It is all but official; Park Chan-wook is the auteur to be
admired most amongst the South Korean directors. With a broad global following and a clear aesthetic, it is hard not to love everyone of this magnificent filmmakers
works. Between the sheer abrasiveness of
Oldboy and the minimalist brilliance of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance Park knows
what he is doing when it comes to releasing socially pertinent thrillers that
beg for continual revisiting. His work
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance is not his best work in my opinion, but it is
certainly superior to most other films with similar concepts and certainly
stands on its own as one of the best movies of 2005. Between the on-point acting delivered by a
slew of well-known Korean actors and the experimental filming, it is a profound
study of redemption and an interesting reflection on women’s power within
contemporary Korean society, and as has been the case with many of Park’s
works, it raises far more questions than answers, never leaving the viewer with
complete certainty of what actually occurred within the dense narrative,
furthermore, as the commentator on the bluray noted, it has one of the best
endings to a film in the past decade, something I agree with
wholeheartedly. Essentially, Sympathy
for Lady Vengeance, causes me to drive home a point that I have said with just
about every Korean film review posted her on my blog, they simply excel at
genre films, particularly those relating to the horrific and the vengeful.
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, like Oldboy and Sympathy for
Mr. Vengeance, focuses on an individual obtaining justice for a wrong enacted
on them, always relying on methods outside of the law in order to obtain
revenge. In the case of this film, the
focus is on Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young Ae) a woman who has recently been released
from jail after being incarcerated for the murder of a young boy. While in jail, Lee made a reputation for
being both incredibly kind and completely indifferent to destroying an
individual who harmed her, as evidenced by her killing a sexually abusive
inmate through months of slowly poisoning her food, of which she volunteered to
feed to her. This reputation also causes
Lee to gain a large amount of respect from the inmates who are let out after
their sentences are completed. Through
their assistance, Lee is able to plan a revenge on Mr. Baek (Choi Min-sik) a
teacher, who viewers come to discover is actually responsible for a series of
child murders and blackmailed Lee to take the fall for him by threatening to
kill her own daughter. Besides planning
on asserting revenge against Baek, Lee also attempts to reunite with her
daughter who was placed in foster care in Australia, making for one of the more
hilarious sequences within the film.
Furthermore, Lee takes up a relationship with her coworker, a young man
who is eerily close to the age of the boy she murdered. After undertaking the kidnapping of Baek with
the help of his current partner, whom he is abusive to, she takes him to a
dilapidated school and ties him up with the intent of shooting him with a
gun. However, upon discovering that he
is indeed responsible for multiple murders, Lee calls upon the parents of each
child to collectively exact revenge upon Baek.
In perhaps the most gruesome moments of the film, Lee and the others
take a variety of weapons to Baek, killing him and then burying him in a hole
behind the school. This is all done
under the watchful eye of a detective who accepts that their actions are far
more fruitful than anything the bureaucratic system of law could provide. The
film then comes back to Lee as she interacts with her daughter and young lover,
she offers a white cake to her daughter to eat as snow falls on her and the
others, signifying perhaps forgiveness or the dismal coldness of her future.
Park Chan-wook gained recognition as a film critic before
becoming one of Korea’s most well known directors. This fact helps to explain the non-linear
narrative of Park’s films, particularly the clear fact that they lift from some
of the world’s best directors, a bit of Hitchcock here, some Kurosawa there and
a complete control of his works, much like Orson Welles. While Park does borrow from some of the
greats he certainly brings his own flares to the table, particularly in his
approach to themes of revenge and redemption.
Rarely, if ever, is there a completely perfect character, even the
protagonists within Park’s films possess their own problems. For Lee, it is a clear inability to accept
her own past and obtain self-esteem that troubles her, something that she never
fully deals with, as is apparent when she refuses to taste the white cake at
the end of the film, instead she simply slams her face into the cake and begins
to sob, perhaps hoping that by throwing herself into something will help to
provide her with the answers she so desperately seeks. This desperation clearly influences her
actions throughout the film, whether it be her desire to travel to Australia to
see her mother, or to pour hours a day into obtaining a lavish fire arm with
the intent of killing Baek. It is almost
as though Lee seeks validation for her own personal wrongs and expects everyone
to simply adhere to them; this is at least the case with her relationship with
the younger man. Park is careful though
not to completely lose the viewers by making his characters completely nonredeemable. Whether it be Oldboy, Lady
Vengeance or Mr. Vengeance the characters have moments of realization, all be
it brief, that help them to accept the absurdities acted upon them, for Lee it
occurs when she is able to shoot the already dead Baek, even if it was an act
of frivolity, it displays Lee obtaining control her life again, something
powerful and evocative and it is completely acceptable, because Park has asked
us from the onset to have sympathy for Lee’s desire for revenge, and to some
degree redemption.
Key Scene: It is most certainly the group revenge scene, try
watching it without grimacing…I dare you.
This is one of the more well-known of Korean films on a
global scale, the bluray looks fantastic and apparently possesses a fade to
black and white version that I cannot wait to check out. Park is a director to share with friends and
well worth getting a copy of to watch repeatedly.
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