Gwoemul (Korean, Joon-ho Bong)
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Originally published in Milliblog at,
http://itwofs.com/milliblog/2007/07/08/gwoemul-korean-joon-ho-bong/
Gwoemul (The Host) is an incredible genre shifter. It starts as a creature-fest, gets into some amazingly goofball comedy and even attempts to make a political statement amidst all that. But the point is – which goes missing even in most mainstream Hollywood monster films – that this one doesn’t let go of its human angle, even for a bit. Yes, its unusually funny at times, makes a strong statement on how silly people can get at the weirdest of situations, plenty of gore all along and even has a surreal scene where one of the lead characters who goes missing, silently materializes amidst the family and no one even reacts!
For most of us accustomed to straight, to-the-point monster movies, Gwoemul is a fantastic surprise. One moment you’ll be laughing your guts out and the next, you’re doing pretty much the same, in utter horror. Director Joon-ho Bong mixes the genres pretty well along with some very imaginative cinematography and effective background score.
The human angle – the child (Hyun-seo, played with quick-witted chutzpah by Ah-sung Ko) being carried away by the monster is indeed the mainstay around which the film revolves with a feverish pace. And that stays at the back of your, the monster’s and everybody else’s mind too. How the family grapples with the situation is something seen to be believed.
The Director gets his fingers on many seemingly disjoint things but makes a very strong point on the anarchy surrounding the country and how global forces lead the hapless country to react with both urgency and extreme insensitivity just because of the word ‘virus’! So, we have brief interludes on disjoint families, affordability, credit cards, American/ World aid in times of national emergency, mass hysteria lapsing into absolute comedy, a irreverent street-side tramp, tax on reward money and the best – an amazingly shot roadside reaction to virus infection, by a bunch of people waiting for a bus!
The finale was a bit of a muddle – to be honest, and Gwoemul does leave a few unanswered questions but in the larger interest of the film’s scope, they are perhaps best left that way. We seem to have got what we came in for and I didn’t expect even one fourth of what the film showcased. Gwoemul is a superb example in making movies that go way beyond conventions and even pokes fun at monster-movie stereotypes. But you, of course, may not notice it, since the film takes itself very seriously.
The creature effects per se are fantastic. The frenetic cinematography, highlighted during the first scene where the creature is introduced and the assorted chase scenes along the banks of Han river, is incredible. The music is highly effective, particularly towards the end. Song Kang-ho (Gang-du) pretty much carries the movie even when he dozes off every other minute!
Here’s one film that can afford the ‘expect the unexpected’ tag. You look for a creature-feature and get some serious shocks – on movie making and genre bending. And all that works. Big time!
will watch it tommorrow" - 
17 Comments
This one of the best monster film i’ve ever seen.It mixes genres Comedy,horror,emtions,drama,moster movie with equal ease..The Host’s director Joon ho Bong is simply the best in Korea today. A young genius to be precise.In the host he achieves what many Hollywood director can only dream of..Social,political comment in a monster film that assumes itself as one..No second degrees here.The Beast is as realistic and freigntening as possible.
Refer to Joon Ho Bong’s “Memories of murder”(prior to The Host) also..You’ll know..This police thriller is relentless and full of twists,deceptions and turns as many as possible at every corner of the story..Extremely realistic without SP effects..Ho bong is indeed a Whiz kid!!!
Thanks Inetk Wonderful and deserving review !
Great piece here Inetk. I loved the film!
kmkm13 and Satyam: Thanks for the feedback. Next on line is Joon-ho BOng’s Memories of Murder…the New York Times review for this one quite amazing. Even Gwoemul has got a great review from them – so much that Joon is compared with none other than Speilberg!
Oh Yeah..This one is BRILLIANT inetk It won a prestigious Grand Prize At Cognac Police film festival 2004(saw it in cine) ..A must see for sure Great investigation film brilliantly adapted to the elemantary locals.Full of twists, turns…but also it frustrates which is an achievement like Fincher’s Zodiac(probably more complex structure) i think ..
Memories of Murder is worth checking out though I prefer The Host. I also prefer Zodiac. On a related theme a fantastic film is Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine.
More recently kmkm13 alerted me to lee chang Dong’s Peppermint Candy which is indeed a superb film and a very worth followup to his earlier oasis.
Another very interesting Korean director is Kim Duk-Ki (The Bow, 3-Iron, Address Unknown, The Coastguard, The Isle, Spring, Summer Fall…).
