Authenticating Anguish: an interview with Oh Seung-uk, director of THE SHAMELESS (South Korea, 2014)

The film that hit me hardest among those shown at the 2015 New York Korean Film Festival was Oh Seung-uk’s THE SHAMELESS. I’ve noticed some bones being made about his acclaimed debut in 2000, Kilamanjaro, and unfavorable comparisons drawn with this long awaited followup. Full disclosure, I’ve yet to see the director’s debut, but I cannot imagine it could have dampened my affinity for his recent follow up. Its slowly circling narrative about characters trapped by their vice-laden surroundings had a hypnotic effect along with visuals that truly seared themselves on the brain, making it the one film I knew would be essential to watch again in a state of the art theater.

I had a chance to speak to the director right before the film’s New York premiere. It was not without trepidation that I prepared to speak with the esteemed veteran. But I need not have worried. It took only a few simple questions to get the garrulous director, himself full of character, to go into great lengths about his process and experiences around making this moody film as genuine a crime drama as possible. Below is an approximation of our talk.

Mondocurry: I understand that you have been teaching filmmaking at a university. Was there an inspiration to return to filmmaking?

Oh Seung-uk: I’ve been teaching for about 12 years and it is more like a survival job for me because I have to pay the bills. The place where I’ve taught filmmaking is the Korean Film Academy, which is a government funded institution. My role is more like that of a filmmaking coach rather than an academic professor. I did have a gap of 12 years between this film and my last, but during that time it was not like I was totally removed from filmmaking. I kept on writing my own screenplays. Although some of my projects fell through, I’ve kept writing them for myself as well as other directors. So I don't feel like it has been a complete gap.

MC: Was there something crucial to getting the making of THE SHAMELESS underway?

OS: I have this sort of distinctive work process where in the beginning I work with the art director of the film. The art director I’ve worked with has been a close friend of mine for fifteen years. For this film I was also adamant about working with him. I started writing the screenplay around 2006 and from that time I was with the art director and we would talk together and find locations and design sets together. If I don't see the location and the space where I am going to be filming first, it’s kind of hard for me to actually start the screenwriting process. Even while screenwriting I would talk with him and exchange ideas. Meanwhile, I had been meeting new staff members and new crewmembers.

MC: There are indeed many intriguing views of the surroundings throughout the film. Is the story set in Seoul?

OS: On a macro level, the whole film takes place in Seoul. But I had a concept that as these characters descend more and more into their own destruction, they are pushed away into the more surrounding parts of Seoul. Satellite cities such as Incheon and Seongnam are the places where the characters slowly descend into their destruction. These characters start out in the main city and then are slowly pushed away.

For the character Kim Hye-kyung, we had the places where she was living in Seongnam but there came a point that we couldn't film there so we had to find a place that resembled Seongnam the most and film there. There was also the last scene, where the lead character is walking out. That was supposed to be filmed in Incheon, but circumstances prevented us from filming there so we found a place that was really on the outskirts of Seoul and filmed there. We had to play along with the locations we had. But I wanted the actual addresses in the film to match the onset locations.

MC: The movie has a kind of calm suspense, not as much action as a typical South Korean action movie. Was this something you were conscious of?

OS: It was kind of my philosophy that in order to best express the pain and suffering that human beings are going through is to not use cheap tricks on screen. I feel that the realistic way is to never go over the top or embellish anything. I also wanted the overall feel of this film to be rough around the edges. I think the biggest reason I could achieve this was because I had talked with the actors and DP about the process I wanted. I made it clear that I wanted the characters to only move around at 2 or 3 in the morning or sunset. There is no sun when these people are out and about. That was a priority so we would film when there was no sun.

MC: It also feels as though it is a very realistic depiction of underworld activity. How did you research your subjects?

OS: It was like going through endless interviews with actual people. In the case of interviewing the detectives I felt that if I tried to interview them directly they wouldn't open up to me. So I sent the smartest and cutest assistants that I had to them and they went undercover and talked to them. For interviewing gang members I did that myself because it’s dangerous, and I like dangerous stuff. In the case of the hostess bars, I actually interviewed a lot of men who had experience living with some of the hostesses at the bars and I also interviewed a lot of the hostesses themselves. So a lot of the lines in the film originated from what they really said and several details come from that as well. You can see there are cigarette burns over here (gestures to arm) and that actually comes from personal experience of talking to some of these women. I actually met a lot of women who had descended into this hellhole of a world to really go through the details.

