Author : Darcy Paquet Film Critic / Darcy Paquet Film Critic
“My films are a means of kidnapping viewers and thrusting them into my world. I don’t mean to offend people, but the things I show in my films are genuine problems in our society.”
In January 2002, in a small Insa-dong café, I sat down to interview director Kim Ki-duk for the first time. His seventh film, “Bad Guy,” about a man who forces a middle-class university student into prostitution, was on release at the time, and was scheduled to screen in competition at the 52nd Berlin International Film Festival. The controversial film had provoked extreme reactions from viewers, but it was doing well at the box office (quite unusual for a work by Kim). Despite the cold weather, Kim was wearing only a T-shirt under his coat, his signature cap covering his close-cropped hair.
Part One: Kim Ki-duk, Provocateur
“My films have done well at international festivals, but this is the first time one has been popular at home,” he said. Kim was already a well known figure for his public war of words with local film critics, who had at times referred to him as a “monster” or a “useless filmmaker.” But in person he was gracious and exceedingly well spoken. “In Korea, critics have written that my films are bad, or dangerous, and so not many people have gone to see them,” he said. “At international festivals, though, criticism has focused on what my films say about society, rather than just branding them as good or bad.”
During the interview, we talked about his background, which contrasted sharply with that of other famous Korean directors. Growing up in a poor family, he dropped out of school at the age of 16 to work in factories in Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon district. He spent his twenties serving in the Marines and doing volunteer work at a church for the visually impaired. Having always loved to paint as a hobby, in 1990 he saved up enough money for a plane ticket to Paris, and spent the next two years making a living by selling his paintings on the street.
It was then that he first became entranced with cinema. “I saw my first movie when I was 33, in Paris,” he said. “I had never seen one in the theater before, because in Korea I was always working.” Deeply impressed by works like “Silence of the Lambs” and the French film “Les Amants du Pont-Neuf,” he resolved to become a filmmaker, and shortly after returning to Korea he won a screenplay contest sponsored by the Korean Film Council. This gave him the foothold he needed, and in 1996 he made his debut with the low-budget film “Crocodile,” starring Jo Je-hyun. Over the next 12 years, he would make 15 films and establish himself as an internationally recognized director, despite having no formal training.
Kim and I also discussed the particular characteristics of his films that distinguished them from films by other directors. Apart from the accomplished and creative visual quality of his films, he was known for being a provocateur. He admitted that his aim, sometimes, was to make his viewers uncomfortable, and to direct their attention toward a sector of society they’d prefer not to think about. “People look at the world of prostitutes and hoodlums and say, ‘This is trash, we need to clean this up.’ But these are human beings who deserve to be treated with respect.”
He went on to assert that many middle- and upper-class Koreans treat the lowest echelons of society with contempt, and I was surprised to hear his voice trembling with emotion. Clearly, this was an issue that touched him deeply and one of the driving forces behind his creativity. “My films are a means of kidnapping viewers and thrusting them into my world,” Kim said. “I don’t mean to offend people, but the things I show in my films are genuine problems in our society. If mainstream society distances itself from the class of people I show in my films, it will only cause deeper conflict. With my films, I want to help both sides understand each other.”
Part Two: Kim Ki-duk, Philosopher
All artists change and mature as they grow older. For some, however, the change is particularly dramatic. One of the reasons that Kim Ki-duk has captured the imagination of many film enthusiasts around the world is that his career in cinema has undergone several notable transformations. He began in 1996 as an unknown, self-taught director who was deeply conscious of his status as an outsider in the film industry, and in Korean society in general. In films like the viscerally cruel “The Isle” (2000), which caused one journalist to pass out during its competition screening at the Venice Film Festival, and “Address Unknown” (2001), about a troubled community on the edges of a U.S. Army base, he used violence and cruelty as a tool to shock his viewers out of their complacency. Film scholar Steve Choe argued that Kim’s films “seem to unsettle liberal tastes with images that violently force viewers to reconsider their familiar notions of cinema going.” French critic Lagandré Cédric observed, “People don’t talk to each other in Kim Ki-duk’s films, people hit each other. Relationships are always frontal, direct, decoded, never mediated through language, which would neutralize the violence.”
But as time passed, Kim began to change. The film that marked the opening of a new phase in his career was “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring” (2003), about four stages in the life of a Buddhist monk. It wasn’t simply that this film, set on a beautiful remote lake, was largely free of violence. Kim was now interacting with his audience in a fundamentally different way. The provocative nature of his early films had been replaced by a different, gentler form of provocation, in which viewers were coaxed into seeing the world from a new point of view. Audience expectations were overturned not through violence, but through surprising creative touches and by placing the viewer inside the perspective of someone else.
