Downloaded from YTS.MX
- Hello, this is Park Chan-wook. - And I'm Kim Young-Jin.
It's overwhelming to be recording this commentary,
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
watching The Last Witness for the first time
in ten or twenty years.
You were a long-time fan of this film, weren't you?
Yes, I was.
I was one of the few who, somehow, were lucky enough
to watch this film.
It was in the mid-1980s, a while after the film had been released.
I'm also curious as to why they privately screened
The Hut and The Last Witness at the projection room
of the Korean Film Council in Namsan.
I was a student, but I snuck in and watched the film.
Then the film you saw wasn't
- the censored copy? - No, I don't think it was.
I saw this film when it aired on TV.
I don't know why, but I remember it was daytime,
I think it was broadcast because a baseball game had been canceled.
Canceled.
I didn't remember much of the story,
but the film left a strong impression.
So in the 1980s when we were in school, we often talked about this film.
Director Lee Doo-Yong and The Last Witness,
they existed merely as rumors.
- And The Trouble-solving Broker. - Yes.
So in the mid-2000s, when I worked for Film 2. 0,
a now-defunct magazine,
I went to the Korean Film Archive in Seocho-dong
with Ju Sungchul, now the editor of Cine21,
and begged to watch the film, which we did with a Steenbeck.
A Steenbeck is
an old machine used to edit film.
I remember, after watching the film, I wrote an article thinking,
I have to write a story on this.
I think this editing is really, wow... captivating the audience from the start.
It reminds me of Get A way.
It's Lee Doo-yong's specialty.
So sudden, just like that,
- with no explanation. - That's right.
He just moves on to the next cut.
He uses the loud noises of the machine to surprise the audience
and just fills the screen with this energy.
Watching this now, the opening title card is quite funny.
It seems to show us a sad, yet funny reality.
The film seems to flatter the Chun Doo-hwan government,
saying it will look at the new era through the lens of justice,
but it also belies such an age,
claiming to express the dark side of the times.
In a way, it expresses the determination of the director.
It is cautiously walking a tightrope, and I think the title card
already shows us this film's fate.
I once thought that the fact that the story and images are both dark,
perhaps the director inserted this title card
as an excuse
for having shot the scenes with too little light.
The early scene in which the lawyer, Kim Jung-yeop is killed,
it really does start out too dark.
It almost seems like a mistake with the exposure.
Perhaps they made a mistake just before the film was exposed to the light.
It almost seems like the director and cinematographer
are telling the audience, "This is the mood of the film, so be ready."
It even seems like a declaration.
Also, the cinematographer Jung Il-sung liked this style.
He did.
So we can see how daring this film was.
It went against the taboos... the various taboos
in mainstream commercial films in Chungmuro at the time.
The best artists in Chungmuro,
daring, with their young blood boiling and their skills ripening,
the film is full of their determination to show us what they can do.
Such scene transitions appear very often in this film, don't they?
- Yes. - Detective Oh Byungho.
This Blu-ray is really good.
It is very clear.
In the past, the film was really dark and the colors dull
but it has been restored to a pretty good condition.
What do you think about the actor Hah Myung-joong?
I think he was perfect for this film.
Of course, the director was good in creating the film to meet the actor,
but the actor was immersed in this film, and I heard that he,
along with the director, went looking for film locations.
He drove around in his car with the director by his side
and even shot some of the scenes that way.
That's what I heard.
I heard from Hah Myung-joong, not the director,
but they shot some scenes before the crank-in, while hunting for locations.
I'm not sure if it's true, but I remember hearing that story.
I heard that too.
He usually played the sweet hero in a romance
or an agonizing intellectual,
but in this film, he's a detective who's slovenly at times,
impoverished, who gradually crumbles.
He wouldn't have been the first actor to pop into one's mind
for this tough character, a man who doesn't hesitate to fight.
So I think it was superb casting.
His acting style is not what we see nowadays, is it?
No.
It's exaggerated at times.
But I think, except for a few scenes,
such acting seems fresh. I liked it.
The current acting style is not always 'correct.'
It does feel strange,
but unlike the style that aims only to be as natural as possible,
the strong expressions touched me in a way,
and given his final action at the end of the film...
I think the accumulation of such strong expressions
actually justifies that final act,
his ultimate decision.
The supporting actors in this film,
they are all so unique
and they seem to have their own stories.
Who is that person? "What is his life like?"
What's going on in his family?
Many of the supporting characters who stimulate our imagination like this...
They are not working, are they? In today's eyes,
- they are young or middle-aged men. - Yes, they're not working.
There are lines that tell us
how economically difficult it was at the time.
The director seems to be constantly primed
to capture that air in a sensitive manner.
This shot is one of the shots that I like most in this film.
The bleak landscape of Joseon captured beautifully with a wide-angle lens.
The angle is good, and the wind, the barren trees,
and the color, almost achromatic,
I think they create a perfect image.
He really just walks, constantly, this Detective Oh.
You kind of wonder how they could have gone ahead with such editing.
It's so repetitive.
He walks here, he walks there.
That slogan.
It would have popped up instantly in your mind, if you lived in that era.
This anti-communist slogan is actually not irrelevant to the film's theme.
No, not irrelevant at all.
And the image of death....
They traveled a lot for these cuts.
He was just determined to fill this film with these images.
Watching this now, after some time, people may say that
the acting of the supporting actors isn't natural
or that the lines are too explanatory,
but I really respect the director's persistence as an artist,
consistently and powerfully pushing ahead with a certain goal in mind.
By the standards of Korean film back then, this film has a lot of cuts.
- It does. - The running time is also long,
but I think the film probably has more than double the number of cuts.
As for director Lee Doo-Yong,
I always asked the older people in Chungmuro about him,
and they'd say he was the best.
His directing...
Apart from his overall abilities as an artist,
he was the best in directing,
particularly in editing.
He always used a place called Yi Gyeong-ja Editing Room.
There, he would capture the different lengths in a single frame
and agonize over them.
He was a man with such keen senses.
I often heard legendary rumors about how sensitive he was in editing,
just as he had a sharp eye when shooting a kick
in an action scene.
He had shot a lot of films at a very fast pace before.
Lee Doo-Yong
also shot Taekwondo films, like four films a year.
I'm not a great fan of action films, so I don't know those films well,
but to shoot films at that speed,
to be fast and to maintain a certain level of quality,
he must have had a very sharp mind.
Lee had worked in Chungmuro a very long time.
When he shot this film, he was in his late thirties,
but he probably already had the airs of a senior director,
on site.
In contrast to reviews by critics and reporters in the media,
in the film industry,
he was highly acclaimed by his colleagues.
That's how I remember him.
Come to think of it,
back then, Lee was not highly regarded by the critics.
So when I watched The Hut and The Last Witness in the mid-1980s,
and also The Trouble-solving Broker,
which I saw in a theater when it came out...
At the time, in Korea,
there was the great Im Kwon-taek
and director Kim Ki-young was somewhat past his prime,
director Lee Man-hee had long passed away,
and I had this thirst for someone else.
So when I discovered these films, I was so happy and proud.
It was a big help at a time when I wondered if I could work
as a film director in Korea.
I was a huge fan at that time.
When Eunuch was released, I watched it five times at the theater.
I wrote and sent a review to Sports Seoul, but it was never accepted.
Lee Doo-Yong was from Seoul.
It's a wonder how he went about the countryside
and captured such authentic dialects
and the rural landscape like this.
Perhaps, because he was from Seoul,
he was able to capture it with such a sensitive eye.
When we think of the countryside, we think of it as warm and friendly,
but that's not all. There's this hostility towards outsiders.
The screenplay was written by Yoon Sam-yook.
Adapted for film.
Maybe the film turned out well because the two got along so well?
What surprised me most when I read a collection of his screenplays,
there was the screenplay for Mulberry
with a postscript in which Yoon mentioned
that the world referred to this film as a sublimation of Korean aesthetics.
He said that he had just one thing he wanted to tell them,
and wrote, "Fuck Mulberry."
It so plainly revealed the writer's personality,
as it was, with no pretense.
He was quite a man.
When we watch these scenes, the indoor scene a while ago,
when Oh opens the door, we can see the yard outside.
That's an angle difficult to obtain in a set.
These days people use computer graphics to create the background,
but they didn't have that option back then.
So, like that...
the camera was able to move in that direction,
towards the wide-open door, from the inside to the outside,
because it was not a set, but an actual location.
In a real location, especially in the small residential spaces in Korea,
the director tried to secure a camera angle,
and chose to freely capture such scenes
despite the limitations. He made an artistic choice,
and it's the same
- here as well. - Here.
In this tracking shot,
in the hallway,
beyond the wall is another classroom, and beyond that is the scenery
outside the window. Lee layered the images to create the mise-en-scène.