One of the really striking things that I experienced while I was researching for this film was that one of the women I interviewed who really was a part of this underworld asked me: do you know what my number one weapon is when dealing with people who are shady and always lying? And she told me that her number one weapon was honesty. In a world where everyone is lying and cheating and dishonest, she said honesty was her biggest weapon. You can see in the film the character Kim Hye-kyung never lies. All she says is the truth.

MC: The aspect of the film’s plot involving pheromones used as an interrogation method was very unusual…. Did this also come from research?

OS: That actually all came from interviews I had done ten years ago. Those are all based on real life events that cops had told me about. Actually the detective who used pheromones is the guy who this whole film was mostly based on. I based the character on him because he would use pheromones to get confessions out of women. He was this really tall guy, looked like Song Seung-hun who is a really tall popular actor. So he would only wear really luxurious items and was very captivating. The film was actually spawned from that character.

For more information about the New York Korean Film Festival, visit its website here.

What Makes A Good Man? an interview with Lee Do-yun, director of CONFESSION (South Korea, 2014)

Lee Do-yun at the 2015 NY Korean Film Festival for the New York premiere for CONFESSION

One of the more passionately discussed films at the 2015 New York Korean Film Festival, held at the Museum of the Moving Image, crept up rather by surprise in the form of the thoroughly independent production CONFESSION. Its somber and unostentatious presentation of a moral quandary faced by three authentically depicted friends left viewers with plenty to think about. I had a chance to speak to the film’s director Lee Do-yun before he presented his debut feature at its New York premiere. Our brief conversation revealed that there are some heady ideas on the mind of Lee, which will continue to pervade his work, as he is already at work on his next feature.

Mondocurry: What made it possible to get the backing to make this, your first feature film?

Lee Do-yun: This film has been on the shelf for about four years. It sort of went from production company to production company without finding the right investors. I’ve had a lot of investors saying we can’t make it because it’s not a commercial film. Then Opus Pictures, which is the production company I worked with this time, they were because they dealt with production and were also an investor company. The producer from that company took a look at my screenplay and said he wanted to try his hand at production and also wanted to try to finance the film. So we were able to do that together with the production company. If it weren’t for that company, this project would not have been able to take off at all.

MC: Was this the film you always had in mind for your first feature?

LD: This has been a film that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. This is a little behind the story but there is actually a second film I confirmed doing for this production company. It has just been confirmed. But that's a commercial film. When I was talking with the head of the company, he said he wanted to do that first. But I told him that without doing CONFESSION first, as a director I felt I would be burdened so much. So In a way I was stubborn about having to do this film before going on to the second film. Making CONFESSION actually sort of helped me turn a page in my life, if you will, as a sort of ending chapter of one stage in my life. It’s like a turning point that I’ve been able to move on from.

MC: The movie has a very genuine feel to it. Is it based on an personal experience?

LD: I feel like it’s not formed only from a particular experience in my life. I thought about it as a film about values. When you look at human relationships, they aren’t just black and white or good and evil. In real life, a person you’re having a relationship with may seem like a good person one day and on the next they seem like a bad person. I think that is exactly what human nature is like.  We are constantly shifting. So I thought that it would be interesting to tell a story about that through a group of three friends. I think, ultimately I wanted to pose a question to the viewers:  ‘who am I?’ and  ‘what would I do?’ So I would say it doesn't come from a particular event, but from 36 years of being alive on this planet and having relationships. That experience sort of seeped into the story that I wanted to tell in CONFESSION.

MC: Was it originally conceived as a movie or another medium?

LD: When this story was originally thought of, I wanted the medium to be film. I think it differs… Some stories are told better through words and others through imagery and I thought CONFESSIONS in this case is more the latter than the former. When I first conceived of the story, it started from an image of a man asking the culprits that murdered his parents to help him find who were the culprits. That was the image I started from.

MC:  It seems there are many societal forces affecting character’ actions. Did you want to say something about one’s surroundings influencing their decisions as opposed to their inherent human nature?

LD: I basically believe human nature is very susceptible to one’s environment. For instance, we right now all are cozy in this New York world but around the world there are wars going on and people are suffering… I think the thing that really defines who you are as a person comes when we are placed in extreme circumstances and it depends on what choice we make in those circumstances. I feel that Korean society nowadays really forces a choice against our wills. Unfortunately it’s just the way things are. Basically I really want to challenge people about their beliefs that they are being a good person or a bad person. Would those really hold up in an extreme circumstances? That's what I want to question. I feel like I’m more interested in characters that are not born to be heroes or villains.  I like to deal with characters that become a hero or villain depending on the choice you make. The stories I really like to tell are about characters who are not in that decision making process at first, but we see them go through it. And then they become a hero or a villain. I think that is also my goal as a director: to portray human beings in that sort of context.

