Park Chan-wook, the softly-spoken figure behind such deranged Korean classics as Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, has little doubt as to why revenge stories are so popular with moviegoers.
August 15, 2006 (Press Release) --
Park Chan-wook, the softly-spoken figure behind such deranged Korean classics as Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, has little doubt as to why revenge stories are so popular with moviegoers. "Revenge is a desire that everybody has but nobody can realise," he smiles. Of course in Park's revenge trilogy - of which the concluding part, the beautifully constructed Lady Vengeance, is currently on UK release - the characters do act out on this very desire with traumatic, bloody but always fascinating consequences.
We're sat in a boxy room of London's Charlotte Street Hotel, and Park appears very much at ease clad entirely in black and sipping from a glass of wine. This doesn't look like a man behind some of the most extreme images we've seen in recent cinema history - images, let us recall, that include a tongue being sliced out in Oldboy and prolonged torture by electric shock in Sympathy for Mr Vengeance. But then, despite the recurring themes in his movies, this is a director who confounds expectation at every turn. His latest movie starts off as a black comedy with events flashing back to Lee Young-ae's incarcerated heroine doing one good deed after another for her fellow prisoners, almost like some kind of twisted sister to Amelie. Unlike Amelie Lady Vengeance develops into something very dark indeed, with its protagonist teaming up with bereaved parents to dish out some seriously bloody revenge on Choi Min-sik's child killer.
I ask Park how he approached the idea of revenge differently this time around. "It's unusual in that 'Lady Vengeance' plans her revenge as a kind of redemption," Park says, speaking through an interpreter. "I wanted to create a sense of isolation between the audience and the protagonist rather than the audience identifying with her. A sense of alienation. The protagonist becomes an observer because she takes revenge on Baek rather than taking it herself. It becomes just another murder rather than revenge."
Park insists that while his movies might be sympathetic to why their characters act as they do, the act of revenge itself is always seen as stupid and unfulfilling. "Revenge is something that makes you happy and invigorates you only when it is in your imagination," Park says stroking his chin. "But when it comes to actually realising this it is never happy and never gives you pleasure. Because it is an act of total stupidity…So as long as revenge is in the imagination it is good for your mental health. But it must be infinitely put off, must be infinitely delayed."
Despite the subject matter, there is a strong vein of dark humour that runs through Park's work. Think Oh Dae Su confronting the lift stuffed with henchmen in Oldboy or the story of a man with two heads in Sympathy for Mr Vengeance.
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
Written by Matt McAllister
We're sat in a boxy room of London's Charlotte Street Hotel, and Park appears very much at ease clad entirely in black and sipping from a glass of wine. This doesn't look like a man behind some of the most extreme images we've seen in recent cinema history - images, let us recall, that include a tongue being sliced out in Oldboy and prolonged torture by electric shock in Sympathy for Mr Vengeance. But then, despite the recurring themes in his movies, this is a director who confounds expectation at every turn. His latest movie starts off as a black comedy with events flashing back to Lee Young-ae's incarcerated heroine doing one good deed after another for her fellow prisoners, almost like some kind of twisted sister to Amelie. Unlike Amelie Lady Vengeance develops into something very dark indeed, with its protagonist teaming up with bereaved parents to dish out some seriously bloody revenge on Choi Min-sik's child killer.
I ask Park how he approached the idea of revenge differently this time around. "It's unusual in that 'Lady Vengeance' plans her revenge as a kind of redemption," Park says, speaking through an interpreter. "I wanted to create a sense of isolation between the audience and the protagonist rather than the audience identifying with her. A sense of alienation. The protagonist becomes an observer because she takes revenge on Baek rather than taking it herself. It becomes just another murder rather than revenge."
Park insists that while his movies might be sympathetic to why their characters act as they do, the act of revenge itself is always seen as stupid and unfulfilling. "Revenge is something that makes you happy and invigorates you only when it is in your imagination," Park says stroking his chin. "But when it comes to actually realising this it is never happy and never gives you pleasure. Because it is an act of total stupidity…So as long as revenge is in the imagination it is good for your mental health. But it must be infinitely put off, must be infinitely delayed."
Despite the subject matter, there is a strong vein of dark humour that runs through Park's work. Think Oh Dae Su confronting the lift stuffed with henchmen in Oldboy or the story of a man with two heads in Sympathy for Mr Vengeance.
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
Written by Matt McAllister
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