Final Thoughts

Before the month ends and we move on to another film, I'd like to thank Chris for allowing me to choose this month's selection. Thanks also to Marshall for his comments and thoughts and to the few others who joined in. Although there wasn't a lot of discussion, I enjoyed what there was and I benefited from trying to articulate my thoughts on this film and on Hong in general. As many could probably tell, I'd like to write more on Hong in the future, in article or even book (especially if my Korean improves), and this experience was very useful in that regard. I hope others found the film and the discussion of some interest, or that perhaps they will track down this film or others by Hong in the future. I certainly think the films are worth the effort. And by all means, of course, I'd be happy to hear from late comers before the month is over or even in the coming months as replies to any of my Hong blog postings.

Also, in Hong news, he is currently in post-production on his latest film, which should be out later this year. Also, he has completed a short film which will premiere at the Jeonju film festival in Korea (April 30-May 8). It is part of a three film "Jeonju Digital Project" in which the festival invites three directors to make a digital short. Further details are available here (go to the JIFF news section and click on "Jeonju Digital Project 2009").

Two Shots That Intrigue(d)? Me

Just thought I'd mention a couple of shots that intrigue me, shots that are seemingly meaningless.

One is Munho going back and asking his wife to let him in at the beginning of the film:

Another is the shot of Seon-hwa arriving to meet Mun-ho and Heon-jun:

When re-examining the film, both of these moments seemed difficult to place. And perhaps, I thought, they are not meant to be. But, the more I thought and read, the more this seemed unlikely. In a film as pared down as this one (even by Hong's standards), it is highly unlikely that they don't serve some purpose. Then, with the mentioning of repetitions, I noted that both shots have their doubles.

The shots of Mun-ho are subtly replayed at the end of the film, when Mun-ho's male student Min-woo approaches Mun-ho and Kyung-hee in the hotel room:

And the shot of Seon-hwa arriving can be seen as a mirror of the early scene in which the woman Mun-ho and Heon-jun gaze at before their flashbacks finally exits the scene in a car:


Now, we can see these as formal repetitions that work as a whole to offset the quotidian realism of the narrative. And/or we can start analyzing these for deeper meanings. Part of me wants to avoid the later, to remain intrigued by the shots instead of forcing an explanation. I remember watching Lynch's Mulholland Dr. and really enjoying it, but then not loving the film nearly as much (to the point of even being bored) once I had a certain framework in which to read and explain what was going on. And the other hand, one cannot and should not shut down these critical impulses. One can only hope that any given film is strong enough to resist their assault.

The Red Scarf: Dream Structure in Hong Sang-soo

"I wanted to create a very artificial repetition, an arrogantly funny repetition in a space that pretends to be real." (Hong Sang-soo)









Re-watching Woman is the Future of Man, the conclusion took on a greater importance, beginning with the dream sequence at the soccer field. In my first viewing, I didn't really recall the importance of the red scarf, but on a second look it seems to dominate the mise-en-scene of the last section. It actually provides the only real clue (other than Mun-ho's eyes closing) that we have entered a dream sequence (this is typical of Hong). The presence of the scarf in the rest of the film, for myself, was a reminder of this dream, and I found it difficult to not see the last scenes of the film as dream/nightmare. And upon a second viewing and reflecting back on the rest of the narrative, it also de-stabilized the reality of anything before the dream as well. I should add that this reading is heavily informed by my own interpretation of Hong's latest film, Night and Day, which ends with a dream sequence that really caused me to re-examine the rest of the narrative ( I am anxiously awaiting the DVD release so I can have a second viewing). Incidentally, Night and Day's dream alludes back to his first film, The Day a Pig Fell in the Well, which similarly has a dream sequence near the conclusion.

When I say the reality of the earlier scenes was de-stabilized, I do not mean to suggest a "whole film is a dream" kind of interpretation. Rather, it is a more modernist idea of a certain unreliability at the heart of the narrative, a questioning of who is telling/showing me this, and why. The most obvious example of this is in the two "flashback" scenes in the first half of the narrative. After a brief opening outside of Mun-ho's house, Mun-ho and Heon-jun have a long conversation at a Chinese restaurant, filmed in one long take of over six minutes, although with a few lateral camera movements to and from the front counter. Mun-ho gets angry at Heon-jun for having hugged his wife when they visited him in America, and gets up to leave. Following an attempt at seducing the waitress, he looks out the window and makes eye contact with a woman across the street. The next portion of the narrative is signalled as a flashback, cutting from Heon-jun's look.


