Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Here’s one of those films that Harry has been raving about non-stop for months that I haven’t seen yet. I’m hoping that if I go to FantAsia this summer, I’ll see it there. After all, that’s where I saw Park Chan-wook’s last film, JOINT SECURITY AREA, which I thought was quite good. SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE sounds totally different, though. Let’s see what today’s scooper thought of it...
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance / South Korean - Boksuneun naui geot (2002)
After the unrivaled local and international success of Joint Security Area (JSA), a myriad of doors through which director Park Chan-wook could pursue his next picture opened up. In the end he settled on filming what he deemed a modern noir – a pet project that had been gestating for over 5 years, something called Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. I call it “something” because Sympathy is ultimately so far-removed from general film noir mores both modern and post-modern that its bleak, searing end result is truly unclassifiable.
Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin, returning from JSA) is a deaf-mute, recently terminated from his factory job and hard-up for cash to pay for his sister’s kidney transplant. A deal struck with a group of black market organ traffickers leaves him short $7,000 and a kidney of his own, and in desperation his girlfriend Cha Yeong-mi (Du-na Bae) suggests another avenue of coming up with the necessary currency to pay for the sister’s operation: a kidnapping. “Kidnapping for a good reason is not a crime,” she tells Ryu.
The pair successfully nabs Yoosun, the young daughter of Park Dong-jin (Kang-ho Song, also encoring from JSA), the owner of the factory where Ryu had worked. They extort enough money to pay for the operation, but Ryu’s sister catches on to the plot and in despair over what she’s caused commits suicide. While burying his sister’s body in a creek bed, Ryu loses sight of Yoosun and she drowns. He panics and leaves her there, and when the body is discovered it sets in motion a vicious quid-pro-quo spiral of revenge throughout the lives Ryu, Cha Yeong-mi, and Park Dong-jin.
Director Park infuses the above, a tale not out of line with much hardboiled pulp before it, with strong visual and aural senses of decay and rot, letting a filthy vibe wash over the entire film to great effect. There is little dialog in this picture and less music; instead we’re constantly confronted with a monstrously amplified soundscape composed of disparate noise, from the unstoppable grinding of metal on a factory floor to the deep roar of electricity as it courses through human flesh. Point-of-view shots from Ryu are employed throughout the picture as well, but in addition to his eyes Park ingenuously allows us access to his ears. His world is one low frequency drone, whether he’s at work, at home, having sex with girlfriend, or bludgeoning someone to death with a baseball bat. This “dead space” helps explain why Ryu can act with violent abandon at a moment’s notice: he never hears the aftermath.
As Ryu, Ha-kyun Shin resists the “showy acting” bug that seemingly bites every performer who takes on the role of a handicapped person and offers a strong, emotive turn. Kang-ho Song also turns in excellent work, walking his character along a violent road to retribution with slow-burn gravity. However it’s Du-na Bae, as Ryu’s own personal Lady MacBeth, who walks away with the picture. Her slight, albeit calculated tugs of Ryu’s very vulnerable strings are what sets event after morbid event in motion, and her half-hearted terrorist past brings the story full-circle. She manages to provide the film with much of its black humor, most of which stems from her afore-mentioned lax-revolutionary attitude.
Sympathy is the type of film that leaves you cold in a wonderful way. You’ve seen characters whose lives you’ve come to care about completely destroyed, down to the core of their souls. You’ve watched the inevitable cycle of proliferating fear and anger lower each down to their knees, and then into the soil. Even as the end credits roll Park doesn’t let up, as we are forced to experience the sounds of a character’s last gasps of life. Park has crafted a powerful film, one worthy of attention and respect. It takes you places you won’t want to go and miraculously somehow leaves you thankful you went. This picture gets my highest recommendation.
I’m intrigued by this one, and can’t wait to get a chance to judge it for myself.
"Moriarty" out.
