Early in his film, Korean writer-director Chang-dong Lee tells us his theme. Holding an apple, the teacher tells his students that, to write poetry, you must first see, really see the world around you. Mija is a 66-year-old pensioner in his class who works part-time as a caregiver for a stroke victim and is raising her sullen slob of a teenage grandson. She struggles with the poetry, but she does begin to see the people in her world with clarity – and it’s not a pretty picture. What she learns to see is human behavior ranging from the venal to the inhumane.
The key to the film’s success is the performance of Jeong-hie Yun as Mija, a protagonist who spends the entire movie observing. Her doctor tells her that her failing memory is the start of something far worse. Sometimes she doesn’t see what we see because she is distracted. But sometimes she doesn’t act like she sees because of denial or avoidance. Sometimes she is disoriented. But she has moments of piercing lucidity, and those moments are unsparing.
This unhurried film is troubling, uncomfortable and very, very good. It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2011. You can stream Poetry from Amazon and Vudu.
Min-hee Kim in a scene from Hong Sang-soo’s CLAIRE’S CAMERA, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
Claire’s Camerais the latest nugget from writer-director Hong Sang-soo, that great observer of awkward situations and hard-drinking. Jeon (Min-hee Kim of The Handmaiden) is a film company assistant who ia traveled to the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of a Korean film. It turns out that the film company executive has had a long-term relationship with the movie’s director, and she immediately fires Jeon when she learns of Jeon’s fling with the director. With several days sill to go before her return flight, Jeon wanders around Cannes. Jeon meets the French schoolteacher and amateur photographer Claire (Isabelle Huppert) and they hang out. Coincidentally, Claire also meets the director. Most of the dialogue is in English, the common language of the French and Korean characters – and the earnestly imperfect English-speaking supplies some of the film’s humor.
Not only does Claire have a camera, she IS the camera through which we observe the foibles of the other characters. Jeon is breathtakingly clueless (or in denial) about the reason for her dismissal. The director, as many Hong Sang-soo characters, has an enthusiastic relationship with alcohol. It’s all dryly funny, although the director and the executive redefine their relationship in a powerfully realistic scene.
This is an especially fine performance by Min-hee Kim. She pulled off some deadpan humor in The Handmaiden, a film more thought of for its eroticism and mystery. Here, she’s often just wandering around in reflection and making small talk. But Kim is just so watchable, she keeps the audience’s interest keen.
Claire’s Camera is not as surreal as last year’s Hong Sang-soo entry, Yourself and Yours, but just as observational and droll. I saw Claire’s Camera at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), where Hong Sang-soo has a cult following and always appreciative audiences. It’s now playing at the 4 Star in San Francisco.
Min-hee Kim and Isabelle Huppert in a scene from Hong Sang-soo’s CLAIRE’S CAMERA, playing at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 4 – 17, 2018. Courtesy of SFFILM.
OKJAOkja is a master filmmaker’s wickedly biting anti-corporate satire. It’s an endearing Girl-And-Her-Supermutant story with one of the best comic chase scenes since What’s Up, Doc?. Okja also carries a strident anti-meat-eating message (see my diatribe several paragraphs below).
Director Bong Joon Ho made Memories of Murder, which I consider a masterpiece of neo-noir and of both the cop buddy and serial killer sub-genres. I have Memories of Murder at #14 on my Best Movies of the 21st Century – So Far. I also loved his affecting drama Mother. As with the sci-fi hit Snowpiercer, Bong Joon Ho got a Hollywood budget for Okja so his imagination could run wild.
And run wild he does. A malevolent and monstrous corporation has engineered “superpigs” for future human consumption. In a scheme to “Green wash” the product, they have distributed the least disturbing-looking of these freaks to be raised by indigenous farmers around the world. One of the superpigs, a female named Okja, is raised on a verdant Korean mountainside by the girl Mija (Seo-hyun Ahn) and her grandfather, Mija and Okja are best friends. But Mija will need to find a way to thwart the corporate baddies who have planned all along to turn Okja into mutant bacon.
The chubby and clumsy Okja, created by a first-rate Korean CGI crew, is instantly lovable for her love for and loyalty to Mija – they even spoon at bedtime. Okja looks and moves more like a hippo than a pig, which makes the movie’s point about genetic engineering while keeping her adorable.
