Korean Film Director Kwon-taek Wows HFA

Greatness graced the portals of the Harvard Film Archive (HFA) on the evenings of Friday, March 4 and Saturday, March 5. On those two privileged nights, Im Kwon-taek, a filmmaker of unrivaled skill and international renown, was on the premises to host the HFA’s screening of two of his most recent films.

The qualification “most recent” is absolutely necessary because the 69-year-old Korean filmmaker has directed an incredible 99 films during his 50-year career in the film industry. In fact, in order to attend the screenings, Kwon-taek had to take leave from the set of his 100th feature.

During the decades he has labored behind the camera, Kwon-taek has amassed considerable critical acclaim: he has won every prize offered by South Korea’s three annual film awards ceremonies; received countless laurels from major international film festivals; and in 2002, he added a Best Director prize from Cannes to his trophy case for his film Chihwaseon.

ACCIDENTAL BEGINNINGS

In light of these accolades, it is somewhat surprising to learn that Kwon-taek did not embark on his career in cinema with artistic aspirations. During his formative years the real motivation for his work was monetary.

“I accidentally got involved with the film industry,” he recalls. “It was the period after the [Korean] War, and everyone had to find work to survive. A friend of mine recommended me for a job as a production assistant; I did not direct my first film for some years. In my first ten years as a director, my only real motivation was to make a living.”

Kwon-taek began to seriously explore the artistic possibilities of film in the 1970s, and his 1981 film Mandala is widely regarded as his critical breakthrough.

The films selected for Kwon-taek’s hosted screenings at the HFA, Chunhyang and Chihwaseon, are his two most recent. Another film, Sopyonje, was screened Monday, March 7, but the director was not present.

Chunhyang, released in 2000, was adapted from a traditional epic and recounts the embattled life and tragic death of the titular courtesan. In the film, Kwon-taek combines the conventions of historical melodrama and musicals in ways reminiscent of Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, which, incidentally, beat Kwon-taek’s film for the Palm d’Or at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Chihwaseon is a sweeping historical epic that centers on the legendary nineteenth century Korean painter Jang Seung-up. Seung-up’s personal drama—his alcoholism, womanizing, and bitter struggle against the conservative academy that scorned his humble birth and unschooled talent—takes place in the milieu of the political and social upheaval resulting from and feeding into the Sino-Japanese war.

Visually, the film is a delight, and the cinematography should be spared no praise. Deep focus is used expertly to draw attention to the myriad details that comprised village life in nineteenth century Korea: the glowing embers of a tavern hearth, the massive earthen pots keeping sentry at the portals of village hovels, the snow-speckled and hard-trod paths interlacing peasant dwellings. The camera moves deliberately, often pausing over a stark landscape seconds longer than is customary, allowing the beauty of each scene to resonate with the viewer.

Cho Min-shik gives a brilliant and humane performance as the painter Seung-up. He generates sympathy and admiration for the struggling artist even as he unflinchingly portrays the villainous aspects of Seung-up’s personality. Min-shik’s Seung-up is sometimes a genius, often a lout, but always compelling. Min-shik’s ability to elicit pathos and laughter with the same gesture is nothing short of remarkable.

As seductive as Seung-up is, his abusive behavior towards the women in his life is unforgivable, and Kwon-taek’s film compounds these malefactions by relegating all of its female characters to the status of groupie or prostitute. By placing the maligned female voices in the film in the background, Kwon-taek falls into the same trap that has marred so many other artist biopics—recall Ed Harris’ Pollock.

That flaw aside, Chihwaseon is a brilliant film: it manages to be both epic and intimate in equal measure. By viewing it, I not only gained a working knowledge of the historical forces that gave rise to the modern, partitioned Korean state, but I also received tremendous insight into a uniquely creative and troubled mind. Kwon-taek’s Seung-up is not only a compelling figure unto himself, but a portal through which to see and understand modern Korean history.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

If only the HFA’s event organizers had been as deft as Kwon-taek’s film in balancing the inspirational and educational components of the screenings.

The HFA theatre was filled to capacity the night of Chihwaseon’s screening, and the audience included a sizeable contingent of Korean-speaking patrons. This linguistic divide proved a tad discomforting during the question-and-answer session that followed the movie: Kwon-taek’s replies were often witty and poignant, but his translator (Professor Kyung Hyun Kim of the University of California Irvine) struggled to keep pace with the director. Often, by the time the English-speaking audience had received its version of the directors comments, the Korean-speaking filmgoers were already in stitches or gasping with delight.

One questioner posed a query to the director in Korean, then at the request of the translator, restated it in English for the audience, but what sounded like a discursive and complex question when posed in Korean was a sound bite in the translation.

The HFA’s greater failing, however, was its lack of contextualizing materials for the filmgoer new to Kwon-taek’s oeuvre, or Korean cinema and culture in general. A brief essay on the politics and culture of late 19th-century Korea would have gone a long way towards improving the viewing experience.

Kwon-taek acknowledged the awkward disconnect between his work and much of the audience: “If you are a first time viewer [of my films] it is not strange to perceive them as strange or unfamiliar. But I have tried to provide points of access for you into them.” And indeed he did: the characters that populate his films, in spite of their inhabitation of a distant continent during a remote century, are comprehensible, relatable, and accessible. The HFA should strive to makes its screenings the same.