Kim Ki-Duk's Brilliant PIETA

Kim Ki-duk's PIETA deservedly beat out Mallick's TO THE WONDER, De Palma's PASSION, and Anderson's THE MASTER to win Venice's Golden Lion Award in 2012; THE MASTER came second.

It's encouraging to see that politics, hype, and big money don't always hold the winning cards in these festivals.

I recently caught PIETA and was blown away by it. Easily my favorite Kim Ki-duk film since CROCODILE and THE ISLE, it is a brutal, unsentimental, yet touching tale of a debt collector who will do anything to collect... until a strange woman who may or may not be 'family' enters the picture.

With recent efforts like TIME, BREATH, THE BOW, and DREAM, the director's ideas have failed to coalesce into a satisfactory whole. Although imbued with strong concepts and deft execution on low budgets, they have lacked the audacity of earlier works such as THE ISLE, ADDRESS UNKNOWN, BAD GUY, CROCODILE, and BIRDCAGE INN. Thankfully, PIETA gets the balance exactly right, and is entirely satisfying as both a visceral and a deeply emotional experience.

The film is filled with stunning revelations and bursts of cringe-worthy violence as it critiques the excesses of capitalism and the aftermath it leaves us . Set in a typically confined Kim milieu, the drama plays out intimately, and Kim never takes easy roads to dramatic peaks. Blessed with truly amazing lead performances, it's a textbook example of a brilliant concept realized brilliantly, and without the compromise that buckets of money bring.

For the faint-hearted, this is one to steer well clear of. For the adventurous cinephile, PIETA is acidic cinematic ejaculate blown across the face of convention. 

...and made for 1/50 of the cost of its closest contenders.

Bedevilled a Korean 'The Beasts'

 Talk about a film with its heart in the right place! Jesus. This shoots the ducks down and goes back to wring their necks.

If you've never seen Dennis Yu's The Beasts (aka Flesh and Bloody Terror; '80), you may not appreciate the virtues of this Korean sleaze- and blood-fest quite as much as I did. The Beasts, a very rough diamond,  was inspired by flicks such as I Spit On Your Grave, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and Deliverance.

My imdb review went thus:

There's plenty to like in Dennis Yu's vicious little shocker. You can cite many references (Deliverance being one), but my guess is Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes influenced Yu most.

I love stuff like this -- the nastier the better. I'm not apt to whine if the film rolls around in its own filth like a fat, bloated pig. I'm not prone to taking issue with gloriously violent, misogynistic behavior if the only reason given for it is the inherent badness of the characters.

"Entertainment" has many faces, and the face of this putrid piece of vile celluloid is slashed with a shit-eating grin.

In The Hills Have Eyes, Craven used the deformed Michael Berryman as the face of savagery. In The  Beasts, Yu casts an equally disturbing, ugly, toothless actor who grunts and screams and lashes out at every obstacle like a venomous snake. He perfectly embodies Yu's vile little world.

A small party of men and cute women are attacked by some local miscreants ("beasts"). One of the women is brutally raped and the police are called. The miscreants, referred to as "disco boys" by one observer, are rounded up by the inept cops, but the cops fail to make a case against them. A local man, upset that justice has not been served, decides to exact his own -- in deep scarlet.

Although some of the film's scenes of graphic violence are a little sloppy, there are enough cinematic atrocities on parade to forgive Wu his occasional aesthetic misstep.

Again mirroring Hills, two ferocious dogs make an appearance in The Beasts -- this time, however, they're on the side of "evil".

The atmosphere of sleaze and dread is well maintained and encouraged by Yu. The climax, taking place during a vicious rainstorm (at night) is surprisingly effective and beautifully shot by Bob Thompson.

Editing is tight and Tony Au's art direction is vivid and gloriously ugly.

A murder with a rope tossed to a drowning man is a showstopper, as is a scene where a character plunges head first into a box of rusty blades.

If you have a soft spot for this disrespected genre, you'll find a place in your heart for The Beasts.

 While watching Bedevilled (2010) unspool, I was heartened by the fact that someone -- a Korean first-time director named Cheol-soo Jang -- had decided to make a film that, for me, recalled the best aspects of nasty exploitation flicks from Hong Kong's golden age.

Mr. Jang weaves other influences into this potpourri of gory nihilism also. The film's musical choices are pure Kim Ki-duk -- gentle piano pieces suggesting brewing violence. The visuals, which are very impressive, recall the vistas of Ki-duk's The Isle, his purest, most surreal work. One of the film's final images is a direct steal from that film... a woman's body becomes an island.