Most of Okja is pretty funny. It opens with the artificially happy music of an industrial film (one imagines a title like Your Friend the Manhole). There’s a slacker Millennial with the worst possible attitude for an employee, sure to be recognized by any boss in the audience. The humor ranges from the sly and cutting corporate satire to the literally scatological comedy when Okja expels manure.
The funniest part of Okja is a cell of sweetly earnest and deluded radical animal rights activists, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), led by Jay (Paul Dano). One of their members is so committed to erasing the human impact on the planet that he refuses to eat anything from animals OR plants, and has to be periodically force-fed by his companions when he passes out from malnutrition. The ALF plans elaborate actions, like repeated rescues of Okja, that play out in mad cap craziness that brings to mind the best of Mack Sennett and Richard Lester.
Okja’s highlight is a chase scene that begins in a tunnel and ends in an underground mall in Seoul. It’s a triumph of zany thrills.
Tilda Swinton plays twin sisters who are heirs to a vile robber baron industrialist and, with great relish, Swinton depicts them to represent contrasting faces of modern capitalism. One is the corporate leader who wants to make money by exploiting the rest of us, but wants to be loved for it and be perceived as benign; I know a big business leader who continually describes himself as of “the employer community”. The other is the type of unapologetic, Social Darwinist corporate villain who just doesn’t care what we think – if it has value, she wants it and she will take it.
Seo-hyun Ahn is appropriately steely as the spunky Mija. Paul Dano is lovable as the clumsily passionate activist leader. A very broad Jake Gyllenhall plays a corporate spokesman at once despicable, dissolute and ridiculous in his 1970s shorts.
There’s one superb performance in Okja that is escaping critical notice. Giancarlo Esposito plays Frank, the chief henchman and corporate advisor to both of the twin sister CEOs. Frank is a master of “managing up”, and one scene in which he spurs a CEO to adopt his idea – and really, really believe that she thought up herself – is brilliantly funny. In a movie filled with very broad performances, Esposito underplays Frank to great effect.
I do have a problem with Okja’s militant anti-meat perspective. I advocate knowing where our food comes from, whether it’s the sweet corn that I buy at my farmer’s market from a farmer in Brentwood, California, or the preserved lemons I buy in a jar from Egypt. Today less than 2% of Americans live on farms, but in my parents’ day, pretty much everyone had experienced firsthand the butchering of meat.
Humans have been eating meat since we could catch another animal (or stumble across one that was already dead). There is no way to eat meat without killing an animal, skinning and bleeding it and cutting it up. Even chicken and steers and pigs that are raised free-range, fed organic corn and yada yada still have to be killed and cut up somewhere – they don’t jump into those shrink-wrapped packages themselves. All that being said, I understand that some people prefer not to see this.
I have toured a meat-packing plant, and the slaughterhouse in Okja is a pretty accurate depiction of the process, although the lighting has been dimmed for a more sinister effect. I have also seen animals slaughtered for dinner on an All-American family farm, and the slaughterhouse is much cleaner and arguably more humane.
Still, even in Okja, Mija catches fish for dinner, and her grandfather raises – and cooks – chickens. I respect the members of my own family who choose not to eat animals. But I think that Okja runs astray by making this perfectly reasonable choice into a moral litmus test.
Some folks will also have a problem with the movie’s extreme changes in tone. The Animal Liberation Front’s Seoul rescue scene has a very Keystone Kops vibe, where nobody gets hurt. In the Manhattan chase scene, however, commandos rain down realistic and brutal violence upon the Animal Liberation Front, making the point that corporate forces play for keeps.
I do NOT recommend Okja for children younger than middle school-aged, for whom the slaughterhouse scenes could be traumatizing.
There’s ONE MORE scene at the very end of the closing credits, so stick around.
I saw Okja at a theatrical preview, courtesy of the Camera Cinema Club; most viewers are going to watch this at home on Netflix, but I recommend viewing Okja on the big screen if you get the chance.
The absurdism of Luis Buñuel meets the social awkwardness of Seinfeld in Hong Sang-soo’s Koran comedy Yourself and Yours. I just saw Yourself and Yours (Dangsinjasingwa dangsinui geot) at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival). In an Only-At-SFFILM moment, I (a Hong Sang-soo newbie) was surrounded in the audience by devoted Hong Sang-soo fans.