That was actually one of cinematographer Jung Il-sung's specialties.
It was.
Jung Il-sung was good at that.
There's a certain, mysterious atmosphere.
A while ago,
we heard the sound of the organ.
The mood in this scene is different from the other scenes in the film.
These are inserted here and there, preventing the film
from becoming boring.
Han Hye-sook seems to have fallen for Oh at first sight.
The film doesn't tell us.
She appears at the end, in the last scene as well.
Lee Doo-Yong was really, quite daring, wasn't he?
He just moves on.
He just leaves things out and moves on.
Even in current films, the director would kind of pause,
- They would. - ...and
insert a scene with the two exchanging glances or something,
but....
I felt the same thing when I watched Eunuch.
Ahn Sung-ki is the main character,
but as I watched the film, I forgot that Ahn was the hero.
I found myself asking, "Where did the hero go?"
So I asked about this in an interview.
Lee didn't seem to care. I think the directors at the time were....
Here, the relationship between the two is vague,
but it doesn't hinder the development of the story.
Detective Oh was a regular character in the works of Kim Seong-jong,
the writer of the original story, The Last Witness.
He appeared often in works other than The Last Witness.
He's like Kim's alter ego, a character representing Korean detectives.
His wife is dead, and he lives but has no life.
Is he like that in most of the novels?
I don't remember what happened to his wife in the other novels,
but Oh Byungho never gets along with his surroundings.
He is always drinking, is filthy and wanders like a lone wolf.
That's the kind of character he is.
Han Hye-sook is really pretty.
She was beautiful then.
She was a different kind of beauty compared with Jeong Yun-Hui.
Her action here is curious.
She removes the table.
Why does she remove the table?
She should actually be serving some food, since a guest has arrived,
but she clears away the table. I wondered why that was necessary.
This is the most mysterious part about this film.
It just passes by when an explanation is necessary,
yet we can still follow the story.
When the director feels a need to explain, he doesn't spare his words.
The lines are at times so explanatory, to the point they seem excessive.
Sometimes showing us images,
and without putting on airs, the film tells us everything when necessary.
That, in today's eyes, can seem somewhat unsophisticated,
but it was inevitable in order to compress such a grand story into one film.
The story is mostly set in Seoul and the Jeolla-do region.
But they shot the film everywhere.
Gyeonggi-do,
- Gangwon-do,.... - Yes, we also see Gangwon-do.
I think this here is Gangwon-do.
Anyways, I heard they just took off when it snowed, just like that.
They would travel all night.
Im Kwon-taek and Lee, these directors had a strong obsession with locations.
So they led a huge entourage,
and when they said, "Get off," they'd get off and shoot.
- It's impossible now. - True.
Choi Min-sik told me a lot of stories when shooting Chihwaseon.
Strangely, a lot of civil servants appear in this film.
This film will be an important textbook if someone writes a thesis
on how Korean films portrayed civil servants or public authorities.
But the police are glamorized here.
True.
Of course, there are some exceptions.
This police chief....
This chief is the embodiment of justice, quite unrealistic.
But the film implies that he actually didn't live his life like that,
so he is supporting Oh as a way to atone ahead of his retirement.
I don't think we can see him simply
as the incarnation of justice.
And when he first assigns Oh to this case,
he acts like this is a secret investigation
quietly slipping him some money and a gun.
Usually, cops go around in pairs,
but here he is a lone wolf.
It's like he's assigning a spy to a secret operation in a spy film.
I think he is assigned to the case like a spy because
it would have been difficult to conduct a fair investigation in this region
if they publicly investigated the murder.
The people, closely knit, would keep their secrets,
watch each other's backs, and give false statements.
In such a society, assigning a detective from a different region
and telling him to carry out an objective investigation,
as a way of factoring for the connections between the locals and the police.
The scene put such thoughts into my mind.
It's absolutely possible.
- At last... - At last....
our Jeong Yun-Hui.
Son Jihye,
in the film.
That actor also appears frequently in Lee Doo-yong's films.
- Hyun Kill-soo? - Yes, Hyun Kill-soo.
Yes, he did many action films.
Usually action-movie actors are awkward when they are put in dramas.
They exaggerate or put too much strength into their eyes.
But in this film, I don't think Hyun's acting
is like that.
This image left a strong impression.
Lee Hae-ryong.
I have no complaints about Hyun's acting here.
Especially when he confronts Lee Dae-keun one-on-one,
I can't forget his eyes then.
He does have some strength in his eyes.
But,
but....
This image is also beautiful.
I heard it was Seoraksan Mountain.
We can discuss the scene where he meets Lee Dae-keun later.
Now how to portray the partisans,
that was probably a real headache for a film director at the time.
This situation doesn't seem so realistic.
I think it was probably inevitable at the time.
For example, this captain in the commie army, the father of Son Jihye,
when portraying this man, the film says he was eccentric enough to bring
his only daughter to the mountains.
I think bringing his daughter here is too important
to simply ascribe it to his being eccentric.
As if he were slightly strange.
However,
why did he bring his daughter here?
Did the daughter just follow her father here,
even though she did not share his ideology?
Or was this daughter also a voluntary partisan?
It just can't be ascribed to his eccentricity.
- I agree. - In this film, she is
the heroine and she is a very miserable figure.
The director could not have her join the partisans voluntarily.
So he resorted to the ambiguous explanation
that she ended up in the mountains due to her father's eccentricity.
A clever way to express that, in those days.
They had to avoid censorship.
Give the authorities no reason to censor the film.
Here, his cruel death.
They had to portray the partisan in this manner
in order to satisfy the review board.
They had to stress their brutality like this.
This scene seems quite dangerous, it makes me wince.
Yes, they probably shot it in a very risky manner.
The people look really terrified.
They do.
It contrasts with Oh's scenes, mostly set in barren winter landscapes.
It shows how much time it took to shoot the film.
Now, this looks dangerous.
It's like they're bragging about how long they took to shoot the film.
They shot it in winter, in summer....
I doubt they did that to show off,
but it enriches the film, and the film captures the four seasons
and all corners of Korea, so it feels like 'our' story.
It has that positive effect.
This was the first film by Sekyeong Films Corp.
They had this "Excellent Film Quota"
The government selected this film and provided a lot of support that year.
But the result was devastating.
This was Kim's idea, the writer of the original story,
but having the partisans hide under the school classroom was brilliant.
We will see it later on, but the little kids innocently sing above,
and when we look at the casting by Lee Doo-Yong,
we can say they are ordinary people, since they are not really handsome,
but still,
they are not such common-looking people, either.
No, they're not.
Their faces are unique, they make a very strong impression.
The characters of the actors are too strong for the director
to convey something about the people,
for them to be wound up in a collective noun such as 'the people.'
Each one is a face with
its own character.
They keep appearing in the film.
They do.
That's why Kwak Jeong-hwan kept complaining.
He would talk about how Lee always went around with actors,
who never looked like actors.
But as you said,
he liked actors with personality.
They all look like they have a story, character.
So even if they don't have their own episodes,
or even a line in the film,
there is this kind of tension.
You get this feeling that one of them might do something.
We saw the gang rape scene a while ago, but gang rape is something
that repeatedly appeared in Korean films at this time.
It makes the audience very uncomfortable, but it was in the original story,
and without it, this story cannot develop, so it was inevitable.
But when shooting that scene,
Lee didn't turn it into a provocative...
That's right.
...and shallow display. His focus is clear.
He conveyed the ugly desire of the men
and how in such an extreme, harsh situation,
they fall to being foolish and barbaric.
His focus is clear.
It shows this strong macho bond in Korean society.
It does.
You can feel that.
That Hwang Bau character and Son Jihye as well.
Son Jihye as the victim like this is kind of a cliché.
It is.
But I think the portrayal was accurate. It was the best possible way.
I think casting Choi Bool-am was the decisive move.
A problem for this film, if it were nowadays,
since the story covers twenty years, would be a problem with makeup.
They could either cast two different actors to play a single character,
a young actor and an older actor,
because back then they didn't have the skills to
make a young actor look like and an old man and make it look believable.
But this film is rather bold.
They just turned his hair white, added a beard,
and had him wear glasses. That's all.
I thought, strangely, that Hyun Kill-soo's makeup was believable.
And Choi Bool-am, despite not being that old at the time,
nothing is lacking when he appears as the older Hwang Bau.
Nothing at all.
But now Jeong Yun-Hui
- is strange. - She's awkward.
Later on, when Hah Myung-joong calls her an old lady, it's awkward.
I guess it just couldn't be helped with Jeong Yun-Hui.
The dark scenes, they're much better
- compared to the previous version. - They are.
Like the scene when Oh goes to the principal's house.
When the director and cinematographer shoot these scenes,
they have to think a lot about how much exposure they want.