This is also the first music we have heard since the opening credits. The music continues into the next shot, in which we see Heon-jun exit a cab and pass in front of the camera.

The next shot shows a man enter the frame, at which point the music stops.

Re-watching the film, this whole sequence seems quite ominous, although I did not interpret that way on first viewing. Nevertheless, I do think it is meant to be disconcerting in some way even without knowing what will happen next. We see the man with Seon-hwa (who we haven't been introduced to yet) and learn he is an old high school friend who has just finished his miltiary service. He aggressively forces her into a cab with him. The next shot is of Seon-hwa entering a restaurant and sitting down with Heon-jun, where he tells her that she was raped by this man.


The question becomes, and this is not an unfamiliar one within art cinema, who is telling me this? It cannot be Heon-jun, since he was not there. But it could be his imagining of this episode. But then, why the ellipsis of the actual rape itself? Is it because he does not believe her story? Or is his story questionable? The next sequence shows the two at a love motel, where he rather violently watches her genitals and has sex with her in order to "cleanse" her. The scene is quite uncomfortable and cannot help but identify Heon-jun with the same behaviour of this "aggressive and phallic man" (as Huh Moonyung calls this character and other marginal male characters in many of Hong's films [71]). This is especially so because we are presented this scene almost in place of the rape scene that has been "cut".

Next there is a scene at the airport in which Mun-ho brings Seon-hwa in order to have a tearful farewell to Heon-jun, who is leaving for film school in America. We next cut back to the restaurant for another long take of five minutes in which Seon-hwa is discussed. After Heon-jun leaves the table, there is a narrative and formal repetition in which Mun-ho asks the waitress to pose nude for him, she refuses (as she did with Heon-hun), and then the camera follows her to the counter. The camera pans back at Mun-ho looking out the window at the same woman as Heon-jun. After her ride finally arrives, Mun-ho's flashback begins.

It is tempting to see this flashback as more clearly Mun-ho's. He is in every scene, and the sequence ends with a rather unflattering sequence in which he prematurely ejaculates. However, the first scene of the flashback shows him forcing himself on Seon-hwa, at which she gets angry and says that "You're all animals. You and that bastard just want sex. Real animals." The fact that she mentions Heon-jun and implicates him with Mun-ho, who had just tried to force himself on her, is suggestive of sexual violence that is constantly referred to and ellided. It should be noted that while they are waiting for Seon-hwa later in the film, Mun-ho says to Heon-jun that she called him a "real animal", not a complete lie but omitting the fact that she said the same thing about Mun-ho as well.

Another oddity to Mun-ho's flashback is the strange doubling of Seon-hwa's friends.

These two shots appear before and after the scene in which Mun-ho forces himself on Seon-hwa, and they seemingly erase it, as Mun-ho and Seon-hwa meet at the wedding and seem to get along well, agreeing to meet the next day.

This dream-life effect continues in the rest of the narrative, culminating in an actual dream sequence and then a repetition of the rapist character from earlier. Kyunghee, Mun-ho's student with the red scarf, has a jealous and obsessive classmate, Minwoo, who follows her and Mun-ho to a love motel. This character brings the narrative full circle, both literally and figuratively. All of the male characters are stuck in some way, unable to break out of circular thinking, especially as centered around women and sexuality.

What to make of these observations? I'm not sure. Hong's films seem to me to be very elusive in their meaning. But I do not think that they are apolitical, as some critics and even Hong himself has claimed. Certainly, they are less overtly political than many of the First Korean New Wave directors that dealt with the highly charged politics of Korea's immediate past. And compared to Lee Chang-dong, Hong's films lack a real political force, partly because of their content but also because of their less direct, more ambiguous style. To view Hong's films as imaginary, dreams and fictions is not the same as saying they are lies, but they are nevertheless unreliable as any kind of foundational truth. They are examples of a post-structuralist skepticism that can and of course has (repeatedly) been seen as conservative or reactionary because of its apolitical nature.

