Only God Forgives

The most interesting thing about Only God Forgives is its poster art.

The movie itself is stilted and ponderous; the sentiment is all overwrought and unearned; even the violence feels unwarranted and gratuitous. Nicolas Winding Refn (whose Drive we all liked so much two years ago) has attempted to make a film about color and light, but there isn't enough variation between the colors and lights for these elements to say anything. He is also attempting to make a Kim Ki-duk-style crime film, but Only God Forgives is only ever second- or third-rate Kim Ki-duk.

Before I say how much I hated this movie, I do want to say that Kristin Scott Thomas is excellent in this picture. I see any- and everything she is in and she is superb in all of her movies, but she absolutely tears into this role and it is totally awesome. She is a scheming, horrible human being with zero redemptive qualities, and she absolutely plays it to the hilt. It helps, too, that her character is the most fleshed out by the director. The other two main characters have so few lines that I never felt like I understood them even a little bit.

There is a lot to complain about with Only God Forgives, but for me the worst part was the terrible performance at the film's center by Vithaya Pansingarm. He walks like a toy soldier throughout the city of Bangkok, but NWR doesn't seem to mind, allowing his camera to linger as we watch Pansingarm walk around in his wooden way. This awkwardness is almost comical at times, but by mid-way through the movie I wasn't laughing any longer. I was just angry. What an extraordinary waste of time.

Mother and Son

Last weekend, Dartmouth brought a whole bunch of films here from the Busan International Film Festival, which means I stopped everything and went to see Kim Ki-duk's latest movie Pieta.

The film was much more horrifying than the Kim Ki-duk movies to which I have grown accustomed. Pieta is a kind of riff on the narrative of a film like Bong Joon-ho's Mother. A gangster who gets money by maiming poor machinery workers (he forces them to put their hands or other limbs in their machinery in order to collect insurance money) begins to be followed by a strange woman. The woman tells him she is his mother, and begs forgiveness for having abandoned him thirty years earlier.

Of course, the young man is a gangster and so he has plenty of enemies and has continued to cultivate many more. Having family just complicates the kinds of revenge that can be wrought. And Pieta is a revenge film, a kind of high tragedy, Jacobean revenge story where everyone is brought low by the tale's end. It is horrifying and psychological and plenty disturbing, with – and this is Kim Ki-duk's skill at work – some beautifully surreal imagery.

I had seen three Kim Ki-duk films before (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, Time, and 3-iron), and so I wasn't really expecting a film that was much more violent and disturbing than thoughtful and intellectually provocative. I asked the curator of the festival about this after the film, and she told me I was out of my mind. "Pieta is like a Park Chan-wook movie", I said. "Where's the Buddhism? Where's the sensitivity?" I asked.

"It is not like a Park Chan-wook movie", she said. "It is like a Kim Ki-duk movie. You need to see Bad Guy, or my favorite, Crocodile."

Busan's festival programmer (her name is Cho Young-Jung) told me that the films of Kim Ki-duk's that I like are the period of time when people though he was "losing his touch" or "gone soft". She totally schooled me. It was great. I found the whole thing pretty hilarious. (Then some professor emerita woman from the Theater Department came and interrupted so that she could tell the curator all about how it was "just like Greek tragedy".)

At any rate, I rather loved Pieta, too, so maybe I just like Kim Ki-duk no matter what: maiming people in machinery, meditating on the Buddha, doing disturbing things with plastic surgery, whatever.

The Pillow of Kantan

While I eat dinner every night I have been slowly reading through Royall Tyler's delightful collection Japanese Nō Dramas. I started reading this last term while I was teaching Nō theatre, and have continued reading, though the term has ended and I should probably be reading other things. Still, I find these plays beautiful, and it is nice to spend just a little time each day with their poetry.