If it's dark, it may seem realistic, but the audience is likely to complain.
So this isn't an easy issue.
Back then, they usually shot the scenes with bright lighting
and pretended it was night.
They'd just add blue moonlight lighting, that was the practice then.
But the night scenes in this film are quite realistic.
Lee really pursued such realism
throughout the entire film.
Starting with his resistance to shooting on sets.
Jung Il-sung was also a very ambitious cinematographer.
He was famous.
I think the two really came together well here.
He was as ambitious as Alex Hong, who shot Mother and The Wailing
And he was legendary for not shying away from challenges.
They say Lee usually accepted the demands of his cinematographer.
Lee Doo-Yong shoots his films quickly,
but it takes a long time to prepare everything.
This scene here,
I laughed out loud watching this scene.
The teacher hears a partisan laughing below and asks who it is.
I think this setting was brilliant, the contrast between the top and bottom.
It makes you think about what the people below must be going through,
what they must be thinking with death approaching.
Although they gang rape the girl and are like beasts,
you feel sorry for them, this group of men.
This film really does have a lot of night scenes.
On one hand, this film pursues realism, but on the other...
Now at the center of the story lies gold,
and the whereabouts of all that gold
is also kind of like an old 'Manchurian western.'
They talk about a treasure map marking the location of the hidden gold.
Now, Lee Dae-keun gets greedy, and it's so typical of this actor.
It's déjà-vu of him in the days of the Manchurian western.
What do you think about the actor, Lee Dae-keun?
In this film, he doesn't seem like the Lee Dae-keun that we know.
His presence is still strong,
but we don't see the exaggerated gestures
or his characteristic cranky expression,
which the comedians mimic at times.
I like Lee's acting in this film because of that.
He also seems very believable.
Back then, leading the youth association, which captured commies,
and wanting to have power, succeed and get a hold of some money,
he is a character who now takes advantage of this opportunity
for such goals, and it all seems so real.
He's sly....
- He's actually quite a talented actor. - He is.
In some films, he exaggerates as a loafer,
but in other films, he really shows his talent like this.
I really enjoyed this scene.
Hyun Kill-soo glaring at the other person like that may seem old-fashioned,
but a partisan in that situation,
hunted down and having gone without food for days,
if a person like that
were to face the leader of the group that is trying to kill them,
he wouldn't want to be intimidated.
And he may also have that pride as a communist.
So for many reasons,
I think he would want to stare his opponent down like that.
Lee thought the actor's appearance, image was very important when casting,
even more so than the popularity or acting skills of the actor.
I think that was the way he was.
I think his taste in casting really shone here.
But isn't that really important?
Before we think about the acting, the image the actor physically conveys,
- isn't that important? - I think so.
There is an aspect that acting skills cannot cover,
that cannot be sufficiently expressed with makeup or costumes.
What the appearance of the actor clearly conveys,
one may be born with such an appearance,
but I think it's also determined largely by how that person has lived life.
So it shows in the character.
I wish the old films wouldn't use music like this.
Still, this film doesn't have a lot of music.
No, not a lot.
Thanks to the director, who managed to maintain a cool and dry attitude
when making this film,
there isn't a lot of exaggerated music
that sounds funny when we listen to it now.
The film doesn't use much music. We don't hear that kind of music often.
That's why the whistling and the pansori song,
they shine in this film.
It was very daring at the time.
If it were nowadays,
we couldn't burn the entire school building like that
- so easily. - No, we couldn't.
It clearly shows how ambitious this film was at the time.
This set, I think they shot this place separately,
under the classroom, where the partisans hide.
- They probably did. - Don't you think so?
They probably did.
I heard that they bought a closed school building.
Is that right?
The panorama was probably shot at the school that they purchased,
and the scenes below were probably shot separately.
They edited the film so well, that you can't feel any difference.
The scenes connect so naturally.
The extras break their fall as they die.
They all do.
Yes, it is kind of awkward here.
They first throw away their machine guns, and then,
when we watch the films we make now,
20 or 30 years from now, there will definitely be funny scenes.
I guess we're always trying so they won't end up like that.
We try to be so, so careful.
But all the excellent works, including The Last Witness,
are the films that have few awkward or funny scenes like that
despite the passage of time.
Even if they do have such moments,
- they are quite entertaining. - They are.
I got to thinking, "That's what it was like back then."
And rather than think of this as an artistic flaw,
I think it was inevitable since the way people think has now changed.
This is also an interesting element to watch out for.
Bau, this Hwang Bau. Isn't he a character
who's at the very center of this film?
- It's not Son Jihye - That's right.
At the center is actually Hwang Bau.
Here, there are these handsome, pretty and smart people,
but the most stupid and dull character
who barely learns to read in prison...
This farmhand, who is of the lowest social class,
to be able to put this farmhand as the main character of this film....
The director seems to think that he represents
something in the Korean people.
I showed this film to my students a few days ago,
and after watching the film with no information at all, they were shocked.
They said it was very interesting,
that they were able to learn many things they hadn't known.
That's the power of classics,
and the people, well all civilization has changed,
but I think this film clearly dealt with something
that any Korean would inevitably feel.
Through Hwang Bau....
Amidst this battle of ideologies and all these evil people,
public authority and corrupt civil servants,
he accepts everything and just bears everything.
Rather than the power of the people,
it's like this fullness that accepts everything.
We see that here.
Of course, some people may complain
that it's too submissive and passive,
but here, in a way, I am moved by it.
These cuts are also quite daring, aren't they?
Yes, Lee was famous for that.
In a dramatic angle,
suddenly the mood of the interrogation completely changes.
Here, he practically kills a man with his words.
They talk about torture resulting in death,
but he didn't touch him, just with words he tortures him,
sentences him to death and executes the punishment.
This scene is more expressionism
it its angle and effect.
In this film, when the camera captures the street,
some roads are desolate and lonely,
while in others, something like a car passes by,
like people on bikes and a bier.
They adequately create the necessary emotions at the time.
Of the many secrets, some are now revealed
and people start to die.
Now, Detective Oh gets involved in this case.
He is in too deep for an investigator.
And I think this moment is when the story simultaneously runs on two tracks,
one being his personal story.
The police station, if it were a set, they wouldn't have made it like that.
The police station....
I think these elements clearly make the film more realistic.
If it were nowadays, we would first find a place like that
and then create a set just like it.
That way we would simultaneously pursue a realistic feel
and conveniently seek various ways of expression in the film.
But this film is shot in so many locations.
They couldn't make sets for all of them,
so they shot at actual locations
despite the inconvenience.
That gesture, picking up the phone, the receiver like that,
it's exaggerated and seems funny now.
Those night scenes, where the sky is blue like that.
Lee Doo-Yong said that that was
his favorite time to shoot films.
If you shoot at night, the image will be all dark,
but if you shoot right after the sun has set,
then the sky comes out blue like that.
The director is asking the audience to see that as night,
but in fact, just looking at the sky, it doesn't really seem like night.
But it's definitely better than a pitch dark sky where nothing is visible.
And that gives this kind of vitality to the image on the screen.
These bridge scenes are really interesting.
Lee could have left them out, but the characters all have their stories,
- as you said a while ago. - Don't they?
That actor was really good.
And when we move on to the next cut, we see a place
- where those people might have lived in. - That's right.
We also hear about a son who died in Vietnam,
and there's the person going to Seoul to earn money.
The director showed us the atmosphere of the times through them.
From the moment Oh goes to meet Son Jihye,
and after he kills a man,
is nicer to them.
See here, he gives the kid some money to go get some sweets,
and I felt that he was becoming kinder than before.
That chamber pot, we can't see it nowadays.
One thing we can find even today would be those cigarettes.
Yes, really.
- They smoke everywhere. - Constantly.
I don't think we'd be able to see this on EBS, the education channel.
There is an American TV drama I like called Mad Men.
Scenes of the 1960s and '70s keep popping up
and there, all the people constantly smoke.
That itself is something to watch, just marvelous,
but I think it's the same in this film.
- It's a tool for the mise-en-scène. - It is.
- It's also an important acting tool. - A tool for acting.
Another alley lined with bars like this appeared earlier,
and this is also something that we can't see nowadays.
We don't have them anymore.
It was an actual location that
I was too young to visit at that time,
but the mise-en-scène and the color arrangements,
they paid them a lot of attention, as if an art director had arranged them.
It's very realistic and natural, yet it retains a unique beauty.
I think it's a very good scene.
I think this was Jung Il-sung's taste.
- He probably placed a lot of things there. - Yes.
He'd say, "It's empty here," and keep telling people to put something there.
Though he was a cinematographer, he did the work of an art director, too.
The way I see it, the color arrangements also seem to be Jung's taste.
Lee was so impatient,
that the people clap like that when the song hasn't even ended,
praising the song.
