Site Update: Interview with Bong Joon-ho
14-Feb-08
An Interview with Bong Joon-ho
by Giuseppe Sedia
Born in 1969 in Daegu,
Bong studied sociology at Yonsei University in Seoul. In 1994-1995 he attended
the Korean Academy of Fine Arts, where he produced his first short films. His
first feature-length movie, Barking Dogs Never Bite ("Flanders-ui gae")
won the Fipresci Prize at the Hong Kong Film Festival in 2001. Two years later
he directed the serial killer movie Memories of Murder ("Salinui
Chueok"), considered by many critics to be his best feature. In 2004 he produced
a digital short for the Jeonju International Film Festival along with Asian
directors Ishii Sogo and Yu Lik Wai for the collective feature Digital Short
Films by Three Directors. His third film, The Host ("Gwoemul"), won
Best Picture at the inaugural Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong, and established a
national box office record in Korea with over 13 million tickets sold.
Currently, he is working on a segment of an omnibus film focusing on the city of
Tokyo involving also the French cineastes Leo Carax and Michel Gondry. This
interview is extracted from a conversation with Bong Joon-ho during the Dongfang
Film Festival in Naples (Italy).
How did you start approaching cinema?
I used to watch
plenty of movies as a child. Television had a vital importance to my formation,
because VHS tapes were not circulating yet in South Korea at that time. In the
late 1980s, together with other sociology students, I created "Cineclick" -- a
local organization devoted to discussion of Mass Communication and Media
Arts.
Could you tell me more about Cineclick's
activities?
We promoted screenings of Japanese and European films
still unfamiliar to South Korean students. Cineclick attempted to encourage
debate on audiovisual culture, and this experience helped to expand my vision of
cinema. My gaze on moving images eventually became more reflexive and conscious.
In 1993 we also shot a 16mm collective documentary, before I completed a short
film vaguely based on the surrealistic atmosphere contained in David Lynch's
Blue Velvet (1986).
What about your relationship with South
Korean producers?
To date, I have been able to take advantage of a
certain protege status. I have been both lucky and sharp to create
durable relations with local producers. Tcha Seung-jae who produced my first two
feature films has always trusted me. He defended the artistic choices I made,
even when my debut film failed miserably at the box office.
Do you think that the theatrical flop of Flandersui gae
(2000, pictured left) drove you towards film genres that were on the outside
more conventional?
The screenplay of Flandersui gae is mainly
based on my personal experiences, compared to the following features which were
taken from news stories occurring in my country. The interiors for that film
were shot at my former flat in Seoul. It can be considered as an
autobiographical comedy, which follows the developmental pattern of a thriller.
Who kidnapped the dog? Some settings like the hot-water heating room in the
building may seem to evoke a dark ambiance that is far from
comedic.
Your second film Salinui Cheok (2003) deals with a
mass murder. Japanese cineaste Kiyoshi Kurosawa revealed that Se7en
(1996), directed by David Fincher, had an influence on the direction of
Cure ("Kyua", 1997). Did you take any inspiration from Hollywood serial
killer movies such as The Silence of Lambs?
Both American
movies you mentioned have become milestones in nineties cinema. They continue to
exert a transversal influence worldwide on the new generation of film-makers.
Besides I've always been an enthusiast of Japanese directors such as Kiyoshi
Kurosawa and Shohei Imamura. Nevertheless, I don't consider them to have had a
great influence on Salinui Cheok, which is based on a true story that
really occurred in Gyeonggi Province between 1986 and
1991.
"Memories of Murder is made up of an unrelenting
series of failures, frustrating the proper political vision of a country",
argued Antoine Thirion in Cahiers du Cinèma. The story seems to implode,
being adverse to any turning point. How did you come up to this narrative
structure?
I attempted to focus on the characters' visceral feeling
of ineffectiveness. The police detectives are doomed to fail in their
investigations. This mysterious serial killer who truly haunted South Korean
people twenty years ago still stays unpunished in our country.
This moving picture displays once more Song Kang-ho's actorial
talent. How did you come to collaborate with him?
