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NYFF Review: Sympathy For Lady Vengeance

[Note: This review contains no spoilers of any kind. This poses quite a challenge, as it limits the ability to truly defend the film, and to fully explain why it is so damn terrific. Those who are familiar with Park's revenge films, and this blogger's love of them, will (perhaps) find the below useful and/or of some interest.] When director Park Chan-wook was at Cannes with Oldboy, he made the following statement during an interview: "With the development of civilization and the rise in education levels, people have had to hide their rage, hate, and grudges deep within them. But this does not mean that these emotions go away. As relationships become more and more intricate, the rage only grows more and more. While modern society is burdening the individual with a growing sense of rage, the outlets through which people can release their rage are becoming narrower. This is an unhealthy situation, and it's probably why art exists. In reality, however, the vengeances represented in my movies are not actual vengeances. They are merely the transferring of a guilty conscience. My films are stories of people who place the blame for their actions on others because they refuse to take on the blame themselves. Therefore, rather than movies purporting to be of revenge, it would be more accurate to see my films as ones stressing morality, with guilty consciences as the core subject matter. The constantly recurring theme is the guilty conscience. Because they are always conscious of and obsessed with their wrongdoings, which are committed because they are inherently unavoidable in life, my characters are fundamentally good people. The fact that people have to resort to another type of violence in order to subjugate their initial guilty consciences is the most basic quality of tragedy characteristic in my movies thus far." An important statement to consider when looking at the three films that make up his revenge "trilogy". (Park explained on Thursday that he never set out to make a trilogy -- his decision to do so was a spontaneous reaction during a somewhat hostile press conference in Korea.) Though his latest film builds upon ideas presented in the first two films, it ultimately winds up somewhere highly unanticipated. Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, the best and most solid film of the three, is truly in a category of its own. Lacking the bleak, almost claustrophobic nature of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, or the devious, playful, noir-infused cleverness of Oldboy, this is Park in a far more sublime mode, who this time takes an almost experimental approach to the material. Religion, specifically in its attitudes toward revenge, repentance and atonement, absent from the first two films, hovers over Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, though this is no way a simple lesson in Christian morality. Park relies heavily on symbolism throughout the film when addressing the uses (and even abuses) of religion -- from a Christian choir dressed in Santa suits, to the various Christ/Mary invocations (see poster, left), to priests with questionable intentions, Park peppers the film with symbols and allusions, but maintains a healthy distance from it, and rightly so. Also noticeably different in this film is the presence of the outside world, particularly the media. In both Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy the stories were contained and limited to the characters involved. Rarely was there interaction with strangers, and the media, though present in both films, never served to comment on the events at hand. In Lady Vengeance, the media is in some way responsible for creating Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae), the titular lady seeking vengeance. Her beauty captures the hearts of many, and though the film opens with her release from prison, she already has a cult following purely based on her looks. The sins of her past are washed away from the public eye thanks to her beauty -- even the church actively courts her to be a spokesperson -- the commodification of rehabilitation, of sorts. Unlike the (mostly) straightforward narratives of the first two films, Lady Vengeance avoids linearity in favor of trips back and forth in time, and by the occasional shifting of narrative focus. Fans of the series will spot allusions to the past two films (very clever at times), including a few that are clearly meant to throw us off. Choi Min-sik (star of Oldboy) is back, and though not as central to the story, his performance is once again incredible. (A comparison of this character to Oh Dae-su will make for a fascinating study, but not here, not now.) What makes Sympathy For Lady Vengeance such an overwhelming success is the manner in which Park drags us into the fray and forces us, for the first time, to consider what we would do in such a situation. For unlike the socio-political circumstances that trigger the multiple vengeances of Mr. Vengeance, or the elaborate, purely fantastical scheme that is Oldboy, Sympathy For Lady Vengeance has at its core a device that, while not original, is one that all but the cold-hearted will have some sort of personal reaction/response to. Sympathy For Lady Vengeance is far more disturbing than its two predecessors -- not for its graphic violence, but for its ability to force us to think about the difficult questions raised, and the even more difficult solutions. Can violence be used a means for the atonement of sin? Is redemption possible after such a horrific act? Park has taken great leaps forward with this film, and it's the kind of film that even those who hated Oldboy might enjoy. There's still so much more to digest (and even more to say), but, as stated above, virtually impossible without giving too much away. This is definitely not Filmbrain's last word on the film. Sympathy For Lady Vengeance screens at the New York Film Festival on Friday 30 September @ 6:00PM and on Sunday 2 October @ 8:30PM. Full details and tickets can be found HERE. A bit of advice -- if possible, avoid reading any plot description before seeing it.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 5 -- Week 12

Filmbrain must have still been basking in a post Bubble-glow when he chose last week's screen quiz. However, he never imagined that only a mere four people would get it right. Granted, Schizopolis isn't one that rocked the box office, but it happens to be Filmbrain's pick for best Soderbergh film...ever. An odd film, yes, but absolutely brilliant. Well, here we are -- the final screen quiz for Round 5! Remember that there are prizes awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, and though Filmbrain still hasn't begun tallying, it's very likely that a few tiebreakers will be required. After last week's stumper, we'll end the round on an easy one. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

