Review of Sam gang yi (Three...Extremes) by Dishon K

Students of cinema Sam gang yi is a masterpiece! Sam gang yi (Three...Extremes) is a three part collaboration by directors/writers Chan-wook Park, Takashi Miike and Fruit Chan. The three segments "Dumplings", "Cut", and "The Box" involve three different stories of individuals that find themselves in situations that develop into nightmares. For the purposes of the blog i will focus on the segment by the director Chan Wook Park, titled "Cut".

("Cut" is played by actor Byung-hun Lee whose picture is on the left)

The segment is about a director who seemingly has the perfect life, wealth, fame, a beautiful wife, and a prospering career. One evening this director goes home after a successful day of filming a vampire film and is attacked by an intruder whom he has presumably never seen before. After being incapacitated the director wakes up to find himself on the very same film set he has just come home from which happens to be the same exact design as his house. He is bound with an elastic band that extends beyond the set and his beautiful wife is sitting at a piano strung up like a puppet. At this point the story begins to unfold as the intruder introduces himself and shares with the director his plan and reasoning for their current dilemma. The intruder happens to have been an extra in each of the director's films! The reasoning for their current dilemma is that the director is too good of a man!

This all seems very confusing until we begin to look deeper into the intruders reasoning. The director has everything that the extra does not have, good looks, wealth, beautiful wife, success; with all these things it is unfair for the director to also possess "goodness". Evil must reside somewhere in him, this is what the intruder wants to find. Through out the rest of the segment the intruder devises a challenge in order to uncover the director's dark side. The challenge is... kill an innocent child or watch all of his wife's fingers be cut off one by one, leaving her unable to do the one thing she loves, play piano.

Park cleverly makes use of color and camera schemes and juxtaposition to make some very distinct points in this segment. The juxtaposition of the intruder and the director, the good the bad, the implied and the obvious are interwoven in the story to recall seemingly unimportant details that in the end are crucial to understanding the segment. In the main character's film there are several scenes which are recalled as the story progresses, such as the use of a similar instrument, or the positioning of a certain character. This effect gives the viewer a triple layered effect of theater within theater within theater, through this the use of layering and repetition the viewer is forced to look into the narrative that is occurring to peel away the meaning.

Toward the end of the story the intruder is now directing a masterpiece of his own, he has placed the director in a position which forces him to be honest. At this point the director indulges the intruder and confesses his infidelity with one of the actresses that he has directed. He explains that he does not even really care for his wife, and is more in love with this other girl and has been for some time. This should please the intruder but, he is not satiated. The drama plays out as the intruder explains in detail how he has just strangled his wife , and would have killed his son too but he couldn't follow through. As the segment reaches it's climactic ending, the main character attempts to kill the innocent child in order to save his wife and marriage when he learns that the innocent child is indeed the intruder's son.

In the following sequence of events, the intruder gets tangled in the wires suspending the beautiful wife and is killed by the her as she bites into his neck and sucks his blood. The director stares in horror as this happens, meanwhile the son of the intruder awakens and vows revenge. Frankly at this point i was confused as to what actually happens, because in a twist of events, the director becomes disoriented and attacks his wife. As he approaches her, he addresses her as though he is talking to the child, explaining why he has to kill him in order to preserve his marriage. The segment ends with the director strangling his own wife, the camera swirling is around him, and the child is sitting tied up on the couch staring at the scene angrily.

The viewer for a moment is left puzzled and possibly frustrated by this ending, but the satisfaction comes from knowing that there is a meaning to everything in the segment. Every sound, camera angle, prop, dialogue, and narrative background is used to connect the story of irony and revenge. Overall, the segment is masterfully crafted and directed, although it may not be satisfying to the typical Western audience it is absolutely a technically and artfully sound cinematic work.

Short Review about Chan-wook Park

We believe the better to understand our future blogs about Park's films is to understand him a little more. So please enjoy this post written by Ben Rinehart regarding the amazing South Korean director...

Park Chan-wook is an enigmatic character of the Korean cinema. His films are known for being genre-films and, in particular, for being very graphic and brutal. Still, there is an ethereal quality to his movies that make many scenes seem strangely comical and outlandish, while at the same time touching upon some innate human tendencies. He is a master at subtly exploiting those tendencies through the lens of the genres which he chooses to use in his movies.

