come anticipate Park Chan-wook's English-language debut STOKER with me (Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Mia Wasikowska)

I love the term 'surface visuals' as if Film isn't a visual medium. Yeah, The Handmaiden is a visual film, and all the better for it. By far my favorite of his films.

'surface visuals' is sort of like saying a record is 'incredibly produced'.

It's nonsense...

First of all, it's a softcore lesbian heist-film, it's not really a genre known for deep thoughts. Second of all, thematically, the film is so much about objectification, gaze, pornography; the handmaiden treating her mistress like a doll, the spectacle of the woman performing erotica for the men, the final act of the women in the library. It's not really a subtle character based film. It's about surfaces, bodies, objectification.

im not expecting some deep penetrating character study, but it wasnt even that good as a sort of delicious female exploitation revenge movie, cos it seemed too caught up in making sure the period drama visual flourish part of it was done right, more than the women-in-love-against-the-patriarchy angle. maybe i will watch it a second time when less tired after work and have a completely diff response but after stoker, i wonder if PCW is more interested in making brilliant looking films, rather than visceral ones.

Well, I agree that Stoker is crap :) Also, perhaps he is interested in making both kinds of films, and he just tries to make different types every now and then? I was really surprised at how much I liked The Handmaiden, and I wouldn't just say it's period drama visual flourish, he really goes for something very unique and interesting, especially in the editing. It hits a sort of manga feel in a way a manga adaptation like Oldboy really doesn't.

it did make me think of certain manga stuff, yes. i might watch it again though im not feeling quite that inspired. basically i like PCW less inhibited.

I also really need to watch it again as well at some point, but preferably from my couch where I can pause and rewind and figure out why I thought so many little things were so weird.

I probably like Park most at his most inhibited, my other favorite is probably Sympathy for Mr Vengeance. Beautiful compositions in that one.

oh wait sry i can't tell if you were calling Handmaiden or STALKER's sex scene's pedestrian. if the former, U RONG (the scene where she sands down her tooth with a thimble!!!!!!) if the latter i haven't seen it

Liked it quite a lot. Was the extended version the one most cinemas got? Because it seems that was the only version shown in UK.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/t-magazine/park-chan-wook.html

weirdly, his new thing is a six part adaptation of a John Le Carre novel for the BBC & AMC.

http://collider.com/little-drummer-girl-images-alexander-skarsgard-michael-shannon/#images

that looks kind of awesome

Is this the only Park Chan-wook thread?

Not gonna lie, feel a little sick with excitement for the new one

he's yet to make a truly bad film imo

God yes, trailer for the new one looks great too

I feel like he's still getting better, The Handmaiden probably my favourite at the moment

DECISION TO LEAVE is an utter masterpiece

I was planning to concentrate on smaller LFF fare this year instead of big galas with films that are coming to the cinemas here anyway but this one's giving me major fomo.

the subs are a little poorly translated on my copy which is my excuse for watching it twice already

I have been trying to download this from my nzb site and keep getting "article not found" which is a pisser.

actually got it from Pirate Bay i think

i'm having a look at upload options if anybody's interested

finally got to see this last night, was relieved to see someone else posting that they were quite confused with the plot in the first half hour. I think this one will get better with every rewatch. Keep thinking about that luxury sushi set.

Without wanting to spoiler, and the bad subs I've got don't help, but the characters imagining their presence in the conversations they're eavesdropping on is definitely a little confusing at first, but you get used to it and that density of narrative as the film unfolds

yeah the subs are very ropey and its probably the same rip I'm watching because there wasn't a lot of them

It's on at the cinema here in December so I'm hoping i can go watch it then with a better translation lol

Got my ticket to see it Thursday; meantime the Alamo here is doing a one-off screening of Joint Security Area I'll be seeing in a couple of hours.

that scene where he is texting his grandma and keeps changing the reply, that's pure cinema!

i haven't seen Joint Security Area, that's one i'd like to get round to at some point

It's great! You wouldn't expect it because it's so distant from Wook's usual concerns, and being a debut I'd always assumed it was just work for hire, but I remember it being tense as fuck and not going soft on corruption in South Korea.

Just saw DtL, will report back tomorrow after it has fully sunk in.

Okay, this thing lived up to the hype.

i worry i get over-excited about PCW but on the level of craft alone he's a master

I loved this film.