A little research reveals that Cheol-so Jang was second unit director on Ki-duk's Samaritan Girl. There is a distinct Ki-duk flavor to this film, and the violence (mostly directed at women) is as brutal as that seen in Ki-duk's Address Unknown, Bad Guy, and Crocodile.

Another title that this film bears many similarities to, at least thematically, is Kim Ki-young's quite extraordinary and little seen Leodo ('77), a bewitching tale of an island of mysterious women who harbor a terrible secret.  

 Leodo's focus is on a search for a missing man who lived on the island,  and the influence of a witch-like woman/shaman on the all-female island's residents. The film is so fascinating and multi-layered that I have started, deleted, and re-started numerous blog posts about it over the past couple of months. Until my words can do it some justice, I'll take a powder. Although it (Leodo) has more in common with the original The Wicker Man than Bedevilled,  I can't help suspecting that its theme did influence many aspects of Bedevilled.

The set-up is basic. 'Hae-won' (Seong-won Ji), a frustrated, somewhat selfish businesswoman, travels to the island where she grew up to spend a week with an old friend,  'Kok-nam' (Seo Yeong-hee). Kok-nam is a simple, loving, earthy woman married to a total cunt ( Yeong-hie Seo) who beats her up constantly and screws mainland prostitutes in front of her (the arrival of prostitutes by boat recalls similar scenes in The Isle).

Even worse than any of the above is the not-so-hidden secret that hubby is also screwing his daughter, a shy girl who couldn't be more than nine or ten. His heinous actions are condoned by a nasty old woman (played with chilling conviction) who is her husband's greatest supporter. This old crone virtually encourages the man's abuse and even attempts to cover it up when the worst thing you can possibly imagine happens.

 The island is home to a very small group of women who seem to accept the wholesale mistreatment of the younger woman. They share an old-fashioned view that women are useless without  men and only necessary for procreation and mothering. Although this view is somewhat at odds with the matriarchal society of Leodo, it is presented with similar visual and literary flourishes.

Bedevilled reminded me of The Beasts because its presentation of perversion and violence is just as unrelenting -- although not quite as trashy. Technically, it is a much more polished piece of work.

The brutal husband is just one of several ghastly men the film presents to us. The husband also has a brother who drugs and molests Hae-won, and there is a boat captain and cop who are equally morally bankrupt. Virtually every male in the film is a rotten sod.

Another film presenting all men as animals is Koyu Ohara's White Rose Campus... Then, Everybody Gets Raped!

Because the film is so dedicated to its bleak world view, there is little room for shading. That's fine, though; it is what it is. And director Yang does a good job slowly piling on the atrocities until the victims and audience reach a breaking point.

If I had any problems with the film, it was with the slightly protracted wrap-up that feels a bit rushed. There seemed to be some bridging shots missing that might have smoothed the transition to the last major location.

Bedevilled is a fine achievement, though, another feather in the cap of Korean cinema. Who would have thought that Korea would become the new Hong Kong of the 70's and 80's? Hats off to them! 
 

The Blu-Ray from Optimum Releasing UK presents the film beautifully.

 

Less Seen Works of Ki-duk Kim

There are those who like the later work of Ki-duk Kim such as 3-Iron (Bin-jip, 2004).

I like his earlier work most.

I wrote in my imdb review of Crocodile (Ago-o, 96):

I saw this after The Isle (Seom, 2000), but it was made well before. It's such a beautiful, painful movie. It contains images that will never leave me. The film's protagonist, a lonely, loveless man, visits an underwater gazebo beneath a bridge in Seoul. He has a chair there, a table, a small gate. The scenes where he swims down to this subterranean retreat and simply stands there are so amazing I cried.

Characters express their best and worst emotions through violence in Ki-duk's films, and never has this concept been explored deeper than in Crocodile. The non-stop beatings, rapes and shovings have a cumulative effect on the viewer that puts you in the shoes of the film's hapless heroine. It's clear that not as much money was spent on Crocodile, but, like The Isle, its brilliance and brittle beauty is in its simplicity.
From my imdb review:

Ki-duk Kim continues his exploration of primal human behavior in Birdcage Inn (Paran Daemun, '98). A master at depicting specific, "closed" environments, here he sets his story in a one-girl brothel in a seaside town. A man falls in love with the brothel's prostitute and this presents a dilemma for those who depend on her for survival. This is a more restrained, quieter film than the Korean director's Bad Guy, The Isle, Crocodile, or Address Unknown. The violence is less overt, the sex off-screen more than on-screen. For some, it will be a more accessible film. Personally, I would place it just below the four titles above, but that is in no way a slight on the movie. Recommended.