In Yourself and Yours, Minjung (Lee You-young) dumps her boyfriend (Kim Joo-hyuck) after he objects to her heavy drinking (“I’ve stopped drinking – now I only stop after five rounds”). Then another man thinks that he meets Minjung, but she claims that she is Minjung’s identical twin. We’re not so sure about that. And then she meets ANOTHER man, and her identity remains in question. Her original boyfriend is comically bereft, and he’s on the lookout for her, too.
One character says “You men are all pathetic”, and Minjung proves that point at every opportunity. In a deliberate homage to Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire, Lee You-young plays the role of Minjung and her multiple doppelgängers (unless they are all really Minjung herself). There are plenty of LOL moments as Yourself and Yours winds its way full circle to a satisfyingly sly finale.
In the madcap Korean comedy Curtain Call, a talent-challenged theater troupe is about to go under. The company specializes in soft porn, and they are so bad that – even though they are simulating sex on stage – they still can’t sell enough tickets. In desperation, they enter a competition to put on Korea’s best version of Hamlet.
It’s a motley crew. There’s the Bieber-coiffed millennial who thinks that he’s a method actor. One veteran suffers from being public recognized for his trademark “Shag Shag Shake It”. They add an aged career Shakespearean who can’t always remember which play he’s in right now. For personal reasons, the theater company owner foists upon them an inexperienced ingenue who refuses to speak anything except her lines. In a seemingly hopeless quest to master the elevated source material, these bottom feeders become scrappy underdogs.
Curtain Call is a pleasant enough diversion, with some happily ribald moments. Audience members who know their Shakespeare will find the Hamlet scenes even funnier. The trailer is in Korean, but you’ll get the idea.
After a few minutes of The Handmaiden, we learn that it’s a con artist movie. After 100 minutes, we think we’ve watched an excellent con artist movie, but then we’re surprised by a huge PLOT TWIST, and we’re in for two more episodes and lots of surprises in a gripping and absorbing final hour. It’s also one of the most visually beautiful and highly erotic films of the year.
Director and co-writer Chan-wook Park sets the story in 1930s Korea during Japanese occupation (Japanese dialogue is subtitled in yellow and Korean dialogue in white). A young heiress has been secluded from childhood by her guardian uncle, who intends to marry her himself for her fortune. A con man embarks on a campaign to seduce and marry the wealthy young woman to harvest her inheritance himself. The con man enlists a pickpocket to become handmaiden to the heiress – and his mole. I’m not going to tell you more about the plot, but the audience is in for a wild ride.
The Handmaiden takes its time revealing its secrets. Who is conning who? Who is attracted to whom? How naive is the heiress? How loyal is the handmaiden? Who is really Japanese and who is really Korean? What’s in those antique books? What’s in the basement? Is the uncle perverted or REALLY perverted? And what legendary sex toy will show up in the final scene?
THE HANDMAIDEN
Chan-wook Park’s 2003 US art house hit Oldboy is highly sexualized, trippy and disturbing. The Handmaiden is much more mainstream and accessible than Oldboy, but its sexuality packs a punch.
Gorgeous and erotic, The Handmaiden is one of the most gloriously entertaining films of the year. You can stream it on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
The documentary The Lovers and the Despottells one of those you-would-never-believe-it-if it-were-made-up stories. The late North Korean nutcase Kim Jong-Il, dissatisfied with the cinematic element in his propaganda machine, sought an upgrade by KIDNAPPING a top South Korean director and his movie star wife.
The story of the kidnapping and their escape spans two decades and is a real Cold War thriller. One interesting aspect is that there was some question as to whether the two were actually kidnapped or instead defected – after all, the director’s career was in a downturn in South Korea and was ultimately resurrected in the North. But, come one, who escapes from South Korea to North Korea?
The proof of their kidnapping is both convincing and mind-boggling. The craziness of the North Korean regime has created such anti-communist paranoia in South Korea that the kidnapping vs defection question is still unresolved for some – and that’s crazy in and of itself.
The Lovers and the Despot will make good companion piece to Under the Sun, the documentary expose of Korea under its current Great Madman Leader, Kim Jong-il’s son Kim Jong-un.
The Lovers and the Despot is now available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and cable and satellite TV on demand.