The greatest is probably Hong Sang-Soo.
In comparison with these I find Chan Wook Park a bit overrated though he’s visually impressive. I don’t like Old Boy but I do find Sympathy for Mr vengeance and Lady Vengeance interesting.
I think S Korean cinema has been going through something of a renaissance though the line between ‘art’ and ’sensationalism’ (defined here as ‘pure effect’) is perhaps a bit blurred in the work of most of these filmmakers.
i think i’ve missed this Imamura film Satyam though i’ve seen L’anguille and La ballade de Narayama which is great..
Well i like Old Boy’s the way it is structured ,graphic violence et al..I think Park Chan is exploring incestual relationships alonside vengeance theme also..Yeah i thik he is overrated not that much though
Never seen a film from Hong Sang -Soo..anyone you’ll recommend..
Thanks for Medevekin and Ichikawa’s Fires..One of the best war film i’ve seen and the Starvation in it is to the extreme physical limit..Not for everyone i think!!
Re: “In comparison with these I find Chan Wook Park a bit overrated though he’s visually impressive. I don’t like Old Boy but I do find Sympathy for Mr vengeance and Lady Vengeance interesting.”
My exposure to South Korean cinema is very limited (maybe ~5 films), but I do agree with this statement. Wook Park reminds me of the early Almodovar, in that he is great at “shock treatment”, but one is often not sure to what (if any) end. That being said Almodovar’s was always a more humane and compassionate and for me, compelling, vision than Chan Wook Park’s. This isn’t to say I wasn’t impressed by his trilogy, merely that it left me cold…
So, Bhaiya Q Almodovar is more “Chaleureux’ than Wook who is colder not really a humanist but visually he is impressive ,breathtaking imo!Yeah remains to be seen if he can reach another level..
In btw i think Satyam is right ‘The Host’ is probably better “Memories of Murder”..Catch them Q if you haven’t…
kmkm13: It’s not hard to miss an Imamura film given that he was making one every year for 15-20 years (sometimes more than this)! But yes Vengeance is Mine is one of his peaks.
RE:”Never seen a film from Hong Sang -Soo..anyone you’ll recommend..”
kmkm13: my favorite is Tale of Cinema. The director has only made seven films and really any one could be checked out. I’ll list the titles though beginning with the most recent one:
1)Woman on the Beach
2)Tale of Cinema
3)Woman is the Future of Man
4)Turning Gate
5)Woman Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors
6)Power of Kangwon province
7)The day a Pig fell into the well
Incidentally #3 and #4 are part of a double disc release in France.
Similarly #6, #5, #7 are part of another set called La Trilogie Hong Sang-Soo.
#2 is available separately (Un Conte de cinema).
Woman on the Beach has not yet released there as far as I know.
Millon thanks Satyam yeah noted..incidentally,i’ve seen “La femme est l’avenir de l’homme”on french channel Canal +..Will check out further his filmo..You’ve seen “Eureka “Japanese director Shinji Aoyama ..Singular film very different in B/W really slow though…
I loved Eureka. I found it a very provocative film. And yes it as slow but really well done.
Ultimately a lot of this contemporary S Korean talent (not Hong Sang-Soo) owes a lot to Imamura and Oshima, often slashed with Antonioni (bizarre as this might sound). And the inspiration even going beyond those two Japanese directors is drawn from Kurosawa’s Yojimbo/Sanjuro moment. Kurosawa invented a certain coincidence of ‘violence’ and ‘humor’ (not to mention the stylization of violence that he later regretted, seeing what he’d spawned!) and this is a somewhat problematic move, especially in the inflections it acquires in the work of Imamura and Oshima, and their S Korean heirs.
But that one moment in Sanjuro when the bloods spurts out like a fountain has bred entire cinemas from Japan to Hollywood, from Imamura to Tarantino. That moment has however founds it’s most interesting ‘readings’ in Kurosawa’s own (and later) Ran and Haneke’s recent Cache.
Since Antonioni has been mentioned here I should add that I am constantly surprised by the degree to which he is almost the seminal filmmaker for emerging cinemas around the globe from West Africa to Iran, but also ‘new age’ cinemas in all of East Asia (sometimes married with Ozu!). ‘Surprised’ because Antonioni is a bit of an acquired taste and one wouldn’t have expected this degree of influence when those films first came out.