Unfortunately, Crocodile has not been released on DVD with English subtitles.

I saw it several years ago at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Birdcage Inn is available on a DVD from Hong Kong's Winson Entertainment. The quality is close to rotten.

Top 22 Horror Films in 22 Years

Recently, there have been a great many horror lists published on various blogs as a rebuttal to Owen Gleiberman's list in Entertainment Weekly.

I cheated my list back 22 years so as to include In A Glass Cage, one of my favorite horror films of any time.

Good horror comedies such as Shaun of the Dead are missing because they're not real horror to me.

You won't find Blair Witch Project here because it is now and always has been utter shit.

I realize some films here such as Battle Royale may not meet everybody's definition of horror. For mine, the film's premise is horrific ) enough in my book -- kill all your friends and classmates or you die!

Utterly disturbing.

Extremely tense. Claustrophobic. Doesn't put a foot wrong.

The cheat ending still bothers me, and almost bumped it off the list, but everything that comes before it is true horror executed with love and gusto.

A masterpiece from the late Kinji Fukasaku, a god among directors.

Surreal, atmospheric horror.

One of the best Italian horror films ever made (and they've made some doozies). Grisly, surreal, erotic, disturbing, and beautiful.

Despite the lack of perfect versions of this, it is a rich, atmospheric horror film occasionally handicapped by wrong-headed comedy. Still, its necrophilic tone qualifies it for greatness.

I love Arturo Ripstein, and this phenomenal Mexican version of The Honeymoon Killers is sometimes unbearable to watch.

As I am not a fan of Audition (I find it quite boring), my Miike choice is the brilliant and twisted Ichii The Killer.

As the years pass, I like Silence of the Lambs less and Ridley Scott's Hannibal so much more.

Gary Oldman's 'Mason Verger' is a modern horror creation that Lon Chaney would have been proud of.

One of the most subversive horror films ever to be slipped through a studio gate.

Real horror with brutal catharsis.

Easily one of the most bizarre, troubling, and anxiety-inducing horror films. From director Fruit Chan.

I may be alone on this one, but John Dahl's riff on the Duel premise is a taut, unrelenting horror pic with a great, unseen villain ('Rusty Nail').

What can I say that hasn't already been said?

Powerful psychological horror that captures the terror of being a prisoner of your own delusions.

A nightmare captured on celluloid.

This '87 masterpiece of bloodsucking just slips through the 22-year gate.

One of the most bizarre, cruel, and horrific studies of child abuse ever burned to the screen, Midori is a worthy successor to Todd Browning's Freaks.

Based on Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show by Suehiro Maruo.

Supreme tension.

Masterful, understated horror fairytale.

Accomplished tale of alienation where the horror grows like cancer on sunburn.

David Mamet's only attempt at writing a horror picture is stark and frightening and unforgettable. Stuart Gordon's direction is flawless.

Ruminations From The Salton Sea

It's 5 am. I 'm too excited to sleep. A day of creative collaboration lies ahead.

I'm staying at a motel fives miles from our Salton Sea location. I love this area. I could make films here forever.

The Korean director, Kim ki-Duk, whose work I admire, would love this place, too.

Each corner of it is a world.

When you're making a film, you're constructing a unique world through your lens, and through your microphone. Where you point your lens, and what you record with that microphone, shapes that world. It defines you as a filmmaker.

The pleasure of filmmaking is the shaping.

It's all in your hands.

Last night I read a reply to my Guy N. Smith blog from a young man (I assume) who asked me about women. "Also, advice you have about women!" he said.

I think every man on Earth has something to say about women, just as every woman has something to say about men.

It's always an interesting topic, and it never gets stale.

The anonymous writer's request came at a good time because I was still contemplating last week's brilliant episode of South Park in which Trey Parker and Matt Stone (two of the smartest blokes in America) skewered Disney's Jonas Brothers phenomenon. It IS a phenomenon because it's pervasive and insidious. It's all about stealing money from gullible girlies, of course, and the South Park boys are bothered by that.

What bothers Park and Stone most is the hypocrisy behind the phenomenon. Through The Jonas Brothers, Disney is selling sex to teens and pre-teens, but they're wrapping it in strands of dripping wet bullshit. Their secret weapon is Celibacy.

You see, The Jonas Brothers all wear Purity Rings. These rings signify the boys' commitment to remaining celibate. They're good boys, you see. Girls can take them home to mum and dad. They're not going to try and cop a feel of your daughter's budding nipples. They're not going to Mapquest or GPS their way to your little darling's Third Base.