After a few minutes of The Handmaiden, we learn that it’s a con artist movie. After 100 minutes, we think we’ve watched an excellent con artist movie, but then we’re surprised by a huge PLOT TWIST, and we’re in for two more episodes and lots of surprises in a gripping and absorbing final hour. It’s also one of the most visually beautiful and highly erotic films of the year.
Director and co-writer Chan-wook Park sets the story in 1930s Korea during Japanese occupation (Japanese dialogue is subtitled in yellow and Korean dialogue in white). A young heiress has been secluded from childhood by her guardian uncle, who intends to marry her himself for her fortune. A con man embarks on a campaign to seduce and marry the wealthy young woman to harvest her inheritance himself. The con man enlists a pickpocket to become handmaiden to the heiress – and his mole. I’m not going to tell you more about the plot, but the audience is in for a wild ride.
The Handmaiden takes its time revealing its secrets. Who is conning who? Who is attracted to whom? How naive is the heiress? How loyal is the handmaiden? Who is really Japanese and who is really Korean? What’s in those antique books? What’s in the basement? Is the uncle perverted or REALLY perverted? And what legendary sex toy will show up in the final scene?
THE HANDMAIDEN
Chan-wook Park’s 2003 US art house hit Oldboy is highly sexualized, trippy and disturbing. The Handmaiden is much more mainstream and accessible than Oldboy, but its sexuality packs a punch.
Gorgeous and erotic, The Handmaiden is one of the most gloriously entertaining films of the year.
UNDER THE SUN. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Film Society.
The subversive documentary Under the Sun is a searing insight into totalitarian North Korean society, all from government-approved filming that tells a different story than the wackadoodle dictatorship intended.
The North Korean regime gave filmmaker Vitaly Mansky permission to film the story of a young girl who is training to take part in one of North Korea’s ritualized propaganda spectacles – when children “join” the Korean Children’s Union on the birthday of the current Supreme Leader’s father. The script and the filming locations were all assigned by the North Korean regime and all film reviewed by their censors. But Mansky was able to conceal and preserve the outtakes – and those moments are devastatingly revelatory about life on North Korea.
What we see is a grim society, virtually devoid of vibrancy and joy. Families are posed briefly mechanically and unsmilingly for ritual family photos in front of flower-bedecked giant portraits of the Leaders. The streets are drab and empty of vehicle traffic even at rush hour. Mansky shows us surreptitious glimpses of his minders and even of boys raiding garbage cans. There’s a lot of regimentation depicted in Under the Sun and lots of people drearily filing to and fro. Sometimes it gets tiresome – but that’s the point.
Everyone is conscripted to perform and watch phony staged spectacles of the grandest scale. The rapturous crowds shown on TV contrast with the stoic crowds forced to view the televised events. North Korea must have the world’s most professional event planners per capita.
Most chillingly, we see a class where 6-year-olds are taught to hate Japanese and Americans. This appears to be a scene that the North Koreans INTENTIONALLY included in the movie.
The beautiful irony of Under the Sun is that, in trying to tell a story about the best of their society, the North Koreans actually reveal their worst. I saw Under the Sun earlier this year at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival. Under the Sun opens July 29 at the Lee 4-Star in San Francisco.
Here’s proof that it’s possible for a movie to be too dark and violent even for The Movie Gourmet.
Pieta is about a 30-year-old Korean loan shark so heartless that he cripples his unpaying clients and steals their disability payoffs. Out of nowhere, a woman finds him and claims to be the mother that abandoned him as an infant. To test whether she is really his mother, he brutalizes and defiles her (in ways that I wish I had not witnessed). Nevertheless she clings to him, and a heaping portion of maternal guilt causes him to rethink his ways.
Now my taste in film runs to the violent. I revel in Killer Joe and Django Unchained and have just praised the exploitation films Outrage and Outrage Beyond. Very violent movies like End of Watch, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sin Nombre and Gomorrah have all recently made it on to my Best of the Year lists. I particularly like the often grim and twisted offerings of contemporary Korean cinema (Memories of Murder, Mother, Oldboy, The Housemaid).
But I don’t like torture porn (which Pieta approaches) or slasher cinema. And some stories – like Pieta’s – just don’t have a payoff that makes it worthwhile to sit through the most uncomfortable screen violence. Call me a sissy.
Pieta has received some critical praise because it is well made and emotionally powerful. But that just isn’t enough to justify such sickening violence. Pieta is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from some VOD outlets.