(coincidentally a new Kim Ki-Duk released today…)
July 13, 2007
MOVIE REVIEW | ‘TIME’
They’re All Through With Love, Yet Searching for More
By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
Stephen Sondheim once said that melodrama and farce were his two favorite forms of theater because “they are obverse sides of the same coin.” Kim Ki-duk, the Korean writer and director of “Three-Iron,” has minted a cinematic example of that coin with “Time,” a tale of big-city 20-somethings and the masks they wear. Throughout, Mr. Kim flips between soapy melodrama and dry, self-aware comedy. The effect is thrilling and disorienting, like walking on a trampoline.
The film starts and ends with the same scene: a woman clad in a long coat, sunglasses and a surgical mask (an echo of “Dressed to Kill”) leaving a plastic-surgery clinic and colliding with our heroine, See-hee (Seong Hyeon-ah). The impact causes the patient to drop and break a framed photograph. See-hee promises to repair it and takes it along to a coffee shop, where she’s meeting her boyfriend, Ji-woo (Ha Jung-woo).
Clearly, their relationship is doomed. See-hee accuses Ji-woo of growing bored with her and having a wandering eye, paranoid accusations that she thinks are confirmed when Ji-woo checks out a waitress, then interrupts their conversation to exchange insurance information with a young woman who dinged his parked car. When the lovers’ quarrel reaches a Jerry Springer pitch and See-hee stomps out of the coffee shop, the driver tells Ji-woo, “She must love you very much; I envy you.”
See-hee, a self-loathing basket case who once said, “I’m sorry for having the same boring face every day,” goes to the clinic glimpsed in the opening and signs up for a new face. Then “Time” switches its focus to poor Ji-woo, who knows only that his girlfriend suddenly moved away without saying goodbye. He doesn’t realize that the cute new coffee-shop waitress with the suspiciously similar name Seh-hee (Park Ji-yun) seems familiar for a reason.
As “Time” follows Ji-woo through familiar big-city mating rituals — karaoke, speed dating, thwarted one-night stands — en route to an uneasy relationship with his new/old love, it becomes clear that Mr. Kim has more on his mind than the ethics of nose jobs.
“Time” has been described as a comedy about the hollowness of relationships in a global consumerist culture, and it certainly is. The film’s three lead performances, by Mr. Ha as Ji-woo and by Ms. Seong and Ms. Park as the two incarnations of his lover, are fearlessly honest, so attuned to contemporary anxieties about sex, love and social status that the characters’ unhappiness is as squirm-inducing as the movie’s close-ups of sliced flesh.
But while the film’s cultural context is of the moment, its depiction of romantic desperation is timeless. Many scenes end on the same uneasy note, a mix of cynical dissatisfaction and desperate, almost childlike neediness. This, too, is reminiscent of Sondheim, specifically the title “Sorry-Grateful,” a song from “Company.” Like Sondheim’s Nixon-era swingers, Mr. Kim’s clueless, self-absorbed 21st-century materialists are miserable in love, and they can’t get enough of it.
Mr. Kim repeats ideas, situations and shots with musical precision. He puts certain sentiments in the mouths of different characters at different times. He lets pivotal moments play out through scrims or partitions, or as reflections in mirrors or windowpanes, depriving them of emotional solidity. He shows characters donning actual or metaphoric masks (getting new faces, moving to new places, starting new relationships) and then becoming depressed when these alterations alter little. As Sondheim’s married men sing in “Sorry-Grateful,” “Everything’s different, nothing’s changed/Only maybe slightly rearranged.”
The flyspeck insignificance of the characters’ narcissism is expressed through a recurring setting: a sculpture garden that includes a pair of giant hands topped by a connected series of increasingly small iron squares that seem to vanish against the sky. The film’s oft-repeated image of lovers photographing themselves in those palms, naïvely trying to immortalize their affection, is the closest the director comes to a moral: Don’t obsess over surfaces, because your life is not really in your hands.
“Time” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has frank sex, nudity and gory documentary images of plastic surgery.
TIME
Opens today in Manhattan.
Written (in Korean, with English subtitles), produced, directed and edited by Kim Ki-duk; director of photography, Sung Jong-moo; music by Noh Hyung-woo; art director, Choi Keun-woo; released by LifeSize Entertainment. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 97 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Seong Hyeon-ah (See-hee), Ha Jung-woo (Ji-woo), Park Ji-yun (Seh-hee) and Kim Sung-min (Doctor)