The legacy of the Film Old Boy
The legacy of the Film Old Boy
The film Old Boy had won numerous of nomination since its publication and its bloody, violent and sex scenes are innovative to the entire film industry. When we look at its design of composition, color and background music have their own unique style and the pace of the story is beyond acceptable. It is a Korean movie with very high artistic accomplishment.
The recent rise of Korean movie shares some similarities with that of a Japanese movie. The rise of a group of young directors represented by Naoto Takenaka since 1980s depends on a large number of soft pornographic films they shot under market pressure: they have learned how to deal with the contradiction between artistic view, artistic means, and demands of the audience. It can be said that if it were not a large number of soft pornographic films shot under pressure, there would be no today of Japanese film. Korean directors are also gradually feeling the capital pressure. Chan-wook Park, the director of Old Boy, said in an interview, “Investors have to consider the return on investment…For instance, the government won’t impose restrictions on you if you shoot a film about homosexual, but Korean audiences are unable to accept homosexual scenes, so investors are unwilling to invest such films. Previously, improper scenes were cut from the film after shooting, now, in fact, it is investors who control capital and watch the market, many things cannot be shot at all” (Shim 7). It seemed to be a good phenomenon that market finally are able to control how a film is produced and a logical system that appreciate both independent and commercial films had been established in South Korean.
The most remarkable of all in the film is the plot. In fact, “film writing” is the essence of film and film should be an integral whole in the highest sense, being independent of plot and structure. Everything should be represented by an indistinguishable film constituted by sound, light, picture and cutting; thus, it cannot be accurately described by words. But obviously, this film hasn’t reached such heights.
When the abnormal love between the sister Li Xiuer and the brother Li Yousheng springs to Wu’s mind again after many years, the bold and exciting sex scene between the biological siblings marks a small climax of the film; when Li Yousheng asks Wu to thumb through the album, Wu is dismayed to find that Meibao who had sex with him yesterday is actually his long-lost daughter that he has been missing all the time. An ordinary person’s ulterior, conceptual fear to incest suddenly comes over him. A fait accompli makes him no longer in a position to fear, and he is beaten down by the immense sense of shame and guilty despite possessing an iron will and strength to revenge.
The same album is also put in front of Meibao. She is constantly recollecting the past memories about his father on one hand and worries her lover who leaves her impressive sexual experience and is in danger at the moment. She is completely ignorant of the situation yet is like a bomb that may explode at any moment. When Li finally agrees to let off Meibao, he turns back, drops the remote switch of cardiac pacemaker and walks toward the elevator. By pressing the button with a shaking hand, Wu does not leave Li to die but turns on the stereo equipment and hears the breath and words when he had sex with his daughter. Between hatred and forgiveness, he chooses the former but subjects to greater torture; Li only says one sentence before the elevator closes, and the shot only lasts a few seconds but brings the strongest question –“We know each other well but still love each other. Can you do the same?”. The director gives a moral judgment through the mouth of a character; that is, what is the origin of evil? Is evil is evil itself or the concept of evil? Whether it is within the notion of evil, whether one admits and persists becomes the criterion of judgment.
The last climax does not seem to be the climax of the story structure, but the climax of logical structure—Wu is in pain in the snowfield, and the hypnotist is helping him to forget that secret, “You’re divided into two parts there, the ugly part of you goes forward with that secret. Each step represents a year, and he will die after you walk seventy steps. Now, good luck to you…” Ugliness stems from knowing the secret. As long as he forgets the father-daughter relationship between him and his lover and does not admit the fact of incest, he can still bear the burden of incest.
To tell a complicated story through a movie and make such bold judgment on incest can be considered as a very courageous and risky present sent by Korean film industry to the world’s film industry or even culture. Although logically the ideas conveyed by the film is not very bizarre, it focuses on a very special topic—incest. Philosophy can almost allow one to strip every phenomenon off its physical shell so as to conduct pure conceptual and logical deduction, but incest has its uniqueness after all—the director Chan-wook Park wants to question the forbidden zone. This is not only what Chan-wook Park claims as the so-called “let your imagination run free” but also a very subtle, odd way of plotting for him or even the Korean film industry.
To sum up, Old boy is one of the greatest mixtures between innovation on the story and violence development. The courage and artistically scene were successfully mixed together to form breath-taking motion pictures to the audience. It deserves a round of applause for being produced in a relative immature movie market with so much innovation.