MC: You mentioned another film is in the works and will be a commercial one. Will it be very different than CONFESSION?

LD: I wouldn't say it’s entirely different from CONFESSION because, although it takes on the genre of an action thriller film, it’s about a journalist and terrorist who are trying to get what they want. Both of them have different goals and they’re trying to get them but I think that similarly to CONFESSION it keeps on dealing with the choices we are confronted with and the consequences that arise from the choices we make. So yes I think it still follows the same thread in that I want to ask the question of how we maintain our integrity as human beings.

MC: Is there anyone you have an aspiration to work with, or anyone you worked with on CONFESSION that you would like to collaborate with again?

LD: I’m about to work on the screenplay of the next movie. Ju Ji-hoon, who played in-chul in CONFESSION, is actually unofficially confirmed to play one of the leading roles in it. It was a great experience for me working with the actors on CONFESSION so I’m happy to be working with him again. During the time between filming CONFESSION and now, he’s grown quite a bit in visibility and popularity so he’s a good asset to have on the film. We’re still in the casting process right now. There are some very good actors in Korea, so I need to get back and see who I want to work with.

For more information about the New York Korean Film Festival, visit its website here.

The NEW YORK KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL Returns With A Sharper Edge Than Ever

Some 15 years ago Korean cinema lodged itself into a special place in my heart, kicking and screaming all the way. Not a source of tranquility or soothing balm, I came to look to the nation’s exploding film scene for a reliable dose of cathartic turmoil.  While its output has been diverse, certain cultural qualities have often found their way into the fast growing canon of work, not the least of which is a tendency for biting rounds of verbal sparring. That and a tendency for unleashing cutting societal criticisms have led to my rabid consumption of South Korean film whenever the chance should arise.

For a while Korean cinema and I have experienced a bit of an estrangement. General busyness has led to seeing less films, and those I have seen felt as though they were laden with an uncharacteristic populist flavor. Even when detailing great struggle, the mood was more celebratory than caustic.

So, it pleases me to report that this year’s rendition of the New York Korean Film Festival, which runs from November 6 - 11 at the Museum of the Moving Image, is bringing the nation’s collective angst back to this metropolis in full force.

Perhaps the venue change to MOMI, situated in the internationally flavored borough of Queens has made the difference; Its vast Sumner Redstone theater is surely an ideal venue for absorbing films’ more bombastic qualities. It may also owe a lot to this year being officially cosigned by Subway Cinema, presenters of the New York Asian Film Festival, who have an eye always out for Asia’s more electrifying works and a penchant for wrangling an impressive array of guests. 

The result is a lean selection of films that is crammed tight with social issues, verbal exchanges both lively and thorny, and plenty of blood spilled, with top notch guests a-plenty on hand to guide you through it all.

The event is bookended by two films that could not be more different tonally, yet manage to share a discontented point of view on institutional injustice: Opening night film OFFICE is a creepy foray into terror between the cubicles of a small and struggling company. Setting out to immediately disturb, we watch as an office worker returns home and calmly murders the members of his family with a chilling hammer attack. The moments of terror that follow shift between otherworldly apparition, stealthy movements, and paranoid perceptions. It is a confusing mix that intentionally keeps the viewer off balance, but what remains clear throughout is that the office politics are vicious, especially to its youngest and most powerless member, and the affairs of the police who come to save the day are no less bound by red tape.

Meanwhile festival closer WONDERFUL NIGHTMARE  is a mostly lighthearted comedy that presents the folly of a one way role reversal. An intensely independent, male bashing, executive lawyer Yeon-woo, whose life is abruptly cut short by a celestial error, is transplanted into the body of a housewife in the final weeks of her life. Her struggles to cope with sudden domesticated complacence make for riotous mirth, while highlighting the difference between traditional and more modern gender roles. Her sudden transplant gives her a new perspective on the effects of corporate interests forcing the hand of civic politics. Things get a bit soapy when serious societal ills befall the members of  Yeon-woo’s new clan, yet the story’s heart is always in the right place in this mass appeal audience charmer.