Despite the fact that these dandy fellas bounce onto the stage and thrust their crotches AT your daughter while singing impossibly gooey love songs wrapped in Christian clothing, they are no more dangerous than a trio of Ken dolls in a store window (apparently).

A rare photograph of three teenage boys who don't think about sex

It's comforting to know that the little girls of the world, virgins all, are safe in the celibate hands of Nick Jonas (16), Joe Jonas (19), and Kevin Jonas (20).

That's because these three incredible guys are different to every other boy in the world. Made no mistake, they are exceptional, and surely heading for a listing in the Guiness Book of Records. These freaks DON'T want to have sex. They think PURE thoughts. They thrust their crotches at an audience of screaming children and it means NOTHING.

In a recent interview, they explained how their Purity Rings are symbols of their RESPECT for women.

In Ralph L. Thomas's extraordinary '81 movie about religious cult indoctrination, Ticket To Heaven, Nick Mancuso is visiting an old friend who has joined a cult masquerading as a youth group. Nick has just been cold shouldered by a female member of the group, so he asks his friend what the policy is on sex in the group. His friend pastes on a smile and says: "We're trying to learn some real respect for women here."

The last time I looked, the first rung on the ladder of respect was honesty, not celibacy.

Man or woman, it doesn't matter. Being honest with somebody is how you show them respect.

Being celibate is kind of like lying to yourself. It's like pretending that you don't need to eat.

Lying to the people who love you and your music is being disrespectful to them.

Purity Rings, therefore, are symbols of Pure Bullshit.

Pure Bullshit sells.

Truth, unfortunately, goes begging.

Organized religion is about organizing and managing thought. It needs to take control of how you think. If it can't take control of how you think, you'll question its validity.

Organized religion has always understood the power of sexual desire very well. It knows it's a type of primal hunger. Or thirst. It's unstoppable. It's not going away any time soon.

A man can destroy a woman by demeaning her. Women are more susceptible to belittling and criticism than men are. They're raised that way. With exceptions, of course. Without guns, the way to destroy a good woman is to make her believe she's bad, she's no good. If you tell her she's bad, and you hammer the point home long enough, she'll start to believe it, especially if you keep contrary views at bay. Once you've convinced your victim that they're bad, you can then (kindly) offer them a solution. Forgiveness even. Yep, you can step in right in and be her savior. Then she'll respect you. She'll listen to you. She'll follow you.

Religious indoctrination works the same way.

Religious leaders (insecure, small-dicked men) always needed to make sex bad because they knew it felt so damn good. They did this (and continue to do this) by demonizing the desire. This demonizing began with women. Women who desired sex were bad. Their sex organs were bad. Bad women, you see, were a threat to good men... men like the Jonas Brothers. Women were forced to cover up and feel ashamed about their bad bodies.

Eve tempted Adam, right? Adam was Eve's victim. Like Nick, Joe or Kevin Jonas, he wore a Purity Ring, a symbol of his superiority to Eve, who stood in for all women.

As the Jonas Brothers gyrate and thrust, they send out a confusing message to their flock. Although they incite desire, that desire will not find expression. It will be cut off at the pass because it's wrong, it's disrespectful.

The Jonas Brothers have much in common with table top dancers. They are paid hookers who don't put out. Isn't that disrespectful?

William Hurt sums it up in Lawrence Kasden's Body Heat ('81): "Sometimes the shit comes down so heavy, I feel like I need a hat."

Advice I have about women?

Be honest from the beginning, boys. Keep all negotiations equal.

Buying a woman dinner doesn't guarantee vagina time. If she wants you, she wants you. If she doesn't, nothing will change that. Certainly not dinner.

Don't trade your personal power for a quick fuck.

If you're going to cum, make sure she comes first. That's respect. Practice makes perfect.

Use a condom (or get snipped) if you care about building a future on your own terms.

Don't let a pregnant belly fuck your career choices. The choice to keep an unwanted child is, ultimately, hers, not yours. Remember that.

Forget about your future, son. She's got it sorted for you!

A five minute ride in a tight, wet vagina should not be the trade-off for your future.

Tell women what you think, not what they want to hear.

The good ones will respect that.

The bad ones will walk away.

Close the door behind them as they exit and be grateful for the Truth.

Unfortunately, most guys are so weak when it comes to women, it makes me want to vomit.

Oh, yeah, and Fuck the Jonas Brothers!

WARNING:
Stakes made for vampires may fare better than Purity Rings
against these two -- unless you're the Brothers Jonas