consequences of such a specific and thoroughly enforced piece of diplomatic work. The monochrome photograph captures Sgt Oh’s wry expression, Pvt Jeong grinning as he marches in the background, Pvt Nam against the wall and Sgt Lee moving to block the lens. There’s an irreverence hiding in plain sight here, a secret pact which Park teases out over the course of this military thriller. But even more brilliantly, the taking of the image itself served as a character beat earlier in the film. While it’s not the first time we meet Sgt Oh, this is his first true reveal, making the choice to hand a tourist’s hat which has blown over into the DPRK back over to the ROK. He’s stiff and militaristic, but capable of making humanistic gestures, we see here. Throughout the rest of the film, he is perhaps the levelest mind in the room. Though fervent in his dedication to the DPRK in his words, Oh seems to value the lives of those he cares about more when things get tense. He uses this zealotry to purposefully, perhaps, sabotage a cross-examination when Lee looks about to break and perhaps damage his future, and as we come to learn about the confrontation which sparked the investigation and film, Oh works to protect his brethren on the southern side of the border even after his comrade is shot. He’s a good man. They’re all good men, on some level. The central idyll is like a warm blanket were it not for the knowledge that this is doomed to fail violently, nightly gatherings of camaraderie. But we come as an audience to enjoy their time together goofing off and swapping cigarettes and stories. It’s a connection not seen anywhere else in this world of strict and arbitrary ceremony and custom. Even the woman investigating the incident, Swiss negotiator Maj Jean, is separated from her intimate connections, her father’s past as a North Korean general weaponized and herself distant from him. Everything is defined by this line in the sand, and yet four men found a way to step across it. If only for a moment. Neither Lee nor Nam escape the fallout, and Oh can only find the release of discharge. It’s a moment in time, a snapshot.

Director Park uses flashbacks and perspective to spool out the different potential truths at hand before revealing the full facts of the matter. It’s well-executed, but not exactly anything novel. What is more interesting is his effortless as usual command of visual storytelling through editing and motifs. Borders are at once very important and completely frivolous, as exemplified by the concrete band defining the split between the two territories. ROK soldiers line up in drills to shoot moving targets from a model version of this setup, but those same soldiers from both sides will in other instances line up to swap cigarettes and hunt rabbit in a whole different kind of war-game. Our secret friends become increasingly juvenile during their duties, early on making threats about shadows crossing the border, which escalates to a spitting contest. They can’t even maintain a straight face when on duty facing off against one another, which makes their later face-to-face encounter at deposition, when there can be no falsehood, all the more heartbreaking. Later, mulling her options, Jean walks back and forth on that line like it’s a tightrope, balancing geopolitical consequences. Park is never twee or kumbahyah, we should all just get along about it: klaxons warn of imminent invasion and the ROK border defense react, our central quartet mull the consequences of invasion and how they would have to shoot each other in such a scenario. He's not naive, but Park does arch his brow at the theatrics of it all.

Underneath all of this is a heavy layer of queer subtext. It’s almost full-on text, just have an orgy! The one thing holding this film back. Nothing’s perfect. But there’s a definite longing between these four, especially Nam and Jeong. The secrecy of night can hide these normal interactions which the outer world condemns. Further overtures are made and blissfully received as Nam witnesses a mirror being flashed from across the border and practically exits this plane of existence. Jeong enjoys the arts and receives his birthday gift rhapsodically. Coded messages—the passing of a Yankee lighter, whistling—take the place of conventional conversation. The memento of the landmine fuse intertwines intimacy of that first meeting with danger, a Very Queer Thing. Nam paints a dark line under his eye akin to Oh’s scar in homage to him. That’s right, I’m going full tinfoil here, this will DEFINITELY fit into my Grand Unified Gay Theory come hell or high water.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'Commie' or 'bullet'.

A car with a diplomat flag on its hood appears in a scene.

Someone names a nation.

BIG DRINK

A flashback begins.

CGI(?) birds? Are birds real?

Song Kang-ho whistles.

21 FILMS OF THE 21ST CENTURY Parasite (2019) dir. Bong Joon-ho

Thirst (2009) dir. Park Chan-wook