As much as I admired Hong's films at first viewing, I did feel they were somehow lesser than Lee's more straightforward political films. I still feel this way to some extent. I don't think Hong's greatest films can be compared to the artistic and social force of the masterpieces of a director like Lee or, perhaps more so, a Hou Hsiao-hsien. But I'm starting to find a greater appreciation of what Hong is trying to achieve, not only artistically but also socially (for me the two are as impossible to really untangle as form and content). If the personal is political, than Hong's work is clearly very socially charged. But form is also a social statement. As much as I continue to love Lee Chang-dong, a third viewing of his 1999 film Peppermint Candy revealed a certain crudity in the form that may make the film less progressive than its message indicates. This attempt at analyzing Woman is the Future of Man, on the other hand, has revealed a much deeper, more critical film than it first appeared.

Apologies for the length of the post, and for its roaming nature, but this is what blog postings are useful for, I think, especially to those of us used to more academic writing. Anxious to read other accounts and perspectives on the film.

A Personal Introduction to Hong Sang-soo

This is a brief intro to my own relationship with Hong Sang-soo's cinema in anticipation of March's film of the month, Woman is the Future of Man. I will add two or three short posts on Sunday about the film itself in order to start the discussion. Of course, others can feel free to ignore my posts and go off in their own direction. I'm actually curious about other people's reactions, since I think mine may be fairly idiosyncratic (but maybe not). Look forward to hearing people's thoughts.

I saw my first Hong Sang-soo film almost a year ago. I had been living in Korea for a few months, and noticed Hong's first film, The Day a Pig Fell in a Well (1996), for sale on DVD. I had heard of the film and of Hong, so I decided to give it a try. My reaction was not overly enthusiastic (see my initial review here), especially at first, but something about the film intrigued me. At around this time, I also purchased a book on Hong by Huh Moonyung, part of a series on directors published by the Korean Film Council. The more I read about Hong, the more I wanted to see more of his films. I purchased his next two films, The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) and The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000) (see respective reviews here and here), and my interest started to turn to fascination. I'm not entirely sure why, since although I liked the films, they did not overwhelm me as absolute masterpieces. There were probably a number of factors, but the major ones that come to mind are:

(1) Hong's films explore modern day Korean society in a way that feels very authentic to my experience in the country;

(2) Hong's films are much more interesting taken as a whole than as individual parts;

(3) He is a very distinctive director in terms of theme and style;

(4) His formal rigour coincided with my own increased interest in formal concerns;

(5) He has an almost obsessive interest in sexuality.

I mention this last quality because I think it is a relevant one to my own and probably others interest in Hong. This is hardly unique. Art cinema and sex have always had a fairly intimate link. And this interest in sexuality connects with my first point about Hong's take on Korea feeling very authentic. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the sexual nature of Hong's films gives them an appeal that caused me to track down all of his films, something I haven't done with all of the directors that I admire. At the same time, the other factors are equally important. Hong's uniqueness is in using his obsessive formalism to focus on topics usually treated in very uninteresting ways.

Following his first three films, I was unable to track down his other films immediately. The next Hong film I saw was his most recent, Night and Day (2008), which played at the Jeonju Film Festival (review here). Although recognizably a Hong film, it also differed in very exciting ways, and the experience of watching one of his films in an audience added a very different element to my view of Hong's work. It is useful to point out that Hong has never achieved a mass audience in Korea, unlike his contemporaries Park Chan-wook and Lee Chang-dong. He has also not played the art house circuit like Kim Ki-Duk. Hong has had the support of critics, both in Korea and outside the country, but unfortunately, his reputation is such that Night and Day came and left fairly quickly in Korea, despite the fact that it is in many ways a crowd-pleasing film. The audience in Jeonju enjoyed it, but it seems Hong's reputation as difficult kept the box office numbers down.

Moving backwards, I next saw Woman on the Beach (2006) (review), followed by Woman is the Future of Man (2004) (review), Turning Gate (2002) (review), and finally Tale of Cinema (2005) (review). More than any other director I can think of, Hong is very difficult to evaluate, especially on a film by film basis. If I had to rank his films in order right now, I would probably go with:

Night and Day

The Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors

Woman is the Future of Man

Woman on the Beach

The Power of Kangwon Province

The Day a Pig Fell in a Well

Turning Gate

Tale of Cinema

However, there is no director who I've encountered (at least among those who have made many films) with such a small margin between his or her best and worst film. Hong's consistency is quite remarkable. Even more impressive is that each film since The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors can be thought of as a transitional text in some way. Hong has acheived that rare balance of continuity, growth, and unity.

It is as a Hong film, and in relation to his other work, that I will begin my discussion of Woman is the Future of Man. More to come.