These scenes are also something we can only see in movies.
It's a little rough, but the film first shows the silhouette
and shows us shots of the people's response, and then....
She is wearing such a vividly colored dress.
At first we see her only as a dark shadow,
then the moment she appears, she appears in such strong colors.
I think this shows what excellent taste and sense
Lee and the cinematographer had.
This is also a typical Lee Doo-Yong-style situation,
and these are really funny.
The people who come to watch this film just because of the director
would say at this point, "At last, it's a Lee Doo-Yong film."
It's a very simple and short scene,
but it has enormous power.
He really shot it easily, in a simple way.
Shooting a fight scene with a martial artist like Donnie Yen may be easy,
but Hah Myung-joong was not that kind of actor.
So the director's skills come out in scenes like this.
Lee's action scenes are slightly shorter than those of other directors.
The shots.
So it feels like there would be additional frames, but they're cut short,
giving the audience a sense of speed.
In some shots, Lee fast-forwarded the frames to make them short
and stressed the speed even more.
This scene is also interesting.
I think this is a truly masterful scene.
Detective Oh shows for the first time
how adept he is in a physical fight.
Then he is so shy, more so than ever before.
In the train....
Of course, he did kill a man unintentionally,
but in the train, he mixes with the people leading tough lives,
exchanges drinks with them, then visits a poor neighborhood,
and meets a woman leading a harsh life here in this bar.
The wrath that has accumulated now explodes at these hoodlums,
and she leans on him and smokes like that.
- It's so pitiful. - It is.
It's a brief moment,
but with the lipstick all smeared over her face like that,
a woman beaten by men and looked down on,
then the moment the two lean against each other and smoke,
the director could have extended this moment of affection,
but immediately, he has Oh mention Son Jihye's name,
and she asks how he knew
and just shatters the mood.
It's hard-boiled,
the rhythm of the film.
Even if it is,
if the film had been hard-boiled without these affectionate moments,
it would not have been interesting.
Such scenes exist, but he shatters them, leaving them so brief
that the film seems harsh, and we sympathize more with the characters.
Jeong Yun-Hui, well,
no one says she was a good actress,
but I don't think she was such a bad actress either.
In particular, watching her films after a long time like this,
I think her acting is actually better and more modern
than any other actress who gave impassioned performances.
I don't know what she was like in real life.
People say that she wasn't ambitious about acting,
that she wasn't really passionate about acting or about being good,
and people often compared her with Marilyn Monroe.
They have their similarities,
but Monroe was always conscious of how men were attracted to her,
about her mighty sex appeal,
so to speak.
She herself was aware of this,
but I think Jeong thought, "What's all the fuss with these men?"
Did I do something wrong? As if being pretty were a sin,
I think she thought she had done something wrong. She was indifferent.
She kept her distance as a person who didn't think she was all that pretty,
and I think that came out in her careless acting.
She seems aloof.
Of course she cries and is sometimes sad,
and even then she doesn't explode with excessive emotions.
Whether that was intended or not,
watching it after such a long time, her acting doesn't seem awkward.
After hearing you say that, I really think you are right.
You just cannot not like her.
It would have been so good if she'd made better films with better directors.
Lee said that when they shot this scene,
Jeong Yun-Hui cooked for the crew.
- The entire crew were mesmerized. - Wow.
It's unimaginable nowadays.
In that situation, if it were a different film,
Lee Dae-keun would puff through his nostrils
and exaggerate his acting,
but here he keeps it simple.
I like the Lee Dae-keun in this film the most.
If we look back at the 1970s, he didn't just shoot action films.
He appeared in a lot of film adaptations of literary works.
- Lee Dae-keun shot... - That's right.
A lot of films.
But he established an image from films in which he played a loafer.
Han Ji-il...
- This is also very beautiful. - Yes, so beautiful it seems unrealistic.
The director uses the zoom lens often in this film.
Lee didn't hesitate to use it.
He uses it all the time,
but strangely that creates such a good rhythm.
It does.
Directors who want to shoot a somewhat dignified film avoid the zoom lens,
but if you want to use it, then you should like Lee, without any hesitation.
As if to tell the world, "What's wrong with using a zoom lens?"
From the first shot in this film,
from the scene where the lawyer Kim Jungyeop, here now, is killed,
Lee boldly uses the zoom lens.
Night scenes require a lot of lighting,
so directors tend not to use the zoom lens.
When you use the zoom lens,
you can't get a lot of exposure.
So directors tend to avoid the zoom lens when shooting night scenes,
but Lee doesn't seem to care whether the object is visible or not,
whether the entire screen just turns black,
he just starts the film by zooming in.
Look at how he takes advantage of the light reflected in the nacre.
If not for the nacre, the scene would be just black,
but by using the reflection, Lee gives the scene this energy.
Then he just shoots with the face dark like that.
I think this scene goes with the gang rape under the classroom.
There's something peculiar about Han Ji-il here, isn't there?
He was a poor actor.
He emerged as an action star, and appeared as Han So-ryong.
- Han So-ryong at first. - That's right, Han So-ryong.
I think that's how his name came up in the credits in this film, as well.
Han So-ryong.
His acting wasn't good, true,
but he led a turbulent life as a movie producer later on.
Hwang Bau's behavior here,
and Choi Bool-am's acting,
they really moved me.
You wonder if a person could really be like that,
accept everything and take the blame for everything,
without bearing a grudge against anyone.
I don't know.
The audience may complain that there's no one like that,
but I think people like that existed in the old days.
I agree.
The editing here is also quite modern.
Lee showed Jeong Yun-Hui as if she were in the prison visiting room,
but when the camera zooms out, she's somewhere else.
I think Lee really showed his legendary editing skills
here in this film.
And the character played by Lee Dae-keun is actually,
he's not such a typical character.
He's not portrayed like the devil.
- He likes Son Jihye. - Yes, he really likes her.
He complains about how cold she still is towards him
and they probably lived decades like that.
Of course, was it Han Dongju?
Yes.
That villain who has no possibility of redemption also exists,
but the villains in this film trigger sympathy
for they seem so human in a turbulent era.
In a way, they also seem like victims.
So this film remains a textbook-like film,
a film that is still universal,
that shows aspects of modern Korean history.
I get the impression that Lee was very devoted to these scenes here.
They don't just pass by all at once.
From the newspaper printing press,
I feel that the director is trying to make it more realistic...
- That's right. - by shooting it in this manner.
Really, these scenes weren't necessary, were they?
No.
In fact, this film is quite long, over two hours and thirty minutes.
The people who watched the film probably wanted to cut the running time
like the producer.
The story would develop fine without these scenes.
Yes, there are a lot of scenes that don't affect the story.
Word has it, when the film was released, it was cut by nearly an hour.
But, of course, they did not shorten the film properly,
so the people who watched it in theaters couldn't understand the story.
But if a more able person had edited it down,
they could have made the story understandable
and still shortened the film by 30-40 minutes.
But a film gains its personality
from the scenes other people wouldn't have shot,
by showing scenes that other directors wouldn't have inserted.
That's how it becomes unique.
True, true.
I think this film is a perfect example.
It is.
The director creates such an atmosphere, such a mood.
A director has to put in more effort when shooting those scenes.
Because the scenes don't affect the flow of the story.
If he's careless, the scenes will be discarded during editing.
That's why the director has to put his life on the line when shooting those.
I think I'll have to record what you just said and let my students listen.
Any director would know that.
So the supporting roles, the minor roles, the landscape that passes by
in this film, the various roads, each one of them is really precious.
This kind of editing, just using the dreary sound of the wind
and inserting these scenes from the Korean War,
this was fresh at the time.
Han Hye-sook's line in this scene is kind of straightforward.
I mean, when did their relationship develop like this?
But this scene was also interesting at the same time.
The mention of Oh losing his wife
a few years before.
Then the film abruptly moves on to the next cut.
I mean the mood,
it seems like something is about to develop here.
Right.
The water sparkles like that, but the face is very dark.
This is also an evening scene. We see the moon.
They really waited for the right time to shoot scenes
just perfect for the mood in this film.
Here again, we see the blue sky.
That time when the sky is that color is really only a few minutes long.
But in this film, dozens of shots
were taken at that time.
The stubborn determination of the director
is well displayed in this film.
You're saying that Lee Doo-Yong liked to shoot at that time of day?
That's right.
Cinematographer Jung Il-sung once said the same thing.
That they waited for that time,
and that everything would be ruined if the take was flubbed,
but that they were willing to deal with the consequences.
Now the scene where Park Yong-pal appears.
He was an actor who appeared in a lot of films at that time
and for a long time afterwards, too, in various films.
He was also very good in speaking the Jeolla-do dialect.
In real life, he was a really funny man.
People might say
that his acting was always the same,
but in this film, I think he was funny and at the same time seemed real.