What a way to take jumper cables to a genre exercise. The kind of film where if you bend down to tie your shoelaces or something you miss a subtle editing choice.

and, yeah, Noodle Vague otm about a certain staging decision.

there's a lot of Hitchcock in this one but done with such joy, the Vertigo parallels aren't overplayed, and for a film that's very funny at times it still earns its ending

it is so layered and subtle that I reckon I'll still be noticing things I missed on my first viewing after half a dozen rewatches.

i promised myself i wouldn't rewatch until i can see an official UK release but yeah there's a lot to go back to

bumped into xyzzz at my screening last night, all the cool kids are watching this

will say I've seen someone somewhere (I thought this thread but no) refer to it as a romantic comedy, and I can see where that take comes from, but it left me v much unprepared for the places this goes

lol i've seen the romantic comedy line somewhere. i guess genre tags are only good for jokes really

Just saw, but didn’t click on yet, something about him claiming he wasn’t intentionally channeling Hitchcock!

well i'm not gonna insist on influences but Stoker was an acknowledged remake of Shadow of a Doubt (ok PCW didn't write that one) and i thought about Vertigo in the middle of Decision to Leave without being prompted

but yeah, not intentionally, we all have things swimming around in the stew of our unconscious

https://www.avclub.com/park-chan-wook-hitchcock-inspiration-decision-to-leave-1849672024

Vertigo and also Rear Window as well. But yeah, I’m not going to worry about sinkah’s i-word if the director says it wasn’t intentional, despite the obvious deep connection.

“I think it’s related to the fact that I have bad memory,” Park continues. “I don’t clearly remember the films that I’ve watched, so it’s difficult to pull out of those.”

lol, same

Oh -- I don't consider NV's spoiler a spoiler. It's essential to understanding the thing.

“Vertigo? Don’t remember that one, but I did quite like Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog.”

“La Jeteé? Now there’s a film for you!”

Or just in the mist, I should say. It’s in his mist.

I wasn't particularly thinking of Hitchcock while watching it, I'd say the plot driver - troubled cop falls for prime suspect - is a pretty well-established noir trope rather than Hitchcockian per se...

Plot stuff, yes, is standard, but some of the tropes and a few specific scenes are more in his particular line.

so am i correct in thinking that what he says to her in korean when he says "bury it deep in the sea" etc can be phonetically translated to chinese as "I love you" and that's what he realizes while he's on the beach?

Where did you get this from? Do you speak Chinese and/or Korean?

I didn't notice this linguistic component at all but that recording is clearly an admission that he loves her in its substance without him having to literally say it.

oh no I meant to put the end spoiler tag at the end of the post, sorry all

Daniel:
it's a total guess based on context clues and the movies overarching themes of desire to be understood being mangled by emotional/personal distance and technology, but it clarifies the ending neatly so i'm giving it a test run here! Can't find anything immediately from reviewers but there's been a great deal of conversation on the movie server i frequent about how hard this film is to translate for lots of reasons.

what i enjoyed most was how the puzzle pieces in this fit together without pomp or circumstance, sometimes clarifying only when you look back. her decision to commit suicide in a way that echoes exactly what he's told her to do but to do it so that he can never truly know what happened to her is the only way she can be sure she'll never lose him. he'll obsess over her forever and that's enough.

^this

I was thinking it might be a little more simple than translation, just some kind of pronoun trouble. Maybe some of the pronouns for “it “ and “you” are the same in Korean (I only know a handful of words myself) so “throw it into the sea” could also be interpreted as “throw yourself into the sea.”

Hmm, that seems to not be the case, but maybe some similar thing. I guess sooner or later we’ll find out, hopefully before the next October 26th, but maybe exactly then

In addition to the film noir side of things, this obviously has one foot in the doomed, star-crossed, geographically-challenged couples pantheon with things like JR&tB's favorite Lovers of the Arctic Circle.

Saw Decision to Leave without reading anything about it beforehand. Instantly thought of Hitchcock… Vertigo yes, but also Tne Birds, with which it shares a blue-green color palette. In fact, blue vs green is an important plot point in the film. The plot did lose me, though I’m not good with complicated plots in general (cue people to say the plot wasn’t at all complicated… well to me it was). The subtitles often felt stilted to me, though I saw the film with a Korean friend who said the translations were spot-on.

"cue people to say the plot wasn’t at all complicated"

don't worry, that certainly won't be happening! So there might not be some better subs when this gets a dvd release.

it is a very complicated fast moving plot!

Again, check your phone once and you've missed a crucial millisecond.

Including milliseconds on phones.

the moment where they jumped ahead thirteen months and now the lead actress is being beaten up by "slappy", happened so abruptly and with so little explanation that I heard someone in the audience loudly say "WHAT?" and then i realized it was me

A dissenting voice: https://www.vulture.com/article/decision-to-leave-movie-review-directed-by-park-chan-wook.html

The kind of film where if you bend down to tie your shoelaces or something you miss a subtle editing choice your hands get wet because you're standing in an apocalyptic tide

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, October 19, 2022 4:56 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lol!

Trying to watch THIRST before it leaves Criterion.

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/what-i-learned-translating-decision-to-leave