Much has changed since Park Chan-Wook released his first feature 30 years ago. The Korean director’s third feature, Joint Security Area, attracted interest in 2000, but it was his “Vengeance trilogy” that really got the world talking. Oldboy, the second of those films, won the runners-up prize at Cannes in 2003 (rumours persist that jury president Quentin Tarantino burst a blood vessel failing to get the rest of his colleagues to award it the Palme d’Or). Hits such as Thirst and The Handmaiden followed. Park developed a reputation for working transgressive violence in with consistently elegant montage. Presenting Decision to Leave, his irresistible new thriller, at Cannes this year, he could reasonably claim to be an oak of his cinematic generation.
“This film’s core premise goes back to the classic detective films,” he tells me through an interpreter. “In the beginning you think you are working with a classic film noir ... up until the end of the first part.”
We will get back to that teaser. I am interested in hearing Park’s feelings about the unavoidable rise of Korean culture. Cinema was at the forefront. Kim Ki Duk, Hong Sang Soo, Lee Chang Dong and Bong Joon Ho followed Park to worldwide success. In 2020, Bong’s Parasite became the first film not in the English language to win the best picture Oscar. Then there was television. Last year, Squid Game, created by Hwang Dong Hyuk, became a genuine sensation on Netflix. But is, perhaps, in music that Korea most surprised the universe. K-Pop bands such as the mighty BTS go places where Britney Spears once went. What happened? How do those, like Park, who paved the way, feel about it all?
“Well, we are all in awe. We are all speechless,” he says with a bemused smile. “And we’re going to need more time to really assess this phenomenon. But it is very true. And I feel it every day. Several years ago, whenever I introduced one of my actors to the western audience, I always said: ‘Well, he is quite famous in Korea, you know.’ For the westerners, it didn’t matter how much of a star he was. To them it was just another new face they have met through this film. But now I’m just really happy that I’m able to present Park Hae Il in Decision to Leave by saying: ‘Oh, he was the suspect in Memories of Murder directed by Bong Joon Ho, who made Parasite.’”
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He seems genuinely amused at what is going on.
“I also know that, among many British young people, they know my new film through the fact that RM from BTS has seen it five times. So it’s all a big, pleasant surprise for us in Korea.”
Born and raised in Seoul, Park studied philosophy at university, but seems to have edged towards cinema after a formative encounter with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. These were times of political unrest, something that shaped his future approach. “I was in college and our student demonstrations were met with extreme violence,” he said in 2014. “I was afraid to participate then. Now I explore violence in my films, and its relationship to love, sexuality, anger and fear.”
As symphonies in tension go, Decision to Leave feels closer to Debussy than Wagner.
Like so many future auteurs, he spent a while as a film critic before moving on to his first feature. Moon Is ... Sun’s Dream, released in 1992, was little seen. Joint Security Area broke records at home. Then came a string of hits with Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance. The buzz around Oldboy looks to have changed his life. The international attention allowed him — with the assistance of producers Ridley and Tony Scott — to cast Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasakowska in his English language debut, Stoker. In 2018 his TV adaptation of John le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl made fine use of rising star Florence Pugh. Oldboy helped all that to happen. Right?
[ ‘Even among ourselves we wonder why Korean cinema exploded’Opens in new window ]
“Yes, you’re right,” he tells me. “I’ve done theatrical films in the English language. I’ve done TV series for the BBC. Right now, I have several films and TV series being planned? All of that presents me with a lot of challenges and difficulties — because that means I will have to live in a foreign country in an environment where I don’t speak the language. And I have to work with people who are foreign to me. So it’s not easy. But at the same time that pushes me out of my comfort zone and really drives me to move forward as a creator. It’s a great stimulant to move forward.”
He adopts a resigned pose.
“I know this is not going to happen, but, in an ideal world, I would love to make a film in the Korean language and then another film in a foreign language followed by another Korean one and then a foreign one.”
Decision to Leave, winner of best director at Cannes as well as being the Korean selection for best international film at the Oscars, feels a little like a counterbalance to his earlier, more violent thrillers. The picture has, as Park indicates, the shape of a classic film noir. Park Hae Il plays a diligent cop who gets caught up in escalating confusion when he is called to ponder a body lying at the base of a huge rock. His interactions with the victim’s Chinese widow trigger the inappropriate liaisons we expect between hard-bitten US stars of the 1950s. But the tone is very different. Its genuflection to noir is moderated by an only partially compliant spine.
“You can call the first part very much film noir,” he says. “But once the second part starts, my film leaps forward in a completely different direction — because she is no longer the cold femme fatale. She is helplessly in love with the detective. She will do anything to win his heart back. She is the helpless romantic. So this film in the beginning wears the mask of film noir. But then in the middle it takes off its mask and it brings the audience somewhere completely unexpected.”
Throughout the Vengeance trilogy we got used to Park as a master of exquisitely choreographed mayhem. The corridor fight in Oldboy is among the most influential scenes in 21st century cinema. Decision to Leave is, in contrast, poised, controlled and restrained. I wonder if he is setting it in conscious complement to the earlier work. As symphonies in tension go, it feels closer to Debussy than Wagner.
We should keep making the effort to ensure people are invited back to the cinema and enjoy that wonderful experience
— Park Chan-Wook
“I would say it was not my intention to go in the opposite direction,” he says. “I just chose the most suitable form and style for this film. It’s really hard to explain. It’s perhaps because of my age now. Perhaps just because I wanted to try something new. But this time around, what I wanted to do is to focus on the nuance and the emotions. Here, I will be featuring characters who are not good at being honest with themselves about their true feelings. If they express their feelings it will be done in a subtle way. So I have to take out those violent or erotic scenes.”
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What remains consistent is Park’s commitment to a gorgeously composed image that spreads satisfactorily across a huge screen. He adapted well to TV with The Little Drummer Girl, but Park’s films deserve exposure on the most enveloping media available. Will enough people see Decision to Leave that way? Will they see his next film that way? The admirably innovative MUBI, originally just an art house streaming service, now also a theatrical Oldboy: An established classic emerges in a new printdistributor, will be bringing Decision to Leave to cinemas. One hopes that option will always be available.
“I cannot guess what is going to happen,” he says, “But what I can say for now is that it must survive. I don’t think there are any particular films that are worthy of being shown in the cinema. I don’t think it is just the spectacles or blockbusters that are worthy of being screened in the cinema. What I mean is that Lawrence of Arabia is, of course, a good film to see in the theatre. But the films of Eric Rohmer are also worth seeing in the cinema.”
He goes on to loyally talk up MUBI’s commitment to the larger screen. He is not the only director of his generation to become evangelical on this point.
“We had forgotten for a little while, during Covid, what an experience it is to get together and go to a movie theatre,” he says. “We should never forget that. We should keep making the effort to ensure people are invited back to the cinema and enjoy that wonderful experience.”
Decision to Leave is on release now
