Still to Watch: The Moon Is…the Sun’s Dream, Trio, I’m a Cyborg But That’s Ok, Stoker, The Little Drummer Girl.
Park Chan-wook mostly makes protest novels that vary in effectiveness and quality. His works explicitly take down the the systems that control the world by showing the impact it has on the people. While I rarely love his work, I am never bored by it.
9. Oldboy [2003]
One of the cool things about art is that experiencing something at different ages gives you different levels and variations of appreciation for a work. Sometimes though you watch something too late to ever have any appreciation of it. I saw Oldboy for the first time at age 34 in 2023. If I had seen it as a teenager when it came out, I am confident I would think it was one of the greatest movies ever made. This movie has got everything: violence, sex, boobs, taboos broken, and a TWIST ending! And it all feels so shallow and immature. I love that there is art that is ideally consumed first when you are a teenager. Some of it sucks though, and this one does.
8. Joint Security Area [2000]
“Your ultimate goal is to appear perfectly neutral.”
We are all one brotherhood – we are all going to die in stupid fashion for no good fucking reason for being unable as a species to recognize this in time in order to build a better world. This is Park Chan-wook’s protest novel about Korea, The real-life situation is of course tragic. The film sacrifices any attempt at thematic artistry to hammer home the tragedy. It is all perfectly average, even solid filmmaking. It is just not especially interesting. A Gentleman’s Three if there has ever been one.
7. The Handmaiden [2016]
I have enjoyed almost every single Park film. He is interested in base human desires and the consequences for accepting them. In this film, two women have fallen in love and accepted they are lesbians. The film explores the insane hoops they have to jump through in order to have the slimmest of chances to carve out a piece of happiness for themselves. It is a gripping and beautiful film even if it somehow feels a little too neat.
6. Decision to Leave [2022]
Park Chan-wook always finds thrilling ways to explore that terrible combination of desire and the emotional turmoil that comes from following up on them. Here, we get a murder police pursuing a suspect of a murder, and their mutual attraction and connection slowly unravels their lives and the lives of those around them. The film is messy and unwieldy – just like life when you explore your innermost desires. The film is both beautiful and tragic.
5. Thirst [2009]
“I lived as their dog my whole life.”
Park Chan-wook is really great at displaying people grappling with their base desires and the emotional cocktail that comes with recognizing them. The guilt. The horniness. The loneliness. The repression. His “vampire film” (to be mildly reductive) is a great showcase for his ability to do all of that. The film also seems to imply that he needs to lean into that aspect more because the film is at its best when it is just a chaotic and messy erotic thriller. The film becomes less interesting when it seems to be stumbling around in the dark hinting at saying things.
4. Lady Vengeance [2005]
While the first film in the Vengeance trilogy felt very coherent throughout in regards to the (chaotic) events leading to the next events, Lady Vengeance feels more like an exposed nerve. It just radiates blind rage instead of trying to explain why the revenge is happened and what it means. It is in exercise in anger and fury. The film simultaneously like it is making you feel like you’re lashing out at the world and that you’re receiving the lashing. An utterly fascinating film if not fully realized.
3. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance [2002]
The first film in the unofficial “Vengeance” trilogy by Park is absolutely fascinating. He managed to craft a story that dives into so many societal design flaws and use elements of the revenge genre to highlight how people being absolutely destroyed.
The world has been divided into two groups: the Haves vs. Have Nots. A few are living the good life, and the rest are suffering. Society is completely broken. It is a looming disaster. What are we going to do? Apparently destroy ourselves from the inside out until there is nothing left.
2. No Other Choice [2025]
We are in an era where filmmakers are seemingly (don’t fact check this) more openly than ever making films that explain that capitalism will be the death of us all. Park Chan-wook’s turn is so fascinating and effective for addressing one particularly insidious aspect of capitalism. Capitalism will have us convinced of a false scarcity of resources, and that we are all in direct competition with each other to such a level that means we need to just get ours and not worry about anyone else. Everyone else is a NPC with no inner-life or journey of their own. It is so unnatural for us to treat each other this way. This is film is about Lee Byung-hun’s protagonist confronting this tension over and over again. The film confronts the terrifying reality that we were all lied to by the powers that be; there is no true safety net. It has convinced us all that we are all on own, and that capitalism preys on that base fear. The true terror is that that’s not really the case but how can we meaningfully fight back against that reality and that lie? The film has no answers. And I am not sure anyone else does either.
1. The Sympathizer [2024]
I went into the HBO adaptation of The Sympathizer extremely cynical of its prospects. An Actually Good novel being adapted by any Hollywood institution just seems like a threat more than anything else. It was quite a pleasant surprise then to see that the show was also Actually Good. The key to its success should not be a surprise: they hired an actually talented filmmaker to make it. I may not be the biggest Park Chan-wook fan in the world, but we have reached a point in the film/television world where the systems in place are so fundamentally flawed, it is almost impossible for something to be good if an auteur is not involved.
This adaptation sidestepped so many potentially potholes it honestly is impressive. They avoided becoming anti-communist propaganda, and instead the series became a blistering takedown of western imperialism. It managed to be a very human story about the struggle to exist in the world as presently constructed. It featured a tremendous lead performance by Hoa Xuande who always felt centered in the series despite Robert fucking Downey Jr. being in it. Speaking of, the decision to have one of the biggest movie stars in the world to play FIVE separate characters on the show could have easily been a distraction or overshadowed the whole exercise, but instead it worked out perfectly from an entertainment perspective and actually held together the central thesis of the show (western imperialism is the massive evil destroying so many lives). This was just tremendous and the best thing I have seen Chan-wook produce yet.
The Reel World 