NYFF Review: Les Amants Réguliers (Regular Lovers)

Les Amants Réguliers (Regular Lovers), the latest from Philippe Garrel, appears to be the director's response to Bernardo Bertolucci and his 2003 take on Paris '68, The Dreamers. Shot in gorgeous black and white by William Lubtchansky (cinematographer on a handful of Godard films), it not only captures the Paris of that tumultuous year, but feels like a genuine artifact from the era. That both The Dreamers and Les Amants Réguliers feature Garrel's son Louis in a leading role is only the first of the similarities between the two. Les Amants Réguliers takes the basic structure of The Dreamers and turns it on its head. Whereas Bertolucci kept his young somnambulists holed up in an apartment until the final moments, Garrel chooses to open the film with the May riots (under the chapter heading "Hopes of Fire"), and this lengthy sequence, with its deep shadows and dreamlike landscapes contains the film's strongest moments, ending with a dawn trek across the rooftops of Paris that more than justifies Lubtchansky's recent award at Venice. With such a powerful first third, how can Garrel possibly top that in the two hours that follow? Therein lies the problem -- the remainder of the film, which follows the post-May existence of a group of friends, has some wonderful moments, but lacks the vitality (and brilliance) of the first hour. Francois (Louis Garrel) and his fellow jeunesse dorée sit around, smoke copious amounts of opium, dance to Nico and The Kinks (in scenes reminiscent of the Heroin sequence from Last Days), and discuss poetry, politics, cinema, and the failed revolution -- they have become the dreamers. Francois eventually falls in love with Lilie (Clotilde Hesme), a sculptor, and their budding relationship has a real Nouvelle Vague feel to it. Garrel romanticizes romance like no other, and the entire sequence would fit nicely in an early Godard, Rohmer, or Eustache film. Jean-Claude Vannier's piano score, which begins with quiet, melodic themes, soon turns to almost discordant hammering as the relationship both intensifies and self-destructs. Just as Bertolucci's film began with Michael Pitt's arrival from America, so Garrel's film ends with a character leaving Paris for Brooklyn. Though he hasn't explicitly stated a dissatisfaction with The Dreamers, there is a moment in the film that is quite telling. During a discussion of Before the Revolution, a young woman slowly turns to the camera and says "Bernardo Bertolucci". Could this be interpreted as a dig -- as a means of explicitly reminding us of the great director he once was? Even with its flaws, Les Amants Réguliers is still essential viewing for any lover of cinema. Three hours of moments in time, with many of them nothing short of mesmerizing.

NYFF Review: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

It should come as little surprise that a film with an on-the-nose title like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu approaches its subject in an almost documentary-like fashion. The first in a projected series of films designed to answer Rohmer's Six Moral Tales (entitled Six Stories from the Bucharest Suburbs), The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is director Cristi Puiu's second feature -- a Divine Comedy (of errors) that follows Dante Remus Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu), a sixty-something curmudgeon, across a single night as he seeks medical care for what begins as a simple headache. The black-comedic tone of the film is established early on, as Dante visits his next-door neighbors in search of medication. The bickering couple are the first of many who will simply write off Dante's illness as a result of too much alcohol, and the litany of medications they argue about borders on the absurd. Eventually, an ambulance is called, and thus begins Mr. Lazarescu's descent into the hellish world of contemporary healthcare. The issue at hand here is not a bureaucratic one -- there is no problem with Mr. Lazarescu's medical coverage, nor does he get buried in forms or is forced to wait for hours in an emergency room. (When was the last time you got to see an emergency room doctor that quick?) The humanity of those in the medical profession is what Puiu is going after, and there's far too little to be found in the characters we encounter in any of the hospitals that Lazarescu is carted off to. Some of the doctors are simply jokers (Lazarescu: Doctor, my head hurts. Doctor: Good, that means you have one), while others are arrogant, egotistical monsters without a hint of bedside manner. There's a remarkable lack of trust amongst them, and not a single doctor accepts the diagnosis or suggestion of the one who preceded them. (The amount of contradiction is staggering.) Pride is what fuels them on, as the ambulance driver (Luminita Gheorghiu) learns on several occasions when she dares to offer an opinion about the patient she has spent the last several hours with. Yet with all the abuse and insults thrown her way, it is she alone who will recognize Lazarescu as a human being, and not merely another case. The parallels to The Divine Comedy are obvious, though one would be hard pressed to locate paradise for this malaised Dante. There are two Virgils present here -- one is a brother-in-law that Dante owes money to, and the other is a doctor at Lazarescu's final hospital. (The presence of this Virgil, instead of Beatrice, is but one hint that we are nowhere near paradise.) One could argue that he never escapes the Inferno, and that the film's closing moments could be interpreted as Lazarescu in Limbo. Though two and a half hours long, and full of long takes, Puiu keeps the action moving, thanks in part to his shaky shoulder-cam, which adds to the documentary-like feel. (Comparisons to Frederick Wiseman are spot on.) The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is one of those fascinating hybrids -- funny at one moment, horrifying at the next -- and one of those films that you walk out of feeling positively drained. Let's just hope the right wing doesn't use the film as an argument against socialized medicine. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu has been picked up by Tartan, and is opening in May 2006.