Tonight I sat down to a play called Kantan, probably written by Zeami's son-in-law Komparu Zenchiku, and I was rewarded with the following lovely passage:

I had thought it night
yet day has dawned;
had thought day risen,
yet the moon is bright.
With spring flowers blooming on the bough,
autumn leaves father their deep hues.
Ah, here is summer!
No, for snow is falling.
So the seasons turn before my eyes.
spring and summer, autumn, winter;
trees and grasses bloom within a day.
How beautiful, how wondrous a sight!
So time passes and the years slip by
so time passes and the years slip by,
till fifty years of glory reach an end,
and melt away to nothing. They are gone,
for all these things happened in a dream.

I Got Work Done Too; I Promise.

Three movies so far this weekend. (I may get in another one tomorrow, too.) In reverse order of how good they are:

I didn't really understand Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. I mean, I get it; I'm just not sure why I'm supposed to care. Devil is a mess, too, and for lots of reasons. My friend Rick remarked that the movie didn't know if it was a Greek tragedy or some kind of neo-noir. I thought it was going for the former, but the film just doesn't work out that way. It's got all of the elements, too, except for characters that are in any way redemptive or even likable. I lie. I really liked Marisa Tomei, but though she is easily the most interesting thing in the movie, her function in the film is baffling and her presence becomes almost gratuitous. I will give it this, Devil is never really boring. But it's never really interesting either.

I make sure to see Kim Ki-duk's movies when they're released in this country, ever since he made the extraordinary Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring three years ago. Time (Shi Gan) is the thirteenth film from the prolific director and it's fascinating if difficult. The movie is about a woman who is so incredibly jealous of her boyfriend and terrified that he'll fall in love with someone else, leaves him abruptly telling no one where she's going, has plastic surgery to change her face, and then meets him again and gets him to fall in love with her all over again. It sounds really fucked up, and I assure you that it really is. It's a very pretty film, and there are some lovely poetic moments. The thing is, to want to do something like I just described, a woman would have to be totally fucking crazy. The main character in Time is obviously completely nuts. And you know there has to be something wrong with a boy (however cute he is) who is in love with a nutcase like this girl. I found myself muttering "this bitch is so crazy" throughout half the film.
Still, it's very interesting, and the philosophical questions Kim is interested in are baffling, weird conundrums that make you think hard. The questions, eventually, are more interesting than the film, though.

And then there's the Coen Brothers' new movie No Country for Old Men, which I've moved to my top slot for the year. It's a fabulous, violent, at times hysterically funny movie. It has a brilliant central performance by Tommy Lee Jones with some exceptional work all around: Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson. I enjoyed the Hell out of it. It's a blast to watch and a total thrill ride. Absolutely not to be missed. I am seeing it again as soon as I can.

Two Movies / No Movies

No new movies today. I re-watched portions of Rian Johnson's Brick—it's on DVD now, so if you missed it, you should go rent it immediately—and Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring. I love Brick and I enjoyed the pieces I watched all over again. It's funny and clever and dark and a damn good mystery. As for the South Korean film, I know I've gone off before on how good it is and it this was drilled into me again as I sat and watched the whole thing again. I just can't turn away. It's amazing how a film this silent can say so much and be so beautiful. I laughed, I cried. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ...and Spring was my favorite movie of 2004, so if you missed it, you're not paying attention. Go rent it.

Buddhism

Tonight I saw the incredible Spring Summer Autumn Winter and... Spring.  Wow.  This is definitely a movie that was meant to teach me.  I came out of Dogville feeling self-satisfied, arrogant, and confident that most of my political leanings were accurate.  I leave Spring... feeling like there is much that I need to work on for myself.  There is much that I could do that I do not do.  There is much to teach and there is much to learn.

I feel like crying again.  This movie has made me feel so full emotionally.  I am going to go to bed soon, but I wanted to get this out.  I got out my journal from the Voice Intensive, ostensibly to look up the song Madison sang to me yesterday, but then I began to reread it.  The things I have written in this book!  The wisdom that I have chronicled in this book is amazing.  Truly.  I need to read it again just to remember the wisdom that I carry with me.  Too often I can get caught up in personalities and pettiness.  I must remember the four agreements and I must remember the things that I know.

EVERYONE should go see Spring...  I feel very moved on a spiritual level... as an atheist.  My spirit is moved by what this film says.

Namastë, everybody.