To Gravitas! Kanpai!

One of the things i crave most when watching movies is a sense of something new, that I haven't seen, heard, read or felt anything that happens on screen before. The current Hollywood phase is sort of a been there done that as evinced by the comic book rip offs, the sequels to said comic book rip offs and some high brow stuff like Brown Bunny which would have been much better left as an idea inside of someone's (probably well soused) head. It is one of the reasons I first gravitated towards classic Hollywood movies, to Bollywood and lately, to South Korean and Japanese cinema. The rom coms, dramas and action movies have a different feel to them as the sense of story telling in Asian cinema not only differs from the West, it oddly enough ticks a lot of boxes for me that I never even knew I had (There is a self imposed barrier that denies me the full pleasure of these movies, but more on that later).

One director in particular absolutely converted me to a true believer, convinced me that I had stumbled onto something great with the reintroduction of Far East Asian cinema into the realm of my conscience. Kim Ki Duk stole my attention with his stunning movie 3 Iron (2004). This deep, layered film of what essentially is an amazingly emotive love story employed a simple device; the two lead characters say almost nothing throughout the course of the entire movie. Odd as that may seem, it works. I started actively looking for his work and watched Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring (2003), Address Unknown (2001), and Samaritan Girl (2004) in rapid succession. For all these movies he served as both writer and director and enjoyed I them all, as thought provoking, genuine unpretentious works that actually strive to tell a story as well as being artful.

To be honest I have access to most of his movies including his more recent works like Breath (2007) and Time (2006), but haven't watched them yet. This is due to an unfortunate foible (actually it is a major emotional failing and a stumbling block to any future career) of mine, where I don't enjoy a lot of serious content. One of Kim Ki Duk's (and other directors like Won Kar Wai) strengths in his story telling is that not much really happens as a movie progresses. It is very much a slow unfolding of events that require patience and a somewhat keen intellect to be able to sit through and analyse the goings on in his movies. I sadly have the attention span of a three-year old suffering from ADHD on speed on my good days. My intellectual prowess? Well as you can tell from the language, piss poor grammar along with run on sentences and a serious overuse of commas on this blog, Stanford is certainly not breaking down the door.

In truth, I also am somewhat scared of movies that make you think too hard because being the selfish bitch that I am, anything deeper than X Factor makes me ruminate on how it relates to my miserable [insert deity here]-forsaken life, which i really don't want to think about at all. Watching a good, deep movie invariably leads me to depression and listlessness which is a great disservice to what are to be sure some great movies. Which is sad as I am very much enamoured of the concepts behind a lot of these movies. I have many stored and available to watch, but cannot bring my self to sit through one without fidgeting like my nether regions are on fire. The thing is this; once you get started with these movies you start to think of symbolism and meaning which to me is sometimes a slippery slope into the over-analysis of a movie. Background skyscrapers are suddenly male phallic symbols, where in fact that may have just been the best place to get a shot at the time. I am lousy at interpretation; I am more of the mind that yes, there are some things that imply more than one meaning, other times it is what it is, a freaking table, skyscraper, whatever. Those are my excuses.

All this was just to say that Kim Ki Duk is my favorite Asian dude/dudette of the month, for daring to be individual and bringing that individuality to the screen and hoping he brings more.

NB (Kanpai is the Japanese equivalent of cheers, could not be bothered to find the Korean, sorry)

A pivotal Scene from 3 Iron