Another grandiose production taking aim at corporate greed unchecked is accomplished action director Ryoo Seung-wan’s ( THE CITY OF VIOLENCE, THE UNJUST, THE BERLIN FILE) VETERAN, by way of an over the top cop drama. After a largely unnecessary half hour of cartoonish action, the story settles into a more tightly wound buildup to a showdown between a privileged enfant terrible son of a corporate tycoon and the reckless top cop on the previously introduced squad, who cannot stomach seeing the antagonist’s transgressions go unchecked. Along with the numerous hotheaded wars of words, the film also contains another familiar feature of many touchstone Korean films: a grudge match between two directly opposed, usually male, individuals bent on tearing each other apart. The film walks an interesting line between serious and silly. It’s a moving depiction of growing class inequity, but never achieves the emotional charge found in the strained loyalties of THE CITY OF VIOLENCE. The numerous familiar faces of the Korean film landscape working together here is impressive in and of itself.

The festival’s main thoroughfare can perhaps best be characterized by a trio of dark dramas from outside of Korean cinema’s most widely known pantheon. TRAP sends a modish screenwriter stuck in a quagmire of writer’s block to a remote makeshift inn where he is immediately taken with the property owner’s barely legal daughter. The source of his fascination is far from innocent as she carries out accomplished acts of seduction. The fetishistic camera work not only captures the writer’s enraptured perspective, but cheekily dares viewers to not be taken in by it themselves. There may not be too much below the surface of this assured exercise in eroticism and suspense, beyond the notion that infatuation is just a slight step away from delirium.  There is a definite gleam of mischief about the film, a curious kindred spirit to OFFICE and WONDERFUL NIGHTMARE for putting female characters in provocative, confrontational roles.     

CONFESSION is an impressive feature debut that presents a clash between ambition and loyalty amid relative poverty in elegant fashion. A backdrop of dingy locales is a steady but not overbearing reminder of how economics and the dangling carrot of financial gain affect the actions and fates of its humble characters. The three individuals whose longstanding friendship is tested are all well-developed and portrayed sympathetically. A work of steadily paced, stirring drama that can truly carry its head held high.

Festival highpoint THE SHAMELESS is a fascinating presentation of the tightrope walk of navigating hierarchical relationships in South Korean society. There is a constant vying for the upper hand of status amongst cops and crooks alike via words and tones, ever threatening to escalate into physical violence. One would be hard pressed to find a cooler customer than detective Jung Jae-gon (Kim Nam-gil) who makes his way through the extremely corrupt landscape as an emotional grifter. He plays on women’s attraction to find suspects on the run from the law. His encounter with bar mistress Kim Hye-Kyung (Jeon Do-yeon, who delivers a perfect balancing act of ferocity and frailty) leads to a crack in his resolve. While he wrestles internally with what it means to lead an honorable path, his steely demeanor remains mostly intact.  With nary a crack in its vision of heartbreak and weariness in a dilapidated urban sprawl, this is one not to miss.

MADONNA is less artful than the rest of its cohort but still compelling, as it weaves the tale of a hospital’s determined caregiver to uncover the past of a comatose, pregnant patient. Meanwhile, strings are being pulled by the son of an elderly wealthy patient on life support, who would resort to immoral means to keep his father’s body alive another day. It’s a chilling microcosm of the disparity of power amongst a nation’s citizens.

For those comfortable with the confrontational nature of many Korean films, the biggest endurance test of the fest may in fact be THEBEAUTY INSIDE, which stands out as a tranquil romantic tale, albeit with a fantastical twist. Its male lead suffers a curious affliction of waking up every morning with a completely different body. A designer of fashionable customized wooden furniture, he falls instantly in love with a woman who works in a shop that sells said furniture. Despite circumstances, they give a relationship a try and for a while, it's all ultra hip wooden chairs and equally hip music choices during a meet that seems interminably cute. When the unique and trying nature of his condition puts a strain on their relationship, things do become sufficiently dramatic. The lack of effort to do anything to understand or curtail the condition lends a fairy tale element. And really, the inclusion of this unreal element allows the director to abstract the problems faced by any typical relationship with adverse elements that has gone past the honeymoon stage, and present them in an entertaining way. Though cloying at times, its second half is heartfelt as is the film’s  ambitions to say something about diversity in these modern times.

For a full run down of the New York Korean Film Festival’s selections and schedule, as well as guests due to appear, visit the Museum ofMoving Image’s website.

@mondocurry