Samaritan girl (2004)

During the last few weeks, I've watched a batch of Kim Ki-Duk films. My gut reaction is that his films are artistically interesting, but morally a bit shady. Samaritan girl does not change my mind in that respect. In many ways, it is a typical Ki-Duk production. The question about problematic female sexuality (which, in many films, is seen as a threat, something that challenges the stability of the world) remains in the limelight. Kim Ki Duk's peculiar perspective on violence is ever-present. The story of the film is quite horrendous (and very misogynistic): a very young girl works as a prostitute while her shy friend, Yeo-Yin is the business manager. When the police is about to interrupt one rendezvous, the girl jumps from a window, and dies at hospital. Yeo-Yin, seeking some sort of redemption /expiation, meets every client her friend has slept with, goes through with the act, and returns to him the money from the first transaction. In the second part of the film, Yeo-Yin's activities are unintentionally revealed to her father who, in a third segment of the film, embarks on a spiritual journey of his own, which involves violence and an attempt to bring his daughter back to virginal purity. 

Though not a Pretty woman, Samaritan girl is, in my opinion, too overloaded with symbolism and metaphors. As a story about redemption, this pic has some merits, but it also contains far too many ugly clichés about the secret of female sexuality to really be of any interest. Actually, I doubt that anything good can be dug out from the whore/madonna dichotomy - and this is proven by this film. What is more, the idea of "female innocence" torn to pieces by males is never really questioned here - rather, Ki-Duk creates a lugubrious tale about a cruel world in which innocent girls are whiffed into a life of obscenities.

The reason why Ki-Duk's film haunt me is because his films always contain two or three scenes where everything is in the right place, cinematically speaking. Yeo-Yin's father sit quietly in his car, covered with colorful leaves, surrounded by an eerie, stern, blue-ish light. Nothing happens. We just see him sitting there. The very ending scenes, in which Yeo-Yin's father teaches his daughter to drive a car, has an almost otherworldly beauty - along with a few layers of meaning.

The coast guard (2002)

The coast guard is not Kim Ki-Duk's strongest movie. It puts forward a harrowing critique of the South Korean army - against the backdrop of a general atmosphere (augmented by music) of sadness & remorse. In fear of northern spies, troops patrol the border. One night, a zealous young soldier shoots a young boy, a civilian, who has sneaked off to the beach with his lover. Tragedy, madness and violence ensue. The film depicts bully and fear. A very bleak picture is painted of the army's activities, arbitrary excercise of power, hierarchy, moral weakness. If there were less big gestures, less action-style violence & a more focused and subtle/evocative characterization of the characters had been provided, this would have been a much better film.

Address unknown (2001)

Kim Ki Duk's films are, I think, too interesting to be dismessed because of "gratuitous violence". But honestly, I'm not sure what his films do with me & whether I should watch them at all. You stare into the darkness & something stares back at you (a passage from Nietzsche that can be quoted in almost any context and still make sense). I am tempted to blurt the win-win relativist's "Well, it depends..." If not that, I'd be as tempted to say, "Sure, Address unknown was disturbing, but..." You haven't really said a lot about your reaction to a film by calling it "disturbing". The insertion of a "but" will always make sense.

Address unknown is a political film. Ki Duk grapples with US colonialism; commercial, and military. The film presents a village in which an American military base is settled. The year is 1970 and the Korea war still haunt the villagers' memories. The film dwells on a series of events that will eventually lead to bloody tragedy: a group of target practicing war veterans, an ex-veteran who is now engaged in killing dogs for their meat, a dog-loving girl is promised an eye operation by an American soldier, a boy who likes to watch. And there are several strands I haven't mentioned. From there, everything goes to hell.

The film captures an almost de-humanized world. Most people walk and talk as though they were human, but the film doesn't quite allow them to become anything beyond expressions of a sense of primordial fear and terror. There are almost no cracks in this world. It is totalitarian and the style of the film is very seamless in that way, too - very austere, very quiet, very short scenes intertwined with longer ones. That makes the film dangerously fascinating. A few days after the film, I still have a bad taste in my mouth.

The film explores several themes. One of them, obviously, is war & a militarized post-war dystopia. Another theme is watching & seeing. We are exposed to damaged eyes, restored eyes, secret peeping - as our own witnessing of the events become increasingly unbearable. A third theme is dogs. A fourth theme is the role of American culture (or dicks) in Korea.

The Isle (2000)

When starting to watch a Kim Ki-Duk film, it is very hard to predict what kind of movie one will see. Is it a drama film, a gruesome thriller, or a subversive horror movie? The same goes for The Isle. I suppose this movie is the horror movie Tarkovsky never made. Long shots / long takes / the tranquility of nature. Honestly - I am not sure what to say about The Isle. The contrast(s) achieved through very disturbing images set within a languid pace & a peaceful landscape is quite overwhelming in a sense that is hard to shrug off. The strange thing about it is that there are images of brutal physical cruelty that are filmed with a slightly evasive camera: we see something, but the camera does not linger, it pans away from the central action to focus on a patch of wooden floor or water. When the camera does linger, the effect is harsh, bordering on the unwatchable. Do I have one single conception about what Kim Ki-Duk is trying to tell us with this method? No. It does not seem like a metaphor for anything (becoming-dead-fish? the evil nature of females?), and if it were to be interpreted on that level - I would soon lose interest.
Oddly, even though this film does its best to provoke me into strong reactions - it is not entirely sucessful. That is because I am not sure to what I am supposed to react. I have a strong sense that lots of the violence showed here is placed within the story just because of the visual side of it. And what is Kim Ki-Duks relation to the visual?