- He does seem real. - Yes,
I think sometimes, but not often, he played those kinds of characters.
His acting in a supporting role really shines in this film.
He's so cunning.
And in a way hopeless,
- always gambling away. - True.
Just a brief look and we can see what kind of life
that character has lived his whole existence.
Back then, I think everybody just assumed that a police detective
beat people up.
So, though it's his son, he just asks Oh not to beat him up too much.
That acting there, for some reason, sounds like a synchronous recording,
because it was done so well.
I think this may be one of his lifetime-best performances.
We see the house of a shaman.
- Now... - He's finally come.
Yes, he now approaches the key villain in this film.
It's interesting each time he meets someone new, visiting houses....
It is.
The film could have easily become disorienting
with new characters constantly appearing,
and with new flashbacks.
I mean, you wonder how far this film will go,
so it could have been boring,
but by introducing the characters in each episode
and approaching their residences in interesting ways,
I think that actually becomes one of the film's strengths.
Making the audience wonder who he will meet next,
where he will go, and what roads he will walk.
Nowadays, you couldn't do that:
a detective searching a house without a warrant,
- digging through the house. - And taking everything.
Sometimes, he just stares and the other person is intimidated.
They're like, "Take everything, but just don't hit me."
That was influenced a lot by Japan.
The Japanese police.
The film was made in the late '70s, and when I watch scenes like this,
I think it really was a dark time, with no awareness of human rights.
- True. - I mean the authorities.
You're right.
Here, we see a typical scene, a little later.
Yes.
This person also appeared in many films,
and here in this film,
I think director Lee liked people who looked like that.
Tae-il playing Han Dongju.
- He has a similar appearance. - Yes, he does.
- They look very much like country folk. - They're similar.
We see a banner about a spiritual revival, wow.
Some directors can bring out such good acting with
minor actors who appear in hundreds of films.
Seeing that just shames other directors.
I mean with the same actors.
I thought this location was really brilliant.
Just as he scanned the school hallway, now he tracks the scene sideways
and even captures the landscape outside the window.
He also chose the perfect time. I don't know if it was intentional,
but he cast that dark shadow on Oh Byungho.
Part of his face stands out while other parts are buried in darkness.
That smoke from the cigarette is captured wonderfully by the strong light.
That light makes the line, and those things are only possible
with artificial lighting, but the fact that he does it
with natural light shows how careful he was with the details.
This is also a masterpiece of a scene.
Just when the audience expects the film to be gloomy throughout,
this scene is very Korean, very 1970s, very folk-like.
It seems like a very rural scene.
Everyone knows everyone.
Their interests are all connected in some way.
They've all gone to the same school, they're all relatives.
I thought maybe because the director was from Seoul,
he was able to make such observations.
I think this actor's performance was very lively.
This person also speaks the dialect in a very funny way.
And later in the scene, where he gets angry,
we see Park Jong-seol nervously snooping around in the back.
His hair once nicely combed, now drops to the side like that.
When the chief said, "Hey!" he thought the chief was standing up to Oh,
ready to confront him. But it wasn't that.
He yelled, but in fact, just to tell his subordinates
to be good to Oh.
Once again, this location was an excellent choice.
Oh and this bold...
A bold interrogation method.
Wow, it's appalling.
I mean how can he, as soon as the person from the station leaves,
in such a frightening manner?
And how did they find a place like this.
I may be exaggerating, but this place is the sort of place
where the Japanese police trained in kendo
during the occupation.
But at this time, the Korean police could have used it
to exercise and train.
It could be.
So this location alone reminds us of modern Korean history
and I think it was an excellent choice to make the audience think like that.
Ironically, in a place where the police trained physically,
and practiced martial arts,
Oh is beating up the man.
And look at how that country man talks big in front of the man from Seoul.
He pretends to be weak, but he's actually on top of the situation.
- It's rather frightening. - It is.
He seems rustic with his strong dialect,
but in his head he's thinking, "You watch out, boy."
I think the directing was good, and so was the acting.
It's a scene that we can't find even in the best of Hollywood films.
And here...
This atmosphere...
We see better scenes as we head toward the end of the film.
They took advantage of the short time just after sunset.
I don't know if we can call this a day for night,
but in a broad sense, I guess it is a day for night.
I think such preferences of Lee's really shine here.
The sky is alive, yet the light,
the light doesn't reach the actors, so they're dark.
They look like dark shadows or ghosts.
The countrymen are wearing hats, which make them even less visible.
The silhouette of the tool, a shovel, which can turn into a weapon any time.
That silhouette is highlighted against the sky.
In this situation, they just walk, not saying a word.
Everything about that scene, the choice of lens and the editing,
it is an excellent scene with a unique charm not found anywhere else.
Watching this film again after a long time,
I feel the acting is awkward in some scenes,
and the lines old-fashioned,
but I think I am more impressed than before with the good scenes.
Now here, the chief talks about how he is bearing the cross
and I think the lines stand out against the scene.
Excessive.
We don't hear those kind of lines in today's films.
Those scenes are embarrassing to watch.
I think perhaps they paid too much attention to the chief character,
the writer and the director.
I guess too much affection was toxic in this case.
Or perhaps they needed a police station to shoot the film.
They could be saying, "We like the police."
I haven't seen a person working as an office girl like that in a long time.
Here, where Oh Byungho is, this place is really interesting.
When I first watched the film, I was surprised when I saw this.
It's very unique.
His position is strange
and of course, because it's a school and not a hospital,
but they've placed the desks together like that.
- This is a classroom, right? - I guess.
The rain pouring outside like that.
The sick man is in such an uncomfortable position.
I think, today's audience might laugh,
but I don't find it funny.
I really like this scene.
Me, too.
But I think it's surprising that they could get away with that.
I wonder what Oh is feeling, when he is so excited like that.
What is he thinking when he lies still like that.
Then, when the camera returns to him
after showing the face of Han Hye-sook,
this face, I mean, was he acting when he was on the phone?
Right.
It makes you think like that,
Was he pretending to be enraged?
I think we have to see it that way.
Then when he says, "I have to go,"
I was really moved.
The somewhat exaggerated acting just now suddenly cools and
he stands up saying, "I have to go," I thought that was brilliant.
It reminds me of Seijun Suzuki films, of Tokyo Drifter.
The acting here, now is definitely old-fashioned:
looking into the distance instead of at the other person,
saying, "Perhaps, we'll meet again someday," and just turning away.
It's like the acting of Shin Seong-il's day.
Then he just staggers along through the mud, in the rain.
They had been pouring rain until now for that shot.
Here, when the director zooms in, I thought, 'wow!'
I thought, 'Yes, this is Lee Doo-Yong.'
He does stagger a little too much,
but I think the intention of the direction was excellent.
Here, if you were a Korean, a Korean living at that time,
I think anyone would have felt this.
A question asking which side you are on,
it was a time that asked you to choose between the North and the South.
It's almost like the attack by public authority
under Stalin's reign of terror.
But how commonplace it must have been,
for they just naturally think it's the police.
That is also unique to Park Yong-pal, he talks endlessly,
no matter how scary the situation. Actually he talks even more then,
and finally reveals his true intentions.
In fact, the money that Son Jihye's father left her...
The lawyer Kim Jungyeop and
Yang Dalsoo - Yang Dalsoo divided it between themselves.
And this man knows their weakness and blackmails them,
earning a fortune and running a business.
So they are all connected, Yang Dalsoo, Kim Jungyeop and Han Dongju.
Yang Dalsoo was head of the youth association,
but is now the owner of a brewery. And Kim Jungyeop is a lawyer.
- A civilian. - Yes.
And Han Dongju is now in wholesale at a produce market.
The money flows to him, a businessman.
This was all in the novel, right?
I read the novel before, but I don't remember.
Anyways, the situation was symbolic.
- After national liberation. - That's right.
After that, such situations and stories occurred endlessly
in works like Jo Jung-rae's Taebaek Mountain Range.
Reality was like that, so they kept appearing in artworks.
This scene also stands out a bit.
Rather than the scene being bold, it seems strange suddenly.
It does.
It doesn't go with the rest of the film,
so it kind of breaks the balance of this film.
But if we didn't have this scene, we'd feel the lack of it.
Considering Oh's end, we'd feel the lack if this scene wasn't inserted.
He seems to be talking about his mother.
Yes.
I don't know why he suddenly mentions his mother,
holding onto the pictures like that.
He looks like a drug addict suffering from withdrawal
after getting off drugs.
But then he got through it all by himself
He did.
- In a motel room. - Yes.
By locking himself in.
It's New Year's Day.
He really looks sorry.
Everyone else is all so....
I think these scenes...
The police...
I feel that the director is taking a breath here,
with that Oh Byungho character.
If that messenger just leaves after delivering the money,
then he's simply being functional, brief.