One of Kim’s most critically acclaimed films is “3-Iron” (2004), which despite being shot in only 10 days received rapturous praise from international critics, and won the Best Director award at the 61st Venice Film Festival. It tells the story of a man who breaks into unoccupied homes but doesn’t steal anything — he lives there for a time, instead, and even fixes broken appliances. One day, he develops a relationship with a woman who is beaten by her husband, and the two begin to pursue this odd, alternative lifestyle together. For many viewers, “3-Iron” felt like an invitation into an intriguing new world that operated according to its own set of rules. The film becomes quite experimental at the end, leading us to question its relationship with reality. This was Kim Ki-duk as philosopher, putting forth deep questions about life and morality, and encouraging viewers to draw their own conclusions.
Kim Ki-duk had achieved tremendous success on the film festival circuit, and both “3-Iron and “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring” had performed very well in commercial releases in Europe, North America and Japan. On the other hand, his films still failed to attract viewers in Korea. “Spring, Summer ...” sold only 55,000 tickets in Korea despite grossing over $2 million in its U.S. release, which at the time was the best-ever performance for any Korean film in the United States. “3-Iron” sold 94,928 tickets, in spite of its Best Director award in Venice. Two years earlier, Lee Chang-dong’s similarly challenging “Oasis” (2002) received a major box office boost after winning the same award in Venice, and ultimately grossed more than 10 times as much. Kim’s frustration at being overlooked in his home country was apparent. Prior to the release of his 13th film, “Time” (2006), he declared that if it failed to reach 200,000 admissions, he would no longer release any of his future works in Korea.
Ultimately Kim went back on his pledge, even though “Time” resulted in just short of 30,000 in ticket sales. But clearly, the Korean audiences had some unresolved issues with Kim’s filmography. Perhaps it was partly an image problem, in that most viewers were more familiar with Kim’s combative public persona than with the films themselves. But it also seems that, whereas non-Korean viewers were attracted to the originality of Kim’s work, domestic viewers found his portrayal of Korean society to be unfamiliar and alienating. The standoff between the director and his home audience continued.
The Return of Kim Ki-duk
From 2008 to 2011, Kim Ki-duk disappeared. Struggling with artistic block, and feeling betrayed by the local film industry, he moved to a remote cabin and broke off almost all communication with the outside world. As his silence continued, people began to whisper that perhaps his career was over. However, in 2011 he appeared at the Cannes Film Festival to present his documentary self-portrait “Arirang.” A highly unusual work in which Kim pours out his thoughts and frustrations to the camera, “Arirang” made it clear that Kim had been spending time agonizing over his future, and the meaning of filmmaking. The documentary was the fruit of that struggle, and it won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes.
Later that year, I met Kim Ki-duk again, when he presented the experimental work “Amen” (2011) at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain. I was struck by the transformation: Kim’s hair had grown long and turned gray, and he had begun dressing in modified versions of traditional Korean clothing. Apart from that, he looked genuinely happy, like someone who had released a burden from his shoulders. Although still critical of the mainstream Korean film industry (“The big distributors have no interest in producing original films,” he said), he seemed to have come to peace with his position in Korean society, and his relationship with the Korean audience. Not only that, his passion for making films had been reignited. “Kim is filled with ideas for new movies,” I was told by one of his co-producers.
Sure enough, Kim’s “Pieta” (2012) was hailed by critics as a return to form at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion. This was not only the most prestigious prize ever won by the director, it was the first time in history for a Korean film to capture the top prize at one of the world’s three most prestigious festivals: Cannes, Venice, or Berlin. After reaching a crisis in his career just a few years earlier, Kim Ki-duk had reached the pinnacle of fame.
He also seemed, for the first time, to be establishing a broader relationship with the Korean audience. Even before the screening at Venice, Kim had agreed to promote his film on television for the very first time, and his open, friendly manner went a long way toward reversing the negative image that many Koreans had held of him. Not only that, “Pieta” itself, despite some scenes of disturbing cruelty, contained a central relationship that mainstream viewers could easily connect with on an emotional level. The film was like a blend between his early, provocative style and the contemplative reflection of films like “3-Iron.” Actress Jo Min-soo’s performance was widely praised, and instead of feeling alienated by the work, many Koreans took pride in its winning the Golden Lion.
It seems particularly meaningful that an outsider like Kim Ki-duk, who has stubbornly pursued his own vision and resisted following mainstream trends, now possesses the most prestigious award in Korean film history. Other Korean directors will surely receive their share of recognition in the future, but at the moment, Kim Ki-duk has become the unlikely face of Korean cinema. There is an element of random chance in all festival awards, depending on the composition of the jury and the inevitable negotiations that take place during deliberations. It’s very possible that Kim might have won the Golden Lion for “3-Iron” back in 2004, if a different jury had been in place. However, it seems appropriate that he is being honored now, at this stage in his career. His films maintain their distinctive edge, but it seems that finally, Kim Ki-duk has come to peace with himself, and his country.
한국국제교류재단
