As someone who never used to really dabble in a lot of foreign cinema, the first time I sat down to watch a foreign movie was a daunting experience. But miraculously after that experience, I was opened up to a whole new world that my naiveness stopped me from exploring.
My first real foreign experience in film was when I saw Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou, a classic European avant-garde surrealist short film with close collaborations with the great Salvador Dali. Like I said, after viewing this, my whole perspective was changed regarding how I viewed and enjoyed the film medium. Like Bong Joon-ho said, I jumped over the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, and was introduced to so many more amazing films.
Enter Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho’s sophomore effort. Released in 2003, the film follows 2 small town detectives, played by Song Kang-ho and Kim Sang-kyung, and a big city detective played by Kim Roi-ha. They are investigating a series of rapes and murders, believed to be conducted by the same person.
The film is based on true events, following the crimes of South Korea’s first serial killer and the investigations that followed. The film is different in that of many other detective movies. This genre can be quite cliche but Bong Joon-ho chooses to focus on the lives of these detectives, their hardships, flaws and ultimately obsession with the case that would never see justice during their time investigating.
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Bong Joon-ho has a gift that very few directors have. He has a tendency to make his films feel, look and sound so original, even if the genre he is in has been done over a million times before. Memories of Murder adopts all these attributes. Bong makes quiet, rural South Korea where the murders take place feel like something else entirely. He makes it his mission in this film to point out the beauty of the scenery and completely contrast that with the abhorrent crimes on display.
Like I stated before, the film ultimately chooses to follow the obsession of these 3 detectives, with their frustration of not being able to locate the killer. The case slowly takes over their lives, leaving only conflict and uncertainty in their paths. As a subversion of the crime and police procedural film formula, Bong opts too long, unbroken takes to showcase that the 2 small town detectives are in over their heads with this case, showcasing disruption and destruction of evidence and mishandling of the investigation.
Bong Joon-ho has never made it a secret regarding his love-hate relationship with American cinema. His films often explore the contrast between both Korean culture and Western culture. Memories of Murder comments on this relationship through many means. The 3 detectives settle on a prime suspect later in the film, and they strongly believe he is the guy they are looking for. The only way that they can be sure that they can identify and confirm this prime suspect is to get a sample of DNA found at a crime scene to be tested in the United States. The test ultimately comes back negative, confirming that their suspicions of this suspect are wrong.
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In many Western films, this moment may be seen as the resolution of the story, the happy ending as such where the killer is caught and justice is served. Bong subverts this expectation by taking what western audiences expect to happen and presents audiences with the inevitable dark reality of this true story.
The flaws and obsessions of the characters in the film are mainly seen in Song Kang-ho’s character, Detective Park. He claims to be able to tell if a person is lying or telling the truth by directly staring into their eyes. This only seems to work once in the whole film, and it only works to identify that their main suspect is telling the truth – that he is innocent. This further explores the flaws of every character in the film, and shows that the characters have to decide what’s harder – understanding that they lost control, or realizing they never had it (as stated by Letterboxd user ‘brady childs’).
The film’s ending is one of the best I have ever seen, and I believe will stand the test of time as one of the greatest ever. Detective Park, years later, revisits the site where the first victim was found. There he meets a little girl who states she saw someone looking in the exact same place recently. He asks “What did he look like?” She describes him as plain looking and Park presses, “In what way?” She replies, “Just… ordinary.” The film ends with a close up of Park’s face as he stares directly into the camera with the shot holding before fading to black.
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There have been many interpretations regarding this ending, but I believe that Park is staring directly at the killer in the real life audience as at the time of the film’s release, the killer had not been identified or caught yet. Bong Joon-ho stated that all uncaught serial killers return to their crimes for gratification, for trophies. And he believes the real killer came to see his movie so he wanted to make sure he wasn’t forgotten, and that he would be caught.
Memories of Murder is a masterclass of storytelling, character study and subversion of genre troupes. The way Bong Joon-ho directs his actors, the camera and the tone is astonishing, seeing as this was only his second full length film. He creates a world that is authentic to it’s time of the late 1980s, and creates believable characters that have flaws and are complex in nature.
The film isn’t a one and done piece of media, it proves itself to be so much more than that. Leaving the audience with moral questions about their surroundings, themselves and others. Bong wanted you to think. Think about who is in your lives. Think about your day to day life, who you see, who you interact with, who you deem as “ordinary”. Are they?
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