It would not stimulate any artistic interest.
But here, the director gives him another character.
He does.
At least in this scene, that man is the star.
He looks too modest to be one of Lee Doo-yong's actors, but...
He speaks like he's reading a state-published textbook.
He should be sorry.
When I saw this scene,
I though the director didn't just make "action films" to make a living.
He was really on a mission and tried to make truly artistic films like this,
that portray the pains of the time.
He projects himself onto the screen.
It seemed like that.
People like director Oh Seung-uk, who like action films,
they regret that Lee didn't continue to shoot action films.
It wouldn't have been fun, really.
No, not at all exciting.
He might have made some money from them, but...
After he made a lot of those films, he then went to the U.S.
and quickly shot two or three films, didn't he?
I think that was crucial.
The films he made then were surprisingly bad.
- He secretly shot the films, but... - Oh my.
- Before this. - Yes.
I think it was Visitors in America, released in 1976.
There was also a film with Han So-ryong,
but Han wasn't that good in action films.
- He was So-ryong in name only. - He couldn't do the actions.
Anyways, after shooting those films, he then shot films like
Muldori Village,
- The Early Years. - The Early Years and Police Story,
for which he won the Grand Bell Award. Han appears in this film.
This scene reminds me of a scene in The Unjust or Veteran.
These scenes, these locations,
they didn't just shoot these there carelessly.
That's true.
Now, when the policemen in the Honam region had an evening gathering,
they would eat in fancy restaurants in traditional Korean houses like that.
Lee captures the yard, the mountains, and all those in one image
and shows us how people with those jobs in that area, at that time, lived.
So every little detail seems valuable.
Lee Doo-Yong once mentioned how much effort
it would have taken if the art department had had to prepare all that.
That's true.
So, in a way, seeking out the location....
Yes, in a film like this, shot in so many locations, they would have had to.
Yes.
That kind of acting is really old-fashioned.
Let's create our own happiness. I was really moved by those words
when I watched this film again.
I thought, I really should live with that kind of attitude.
Happiness is not something that someone gives us.
Why did you think that? Are you going through something?
The director continues to simply show us places that he searched for.
The shooting may have been simple, but searching for locations wasn't.
- It would have been an arduous task. - Really.
He went to all those places to shoot the film.
If it were the U.S. the second unit director would probably have gone
and simply shot those scenes.
But in Korea, the director does everything.
He also shot them quite well.
He could have just handed out instructions, but...
That image of surveillance...
Sometimes an Army truck passes by when Oh is walking.
At the police station, the police in combat uniform kept marching
in front of the camera. Now those are embedded
as the Korean landscape under the military regime.
Lee is aware of that every single moment.
The lines here are also quite explanatory.
It's old-fashioned, but Lee needed to explain
in some way,
about Hwang Bau.
The train passed by the beach a while ago,
and we see the lonely image of Oh through the telephoto lens.
This series of shots
starting from Oh walking alone in a crowd of people continues.
When this whistling first began, I thought "What's this? So suddenly?"
Why is this music flowing out?
but as I watched the ensuing shots, the music went so well with the images.
I think it is excellent music.
It really seems like an old
Seijun Suzuki film.
A Japanese film.
It has that feel.
It also feels like a Yakuza film or a police movie.
Now, the film describes the mind of Oh,
the situation on Korean society at the time, with the landscape.
Those are a few shots that briefly pass by,
and from the perspective of the film makers,
the crew probably wondered if they had to put so much effort into them.
I think they probably complained. Otherwise, they might have been
enthusiastic to create a masterpiece
with such a fine director.
Im Jae-young was the lighting director when I shot Joint Security Area.
Here, he took part as a lighting assistant,
so I heard a lot of stories about back then.
He said that the site was full of this energy,
this enthusiasm to create a masterpiece.
I also heard a lot about Jeong Yun-Hui.
The crew all loved her so much.
I think according to the standards back then, they would have wanted to
try to make a great film, with the talented director, Lee Doo-Yong,
and with the situation at the production company and all that.
The crew, too.
Wasn't this a time when Korean films weren't
respected very much?
That's right. Really.
So, the young...
Oh, look at those pants.
Such details weren't visible in the previous DVD, but in Blu-ray,
it's so nice to see the details, the mud on his pants like that.
For the director, such details would have been really important.
The young film makers wondered if Korean film had a future.
They had many doubts about whether working in Korean film
could actually be an occupation,
if they could aspire to be artists.
Im Kwon-taek, Kim Ki-young, Lee Doo-Yong, these men gave them hope.
And back then, they wouldn't have shot films if it wasn't for
the "Excellent Film Quota." It's ironic.
- That's right. - Because of that policy,
they funded films so they could secure quotas for foreign films.
So talented people are bound to be pioneers
in any situation, in any adverse system,
taking advantage of such a bad system.
That baby wrapper,
that pink,
it's so provocative.
The director boldly uses such vivid colors in such a situation.
She's too pretty. Looking at it from here,
she's so pretty at times like that, it almost seems like a miscasting.
It's not that. After all, she's supposed to be very pretty in the film.
It's just that her beauty doesn't go in harmony with the environment.
And also makes the audience forget the theme of the film.
It does from time to time.
But that close up a while ago, is just...
I wonder if today's audience,
the young audience would also think she is beautiful when they watch this.
Don't you think they would?
The criteria for beauty has changed a lot.
But in fact, Jeong Yun-Hui was at that time a very urban character.
She often appeared in such films, too.
But strangely after this film,
she kept appearing in erotic films with bird names in their titles,
and continued to appear in films with rural backdrops for quite a while.
She did.
They were regarded as erotic folk films.
Strangely, this film just skips through these details, with this one scene.
You kind of wonder if Lee could get away with that
because twenty years has just passed.
The appearance of Hwang Bau here,
I was very moved.
I think it was possible because it was Choi Bool-am.
His appearance, his awkward posture,
every detail was so nicely arranged in that shot.
Of course, I do kind of wish that he would have shown us the long shot,
without zooming in a little longer,
- but since it was Lee Doo-Yong... - The director...
I don't think we can ask for that. He zooms in straight away.
Another good thing about this scene is that, because it is so short,
it leaves the audience wanting more.
The rhythm of the film is from start to finish...
Even now, Lee doesn't hesitate.
He just changes the shot size.
But the full shot where Bau appeared,
despite that him being a really ignorant and dull man,
he seems dignified.
I think that was why I was moved here.
Only a person who has a conscience and behaves like a true man
despite not having any possessions,
the integrity of such a man shines in the shape of Choi Bool-am.
That is a power that cannot be obtained with any skills,
something that even the best actors can hardly reach.
I think Choi really looks good as an old man.
He does.
In this film, and as the father in Our Joyful Young Days,
I think he portrayed a figure that hadn't existed in Korean film.
The image of such a father, his acting,
talking to his son, Ahn Sung-ki while pushing him on the swings...
That kind of sentiment would have been difficult if it weren't Choi Bool-am.
It would.
People say he has a Korean face, but in fact, his face is very photogenic
It is.
The wrinkles, the way his eyes, nose, mouth and ears are positioned,
I think it's definitely the face of an actor.
This house on the brink of collapse...
I think it was one of the locations that they did their best to discover.
Many houses appear in this film one by one.
Each one has a personality,
its own unique style.
It would be difficult to find such places even if we tried now, wouldn't it?
Yes.
Even this scene, it looks like Lee worked really hard on them,
- the women... - Talking with each other like that.
Here,
this is also an interesting scene.
I counted and the director shows us seven shots in one direction.
The shots are all different in size.
He used different lenses and distances and put the seven shots together.
Usually, that kind of editing is slightly childish
and directors generally connect three shots together like that
to bring about a zoom-in effect, but here
he just puts so many shots together
creating an effect that I've never seen before.
I guess it's Lee Doo-yong's order of presenting the scene.
Lee Doo-yong's style.
Just now the sound of the rain and the wind is really loud,
but not a branch is shaking.
It's bold.
Those branches over there are still.
The sound of the wind.
I wouldn't have been able to do it like that, be that daring,
but it's believable, for some reason.
It is.
I heard that the crew had a hard time pouring all that water.
This scene was very interesting.
This reminds me of Memories of Murder, and especially Mother.
The burning house.
Here we have a very foreign and unforgettable scene.
I feel that he is wandering the corners of South Korea
and facing the landscape of hell here.
At first, you are surprised at the noise.
That image is also very...
The way he holds a knife and illegally butchers the boar.
The rain outside is artificial, but...
Then, the machines and technology for sprinkling rain were not advanced.
So they couldn't control it. If it rained, it poured like that.
But in this film, that goes so well with the story.
I remember that it also rained like that when he was with the teacher.
It accentuates the scene, the directing.
It does.
