The strange case of director Kim Ki-Duk: the past, the persistent problems and the near future

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Category: Portraits

“Don't shoot the film director!”

Currently between films, Kim Ki-Duk has been in a rather puzzling situation this year. Mostly, things are looking good for him... outside Korea. His latest work, Time, scheduled for January 31st 2007 in France (a country where he is particularly well-received), was sold to Lifesize Entertainement for distribution in the US (Lifesize distributed Kim's Bad Guy and Lee Chang-dong's Oasis). His new project seems off to a good start, as Cineclick has already secured pre-sales for his next film, entitled Breath and scheduled to start shooting in early 2007. Territories covered by the transaction include Italy (Mikado), Mexico (Film House), Turkey (Bir Film), Benelux (Cineart), Israel (Shani Film), and Greece (Hollywood Entertainment). Following Kim Ki-duk’s usual formal codes, the film will dispense with dialogues (a good thing for the subtitling) and will deal with the relationship between a prison inmate and the woman who decorates his cell, afflicted with an unfaithful husband. From these bits and pieces of information, it looks like Breath will be thematically close to 3-Iron and Bad Guy, with which it shares two elements: the incarceration, and the woman disappointed in her couple.

The actor he has picked up for his new project is Chang Chen (Zhang Zhen in pinyin), a Taiwanese actor best known to Western audiences for his role in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. He has also worked with major Chinese directors like Wong Kar Wai, (Eros, Happy Together), Tian Zhuangzhuang (The Go Master) and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Three Times.

Chang Chen

As for the rest of the cast, Kim allegedly wishes to have a mixture of Chinese and Koreans. It is easy to read in the casting choice a will to distanciate himself further (if such a thing is possible) from the Korean industry.

In this respect, to fully grasp what Kim Ki-Duk's current status is (quite the quandary), it is worth looking back to the events that occurred last August.

But first, one should bear in mind that, in spite or because of his international success, Kim is still extremely marginal in his own country, to the point that he became quite discouraged after the failure of several of his films, so that he announced that he would not even bother to release his next films in Korea or give press conferences for that matter. According to Kim, arguably one of the peninsula's most famous directors beyond its borders, the number of tickets that one of his recent films sold in France was much bigger than the total number of admissions for all of his films in Korea (which is a bit of an exaggeration, considering that Bad Guy gathered 700 000 admissions, a more than respectable number, but on the other hand, in 2005, The Bow only sold 1,100 admissions.) So indeed, why bother?

A couple of weeks after his dramatic declaration, going back on his word, the “bad guy” director appeared on an MBC talk show, where a journalist asked him what he thought about the unprecedented commercial success of Bong Joon-Ho's record-breaker The Host.

His contribution to the debate had an unexpected blood-and-thunder effect on an already highly polemical subject-matter, when the filmmaker referred to The Host as “the apex where the level of Korean movies meets the level of Korean audiences; it is both positive and negative.” The ambiguity of these words did not fall into deaf ears. The statement was immediately interpreted by internet communities as provocative, hostile and contemptuous towards “Korean audiences” in general and The Host in particular. Korean netizens, a force to reckon with (or should I say, not to trifle with) proceeded to virtually lynch the artist.

An interesting backlash since, as a rule, local audiences seem to ignore him, and his peers in the film industry hardly acknowledge his existence. It is quite revealing to compare him with Hong Sang-Soo, who regularly bombs at the box-office, just like him, but still enjoys considerable prestige among art-house crowds. Hong Sang-Soo, professor at the National School of Cinema, is the paragon of the film auteur, favorably and amply commented on by Korean critics and intellectuals. His respectability as a film director consistently draws the attention of many famous actors/actresses and makes him an ideal topic for special magazine issues every time he makes a film (deservingly, I must add).