Despite the
convincing performance of Lee Sung-jae, Flandersui gae was definitely a
"floppola" in Seoul theaters. Therefore I decided to work with Song Kang-ho. His
popularity was constantly growing, even among Western audiences since Park
Chan-wok picked him for Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002). Yet we
should not forget that Song Kang-ho was already showing his talent on the stage
until he left his theatrical career behind in 1997.
Could you tell
us more about your contribution to the project Digital Short Films by Three
Directors 2004?
The three of us each worked on our own. I have to
admit that I didn't even view the episodes directed by Ishii Sogo and Yu Lik
Wai. Apart from the aesthetic results, this cinematic experience personally gave
me the opportunity to check the possibilities offered by digital
production.
Loss of control over reality is a topic that remains
under the skin throughout your filmography. Panic attacks usually erode the
relationships of the characters you invented. Even Gwoemul, despite the
happy ending, gives evidence to this feature
The concept of chaos
has always fascinated me from a philosophical perspective. Moreover I would
mention also a peculiar form of chaos reflecting the social and cultural context
in South Korea. Anyhow, the positive epilogue in Gwoemul is deliberately
pretentious. Just consider that the Park family is slaughtered before the final
victory against the monster.
The Gwoemul monster iconography is very different from the
classical appearance of bipedal monsters such as Godzilla and King Kong. How did
you come up with its final look?
The monster's appearance is not
based on a pre-existing model. The starting idea was taken again from a true
story. I read in the newspapers about a deformed fish with an S-shaped spine
caught in the Han River. The monster design came mainly from this strange
discovery.
Do you consider that monstrous creatures on screen,
such as the North Korean Pulgasari, could convey ideological and moral
values?
The role of the monster in Gwoemul is progressively
reduced throughout the film. The initial scene set in the military laboratory
reveals an attraction-repulsion dynamic towards Americans that is also
responsible for the fake virus invention that will disband Park family. However
familiar relationships are most assuredly a dominant topic in the
movie.
Gwoemul won funding from the Pusan International
Film Festival's Pusan Promotion Plan, and attracted more than 13 million people
in South Korean theaters. How does it change your approach to direction when you
work on high-budgeted features?
The remake rights to this film have
already been sold to a major movie company. I should confess that I am growing
weary of writing screenplays. Sometimes I question myself about the future with
the same concern that thrills horror film movie-goers. However that may be, my
next movie is a low-medium budget feature which is currently in
development.
Giuseppe Sedia, NAPLES October 2007
Translation by Kim Oen Joung
Additional translation by the
author
The Salaryman is a variation on the oft-told morality tale of why bad
things happen to good people. Our patriarch is a sensible, upstanding member of
the community. He teaches his children about ethical matters as minor as
punctuality and as major as democracy. (Although when his father stops his son
from urinating in the street, our patriarch finds his words used against him.
"It's a free country" the small, smart-ass says.) Our patriarch is a man beloved
in his neighborhood. The neighborhood boys form a fan club of sorts, parading
around and praising his ethics after he sees to it that a missing ball is
returned to the rightful owner. Even though he doesn't make the unethical choice
at the beginning, he does stray a few times, lying about dying to avoid paying a
bill and asking his daughter to help him cheat on the job exam. Still, overall
we have a lovable father for whom you feel pity that he's in the precarious
position he is after making the just choice. We feel for the man's troubles when
he proclaims "I'm utterly useless" late in the film. We all know how this will
end. Just as a film in the United States under the Hays Code promoted the
punishment of the 'uppity' woman or the Lesbian or Gay man, the South Korean
film of this time expects a sentimental resolution that reinforces 'traditional'
family roles. Acknowledging that, I was able to hold back my circa-cynic quite
well. I allowed the film to be a product of its time.
Someone Behind Me is based on a comic book by Kang Kyung-ok, which
apparently is a straightforward supernatural thriller, attributing the cause of
Ka-in's horrendous situation to a family curse (naturally, the curse descends
down through the agnatic lineage, this being a Korean one). The movie version
dabbles with that premise, then abandons it altogether and turns itself into a
far-fetched murder mystery, finally resolving into a yet another rip-off of
Tale of Two Sisters, with a chunk bitten off from Death Note
thrown in for a good measure.