I guess, since this is a film of landscapes,
the effects that go well with nature and natural phenomena are good.
The casting of Go Jeong-hwan was also perfect.
Perfect.
It really looks like they found and cast a real butcher for the role.
The lighting here also recalls the scene where the partisans
hid underneath the school classroom.
I think it's a scene that powerfully presents affection for the people,
the commoners.
He appears as a terrifying figure, like a murderer,
but then shows us what life was like back then.
Doesn't he mention that strangely people don't cultivate the land anymore?
He does.
So a lot of houses were abandoned like that at the time.
Anyway, even in scenes like this, a peculiar air resonates.
Lee is very stubborn.
He tries to do his best even with scenes like these,
when one could easily justify a more laid-back approach.
The film may be a little longer,
but never boring.
It's rich....
And the presence of the actors stops the film from becoming boring.
There in the distance we see
- Namsan Mountain. - Yes.
The director shot the scene so the mountain could be clearly visible.
The voice actors recorded the lines later on,
so the voices seem similar
and that is one sad thing about films from back then.
The voices don't seem to have any soul.
Even if Son Jihye was young at the time of the war, 20 years have passed.
She was eighteen,
eighteen then.
Yes, so in the film, she has now aged,
so Detective Oh calls her "Mrs."
But she doesn't seem that old at all.
Since it was Jeong Yun-Hui,
I guess that kind of thing wasn't important.
Now the reporter in this film, Eom.
How much was it for a night in that room? 100,000 won?
- The hotel. - He has a job and
I don't know what country he is talking about.
After all this is fiction, but still.
He covered local news. I guess they were different from film reporters.
I can't believe that.
I mean the company giving him such a luxurious hotel suite
to write a story.
In today's money, that would be more than 1 million won a night,
since he said it was half his monthly salary.
The scene where that journalist first appears, it was a while ago,
but I thought it was interesting because he gets a call at the printers
and comes to see Oh. As soon as he sees Oh, he says,
You've completely changed. Completely different.
But he says the lines so fast, without even taking the time to look Oh over.
He goes straight into his lines.
So I thought Lee was really intent on maintaining the pace of the story.
But now, Hah Myung-joong a while ago...
He kind of looks like director Ryoo Seung-wan.
He really does look cold, in all the scenes.
He does.
What do you think about the director putting the actor
in that kind of situation in real life,
with the snow and the rain, and his feet sinking in the mud?
Well, I don't like pushing actors
to the limits of their physical ability or patience,
but sometimes it is inevitable,
and a sense of accomplishment does follow such times.
But when I shoot that kind of scene,
in some cases, we go through hell shooting those scenes,
but the audience barely notices, and there's no reward for our efforts.
So, sure, you can go through a lot of challenges, but when you do,
I think you have to shoot it that well, to make it worth it.
The film has to convey the scene well enough that the actors won't complain
I went through all that trouble, but why doesn't it show in the film?
Why did I have to go through all that?
The cold. No matter how cold the actor may really be,
often the audience cannot feel it.
Shin Woo-chul, who played the reporter,
He eventually starred in a film I like, The Trouble-solving Broker.
Wasn't he the president of the Actors' Association?
Yes, he was.
He passed away recently.
This is also a scene that cannot be left out in
the social landscape of Korea at the time.
- People probably won't be familiar now. - A packed bus and the bus girl.
The last bus.
- The curfew. - The curfew.
Even when we, who lived in that time, watch this now,
- it's unbelievable and strange. - It is.
- Surreal. - Surreal.
I think they played the frames a little faster a while ago.
Yes, yes.
They did.
Lee liked that kind of thing. I think he was very clever with it,
maintaining a fine balance so that it wouldn't seem too strange.
This is also interesting.
The police detective loses the girl.
I mean does that seem like a competent detective?
The director adds much texture to Oh's character.
He does.
- In that kind of situation. - Yes, yes.
You're right.
He's not a perfect man. He makes mistakes. He has regrets.
He sometimes barks up the wrong tree.
This long film is meaningful because
of such multi-layered elements.
I don't know what lens he used here, but the four corners are....
vignetted.
- I see. - He shows us that kind of screen.
That kind of shot appears occasionally in this film.
Then again, he searches the house with ease.
He just breaks the lock and...
He simply says he's from the police.
The concept of a warrant doesn't seem to exist.
They have no knowledge of a warrant. He searches and takes things.
All at once.
They're like, "What is this warrant? Is it something we can eat?"
In that sense, a lot has changed in Korea.
It wasn't even that long ago.
I know.
The aesthetic sense of the director and the cinematographer,
I am continually impressed because, despite so many locations,
they are all different,
and they all have their unique beauty.
No matter how poor, old and shabby it is,
there is this subtle arrangement of color that may not have been intended,
and this division of space. I think they were really good
at finding places that were already beautiful to shoot.
Back then, it was arduous to shoot a Korean film in places like that, right?
Yes.
Since the censors didn't like you to shoot such places, such poor places.
That's why in 1970s and 80s Korean film, we often see large spaces.
The houses are big
and are strangely western in style.
But this film stubbornly shoots places where someone might actually live.
At the same time, they are beautiful.
I think that is an important difference.
When we look at films from back then, the lighting,
they usually place a bright light in front as if to show us everything,
but these men didn't do that.
Even if the faces are not visible,
they cast the darkness.
Just think of the scene where they exit the taxi in front of the asylum.
It shows that they placed the camera on the ground, and although it's a
short, a simple shot, they show us everything we need to see,
and express everything they want to express, avoiding common clichés.
I think that was probably Jung Il-sung's idea...
the cinematographer.
Anyway, the two worked really well together.
That scene was pretty funny.
It looked like he was asking for help getting out,
but later he whines that Oh is trying to take him out.
Watching this film after a long time, I thought Jeong Yun-Hui in this film
felt similar to the actress Kim Tae-ri, with whom I worked
- on The Handmaiden. - She does.
Maybe I chose Kim in the audition because that was what I liked about her?
I wonder if my choice of Kim was colored by my affection for Jeong Yun-Hui.
There really is a resemblance.
- Don't they really look similar? - They really do feel the same.
Her hair pulled back and makeup similar to The Handmaiden, maybe...
In this film, they call Bau, Mr. Bau like that.
Even the detective.
He considers him to be a key suspect,
yet he keeps calling him Mr. Bau.
I may be exaggerating, but that was moving.
It made me think about what kind of man Oh Byungho was
and made me want to open up to him more.
Hwang Bau bows prostrate to a man he's met for the first time.
That wasn't really our traditional custom,
but we accept it of Bau.
Perhaps in this case, because they say he's a police officer.
- He may be scared. - Scared.
His hands are shaking.
When I first saw that scene, it left a strong impression.
The scene where Hwang Bau bows like that.
His hands trembling... and the director,
sensitive enough to capture that with a close-up.
The scenes are really fast.
Here, the lighting and the mise- en-scène are really beautiful.
The colors are different from the present, to show that it is a flashback.
Just at a glance, the scene has a different look,
and its own beauty.
Such variations are interesting.
In this scene, the lines tell us everything.
They do.
- The lines are really in sync. - They are.
It's actually a lip sync.
It's really fast and the film just dashes to the end.
Then so soon,
- Like that. - how can he appear like that?
As if he was waiting.
It was like that in the mountain, too.
When Hyun Kill-soo was hiding.
Anyway, they enter and exit really fast.
From the perspective of a film maker,
someone could have raised an issue with this.
How could he appear like that as if he had been waiting?
But if he is dauntless, the audience will accept it and watch.
Thanks to such attempts, the director was able to make this grand story
into a long film, without making it boring.
The story changed in the middle, so Oh Byungho explains
what we just saw.
Oh Byungho's explanation of the case, I think, makes it difficult to follow,
because we don't know on what grounds he's reached the conclusion.
Why he interrogates one man,
and argues that this isn't the truth.
I think he's a detective who is slightly ahead of the audience.
I think this is better than the detective repeating what
the audience can already guess based on what they've seen so far.
But I think the shooting would have been quite difficult,
- in such a small space like that. - Yes.
They would need space for the camera and also the lighting.
The legal outcome of a case cannot be determined by one detective alone,
but this shows what people back then
thought about public authority.
Compared to nowadays, back then, the police had a lot of authority
in the countryside.
Compared to people now,
people back then thought a police officer could determine one's life.
Yes, yes.
They accepted the police officer as a person with immense power.
Here the director once again uses that short time after sunset.
- Here. - Really, he is consistent.
He is.
The night scenes in this film are all shot like that.
They really enter and exit quickly.
Suddenly all these white people appear, and you wonder,
Where is this film headed?
You see these ignorant people bow before authority
and then you see these well-dressed white people.
I think the director really enjoyed such clashes.
To say that that is the fashion of a reporter....
I know.
Particularly a local-news reporter...