In 2005, Park Chan-wook sat down with Damon Smith for a short interview for the Bright Lights Films Journal. In this interview, Chan-wook discussed some of the themes and film-making styles that he likes to explore (and exploit, more about that later though). In particular, as Lady Revenge had just come out at the time, Smith wanted to hone in on the themes of revenge, genres, and gender.

On the theme of gender, Chan-wook, in his usual Korean humility admits that “I don't really know women that well, so there are limits to how much I can portray.” (I found this to be entirely over-staed, as the main female protagonist in Lady Revenge proves to be an elusive feme fatale who Chan-wook has crafted masterfully.) He goes on to point out the interesting plot twist at the end where the female character chooses, with her prey in her possession, to allow those who were most hurt by him to exact a final vengeance instead of killing him herself.

The two spend quite some time discussing the idea of genres and genre breaking. Park Wook-chan is a master of breaking genres. Unlike most revenge films, these films all have an inherent question to them: is revenge good for the soul. The insurmountable answer remains, no. Park broke several conventions during this movie. Pointing to the Japanese film Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion Park remarks that the first half of Lady Revenge, was spent setting up a typical revenge drama, where the protagonist unjustly is incarcerated, and upon release goes on a single-minded, neurotic quest to exact revenge. In the end however, it is not her, but grieving families who do the dirty work. This breaking of dramas, Chan-wook says, is what he prides himself on. “Genre films are composed of clichés, and I'm wondering how to make use of them, which is what will make the film interesting or not.” In the end, Park Chan-wook is, much like the chaotic and morally decadent nature of many of his films, all about destroying genres. “I'll probably continue to make genre films, but it'll be more about how I make use of them and destroy the genre.”

Finally, we get to the theme of revenge. As this is in the title, this moral dilemma and its consequences takes center stage on the masterfully crafted film, Lady Revenge. Smith remarks that the film's female character is unique in that, “The old adage "There's no vengeance like a woman's" seems apt here.” So true, unlike in Chan-wook's previous revenge films, Sympathy for Mr. Revenge, and Oldboy, this movie showcases an interesting paradigm of female vengeance. Smith makes the observation, very keenly that some of the settings of the story take place in very frigid locales. “And also in terms of the color palette and the themes of ice — the iciness of the revenge impulse paired with white, snow, and the idea of purity. All of these revolve around the ways women have always been characterized as particularly catty and vengeful.”

The original interview can be found here

Intoduction Blog

Hello fellow bloggers, film watchers and students of culture. We are embarking on a journey of a man whose life is thousands of miles away although his impact is right before our faces. We will be studying some of the films, articles and interviews of the South Korean writer/director Chan Wook Park and analyze the impact that his works have had on the film international film industry. Through careful critique we will delve into the intricacies of Mr. Parks’ films and the importance they have in understanding the South Korean culture. The films we will be watching include the following:

We decided as a group to watch three movies together that are part of a trilogy. Vengeance Trilogy:
1. Boksuneun naui geot, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)
2. Oldeuboi, OLDBOY (2003)
3. Chinjeolhan geumjassi, Lady Vengeance (2005)

The fellowing people will watch one other movie:
1. Bakjwi, Thirst (2009) – Angie
2. Sam gang yi, Three Extremes (Segment “cut”) (2004) – Dishon
3. Simpan, Judgment (1999)- Brynt
4. Gongdong gyeongbi guyeok, Joint Security Area (1992)- Nicole
5. Saibogujiman kwenchana, I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK! (2006)- Ben

Sylvia will be in charge of posting and organizing the group over all preformance.

We will also analyze several articles/ interviews over the course of the next few weeks in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Mr. Parks’ work. A beginning list:
1. Interview during the Edinburgh International Film Festival by Neil Young on: OLDBOY.
http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/parkchanwookinterview.html

2. Interview by a Damon Smith of “Bright Lights Journal” on: “Acts of Revenge: Lady Vengeance and more.”
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/53/parkiv.php

3. An interview by Asia Pacific Arts staff Ada Tseng on: “Thirst”.
http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=111331

Through the use of these and other pertinent resources we will explore the work of Chan Wook Park in an effort to more clearly understand the relevance of his work to an international collegiate audience. The world is a classroom in which we are all students, cinema is a means of education; let’s begin learning shall we?