Hong Sang-Soo

In stark contrast, about Kim Ki-Duk, it will be hard to find more than a tiny bit of criticism or review in the same film magazines that dedicate so many pages to Hong Sang-Soo's work. Often turned down by movie stars, Kim usually works with lesser known actors, or beginners. Critics are not really hostile to him, they just tend to ignore him. Either because of his lingering reputation of giving women a bad name/image (chances are, if you happen to say you are a fan of Kim Ki-Duk's, Korean feminists will probably take you for an unrepentant misogynistic pig, which is quite a paradox for such a gender-marked society), or… because of his lack of education in a country where good academic records can make or break a life/career: the Kyongsang-born director went to agricultural training school and dropped out before graduation. Then he took up work in factories and did not get to know cinema until he went to France where he eked out a living as a street portrait painter (an aspect of his life that appears in Real Fiction). In this perspective, it is no wonder that Kim hardly received any of his peers at the party organized by his producer to celebrate the two Best Director awards he had received in Venice and Berlin the same year (for Samaria and 3-Iron) : only a few elders who had quit making films ages ago deigned to come. Unlike his peers who enjoy fortune and fame (it is not rare, these days, to see film directors in TV commercials), Kim has not managed to break out of his anonymity, and seems (forever?) condemned to be outside the system. Here is an edifying anecdote: last spring, he visited a police precinct to ask for the permission to make and use guns in the prospect/context of his next film.
No one recognized him, no one had ever heard of his name, and he was mistaken for a loon or a vagrant.

Kim's decision not to release his films in his own country could have been a new beginning for him; film magazines, perhaps out of guilt, suddenly published articles about him. But his little speech about The Host during the press screening of Time turned out to be a disastrous P.R. move. The media described him as an arrogant antisocial artist rather than a victim of the system. His later appearance on a TV show to speak about the problems related to the distribution of independent films could have been a good opportunity to defend himself, but only aggravated his situation. No need to get into the details of this witchhunt, but it is pretty clear that the contempt and hatred towards Kim Ki-Duk have grown so strong that his intervention has actually helped The Host, which was turning into the icon (or the scarecrow) of commercial cinema's hegemony over Korean theaters before the unfortunate director spoke out and became everybody's favorite “bad guy”. This tragic and somewhat ludicrous incident has found a pathetic conclusion with the very ironic apology that the cursed filmmaker has emailed to the media. Here are some of the highlights:

To the production staff and all those who worked on the film, and to the film's director Bong Joon-ho, Kim said: “I hope that he can forgive my statements, which were unbecoming of a person who has been in the film world longer [than Bong]”.

On his sarcastic declaration that he would stop “exporting” his films to his own homeland, he said: “After winning several awards and seeing them screened overseas, I took the arrogant attitude of trying to educate Korean viewers, and I later regretted saying things that should not have been said. I hope that the public can forgive my brutal way of expressing my point: that this is a market where it is difficult to release lower-budget films.”

“... And when I said that netizens who maligned me did so 'out of an inferiority complex demonstrating their level of understanding,' I am very sorry. I am also very sorry about mocking viewers with the outrageous comments I made on the talk show.”

“... My movies are lamentable for uncovering the genitals that everyone wants to hide; I am guilty for contributing only incredulity to an unstable future and society; and I feel shame and regret for having wasted time making movies without understanding the feelings of those who wish to avoid excrement even though they have eaten well.”

“... I have realized that I myself am a monster in Korean society, grown by feeding on an inferiority complex.”

“... Though late, I think it is fortunate that I have come to understand what the Korean public wants and can withdraw from the Korean movie industry.”

“... I apologize for making the public watch my films under the pretext of the difficult situation of independent cinema, and I apologize for exaggerating hideous and dark aspects of Korean society and insulting excellent Korean filmmakers with my works that ape arthouse cinema but are, in fact, but self-tortured pieces of masturbations, or maybe they're just garbage. Now I realize I am seriously mentally-challenged and inadequate for life in Korea.”

Aside from the polemic, I believe this incident reflects, on a higher level, the confrontation and the opposition between two fundamentally different types of cinema, and two different styles... “Style is man himself”, Buffon said, and in Korea, these words have a particular resonance. The film director or kamdok (the honorific -nim is often added) has tremendous power at his/her disposal. Much more so than his/her Western counterpart, so that it is tempting to completely identify a cinematic work with its author, for structural and societal reasons.
If there is an opposition between two cinemas, it is an opposition between two men, two signatures, two kamdok: Bong Hoon-Ho's films are more firmly anchored in social reality and criticism, when Kim Ki-Duk's works are certainly more metaphysical (and more conceptual), even if they borrow the guise of social critique. There is little doubt (to me) that the clash has reached such intensity, not just because of the violence of Kim's words, but also because both types, both styles of cinema engage viewers as moral beings. And they have reacted as such, for better or for worse, on the occasion of the polemic. Obviously, Bong's films have more “mass” appeal, because they seem more relevant, socially and morally to Korean audiences as a whole, whereas Kim's aesthetic realm appears to be essentially untimely, in the Nietzschean sense of the word, at once too close and too remote to please contemporary sensibilities in the peninsula. A very revealing incident it was, at any rate.