At times like this, it looks like the work of Lee, the action-film director.
Yes, it does.
Action films with no nationality.
It's like a Hong Kong scene in a spy action film of no particular origin.
I think perhaps the actor just dressed as he wanted.
It's highly likely.
Oh actually looks more like a reporter here.
He never changes.
Oh's costume is similar to those in No Glory,
which was released about the same year.
- Isn't it? - Yes, it is.
I also liked Hah Myung-joong in that film.
It was either released in the same year or a year earlier,
1979 or 1980. That was also when Im Kwon-taek shot....
- Jagko and... - Yes.
No Glory. And a little later, Mandara.
It was an age of transition.
It was back then.
Very chaotic.
When Lee was shooting this film,
Park Chung-hee had already been assassinated,
and now Chun Doo-hwan would appear.
That time,
from a film fan's perspective, Kim Ki-young's golden days had just passed,
and Im Kwon-taek's art world had just started to blossom.
Government control seemed to ease,
and no one person seemed to dominate the scene.
At this time, such films, for a short while, came out.
How fiercely they must have agonized over what they could do as
a commercial film director in that age in order to get these results.
It's surprising how the film just came out like this,
out of the blue, quite miraculously,
but then of course, it gets cut up,
and ends up being released in a mess.
I heard Lee mention this film saying,
he didn't acknowledge it as his work, and just let it slip from his memory
and he said that was so much like this film.
I thought, "What a brilliant way to express that!"
It's enough to make him go mad, after so much trouble shooting the film.
I know.
Then against his will... If it were me,
I would have looked for another job or moved to another country.
I heard he suffered an acute psychological shock.
I don't think I could have borne it. He made his magnum opus...
No one watched it, and the film was ruined.
Not being successful at the box office is okay,
but to have the film cut like this, that's unimaginable.
Pretending that these vicious scars in the modern history of this country,
and these conflicts never existed, forgetting them,
and denying them. Now that feeling was exactly the way
the director felt as he was forced to forget this film.
This was also a film he was able to shoot because he was young.
I agree.
He is not here with us today, but I think in his later years,
Lee Doo-Yong wasn't as sharply critical as back then,
about that time.
No, he wasn't.
I heard that Lee was also very much into these detective stories,
Director Lee.
Here, it's really like some spy movie, isn't it?
Like chasing a North Korean spy in Hong Kong.
- Is that in front of Seoul Station? - The Daewoo Building across from it.
That's impressive.
Here, the mood is also slightly absent of nationality.
A newspaper reporter and a detective.
But the sight of the street is very realistic.
Each one of those shots is very precious.
Putting bread on the table....
He doesn't forget to arouse affection for the common people.
To arouse affection.
He inserts such scenes whenever he has the opportunity.
I think he tried to effectively and briefly describe this job.
This is also very lively, both inside and out.
It is.
When we watch Hollywood films from the 1970s, like The French Connection...
what we like is....
I think such attractions are already all in this film.
Director Chung Yoon-chul watched this film, after I told him to,
when the film was screened at a special event in 2000 and something.
He called me, all excited, and said what you just said,
that we also had elements we saw in The French Connection,
New American Cinema.
That's right.
But this film is more ambitious and deals with a much heavier theme
that starts from the Korean War in the 1950s
and pierces all the way to the present.
It does.
The scale is just...
Lee shot this scene like some stage drama.
Yes, he did.
Looks kind of like a stage, doesn't it?
I think he tried to evoke a stage-like feel with all the props and lighting.
Although the film was released in horrible shape,
and it's performance at the box office was embarrassing,
it has all the elements of a commercial film.
Characters appear, keeping the film from becoming boring,
and it also shows colorful glimpses of genre.
From this period until the end of the early 1980s,
Lee Doo-Yong was unparalleled.
He had gone through so much trouble shooting this,
the next film he shot was The Hut.
They shot 27 scenes while playing Go-Stop every day.
With a film he shot as if just playing around, he went to
The Venice Film Festival,
Venice in competition.
Lucky him.
What was so surprising was that the crew got along so well,
that they really did play Go-Stop every day,
Taking a break playing Go-Stop.
This film he struggled through so much to make, was never released properly,
and a film he shot while fooling around went to Venice in competition.
He probably thought,
This is it!
I can shoot films like this now.
Spinning the Tales of Cruelty Towards Women at this time was good.
It was good. And for a few years, like a flame...
He could have been pressed for time, but he just uses a zoom lens
and continues to shoot, zooming in and out.
Actually, the cinematographer who operates the camera relies almost entirely
on his instincts to determine the speed at which he'll zoom in and out,
and where he'll start to zoom in and where he'll stop,
and in that sense, Jung Il-sung's taste is very sophisticated.
He uses the zoom lens very well, when it could have looked rather clumsy.
I guess we can say, he has good hand skills.
Now we head to the grand finale.
The shocking pansori music is introduced.
When I first watched this film, this was also quite unexpected.
Yes.
At that time, I was a college student, not really interested in traditional
Korean music, and I was really shocked when I saw this.
I realized that you could actually use music like that.
- The lyrics are the suicide note. - That's right.
Think of what it would have been like if they had inserted a voice over,
having Choi Bool-am read the letter.
It would make us uncomfortable, we would hardly be able to stand it.
But to deliver the letter in that way.
Even more amazing, how did they think of using a female singer?
Why ignore the numerous male pansori singers and choose her?
- Because it appeals to the audience. - I think it's really amazing.
I don't know what he was thinking when he did this,
but the Bau in this film is kind of sexless.
He is.
- He has no sexual element. - No.
So even if a woman sings, the song fully expresses Bau's mind.
In fact, I think it suits him even better.
The idea was good, but I think that hair and makeup were also good.
There could have been some opposition.
Yes.
They could have asked, "Why did he do it like that?"
Well, back then, a producer brave enough to stand up to Lee Doo-Yong...
The song was performed by the master, Kim So-hee.
The editing here is also interesting. He persistently repeats the story.
- He just changes his voice. - It's very technical.
This tension seems to show us his skills.
It does. He creates this urgency.
He probably thought about how he would move on to the next scene,
immediately, you get the thought that,
He could do it this way.
Although it is questionable
how Hwang Bau's suicide might help save his son,
doubtful,
still,
I think it was an idea that Bau could have had because it was him.
He's not really a clever man, just an honest person.
He keeps mentioning in his lines,
take me instead,
take me instead of my son.
He could have been naive enough to think that the law
would think like him and be lenient on his son.
This scene shows such a naive thought.
The film is quite dynamic.
The director never once shoots it in an ordinary way.
He uses the telephoto lens well and creates a powerful scene.
If the film went around every corner showing us the landscape of
the South Korean countryside in the beginning of the film,
now, as if it had been waiting, it very intentionally shows us
various urban landscapes: the apartments and hotels in Seoul,
the slums with the shacks packed together.
I think the funeral scene was also arranged very efficiently.
It was, it was.
They parked a funeral bus outside the window
and showed us where this was.
There's no explanation, and then there's Son Jihye's suicide.
The film just dashes through the story.
Zoom in, zoom out.
But the mise-en-scène here, isn't it quite brilliant?
All the people that could come have come.
In fact, there's no reason for Han Hye-sook to be here.
But the director just rounded them all up.
Because this song is repeated,
I feel it's more effective.
Since this is also a song about Son Jihye,
the director is expressing the hearts of the couple with one song.
I heard this scene was almost cut during the screening.
One of the authorities asked why she had to die next to the coffin.
They say it was a well-known person who said that.
I wonder who it was.
Now a heron at a distance...
- This last scene is also amazing. - It really is.
I didn't watch this film at the time it was released,
but as one of the few people who watched it some years later
I told my friends about this film, The Last Witness,
and how the story went like this and this and then ended like this.
When I described the last scene, they were all dying to watch the film.
I believe they would all have agreed after having watched it, much later,
that I was not exaggerating.
When he was injured, he told Han Hye-sook, "I have to go,"
and here he answers,
Yes, when the authorities tell him he has to go.
But the destination he has in mind....
The film is so interesting even when we watch it over and over again.
It is.
This dreary landscape, the bleak feeling.
The director pursues this mood so relentlessly
that by the time we arrive here at the end,
the audience are completely immersed in it.
Our emotions rise to a similar level as
Oh Byungho's.
Yes, the audience have been well prepared.
The countless shots on the road, walking,
that they went through so much trouble to shoot, they are now rewarded here.
might ask whether the audience would be persuaded by all this,
but I don't think we would have been so shocked
if everything had been so natural.
The film walks a tight rope, a fine line.
When the audience watch the film, at that moment, they are shocked.
Then, after much thought, they think, "Yes, he could have done that."
I think this film did very well in maintaining that empathy.
We will now end the commentary of this film.
Thank you.