##The country is a lie
There has been no Kim Ki-duk movie more straightforward than "The Net". Without his signature, people would even suspect that the director of the film was a novice who was eager for quick success--unfortunately, people's judgment on the work is often completed most of the moment when they see the signature.
A fishing net entangled the engine of a North Korean fisherman's boat, causing him to drift across the 38th line. He was captured and detained by both the North and the South. The interrogation of the North and South Korea, and the forced confession turned out to be exactly the same. He tried his best to survive and wanted to go back home, but this journey of survival was also a journey of destruction, because everything that happened was enough to break down his spiritual barriers. It's like a fish caught in a net, and you can't break free."
When the fisherman returned naked from the applause of flowers in the aisle, the North Korean police gave him a national flag, and he pulled it over. Instead of putting it on his body, he wrapped it up. Crotch. This shameful instinctive reaction instantly defeated all the oaths of loyalty to the party and patriotism. What kind of doctrine, what kind of idea, the national flag is just a fig leaf——it covers the place where people are the most vulnerable and most ashamed to be exposed, and the cover of the national flag will be broken with a poke, but the pattern with meaning on it often becomes Thought shackles.
Although there is more publicity that is common in Korean films, Ryu Seung-bum's performance is undoubtedly a success. The fisherman is a combination of multiple contradictions in the film. On the one hand, he is a backward and ignorant party. He uses all postures and routines that obey the main idea without a teacher. He is so loyal to North Korea that he dare not open his eyes in South Korea. In the face of the national flag, he bows and salutes conditioned reflexively; on the other hand, he maintains the most noble gesture of the whole film - his dignity as a person; at least he never yielded to the interrogators, and even dared to help when he encountered an insulted prostitute.
The character setting and text in the film are also highly directional, arranging the background of the Korean War orphans for the vicious South Korean interrogators, and accusing the money society in the taste of prostitutes, but the film does not develop some small clues, such as "opening seven golds". Is Dalai's children's rhyme information or a home letter? Who is the spy among those interrogated at the same time? Kim Ki-duk may be trying to maintain the subjective point of view of the fisherman, or maybe just to create absurdity with a sense of mystery.
People tend to look for Kim Ki-duk in "The Drift Bathroom" and "The Empty Room", but they often take "Breathe" and "Shoreline" in a hurry, seemingly refusing to admit that those are his works. However, at the beginning of "Arirang", Kim Ki-duk, who has suffered from social phobia and is much older, became more willful and stubborn, and even more angry. He is obsessed with secret room interrogation, forced confession and corporal punishment, and of course there is no lack of the most straightforward and pure spiritual game between the two. This preference first appeared in "The Drift Bathroom" and "Empty Room" until "One on One" became more explicit.
The interrogation scenes in these various films are like layers, laid out one by one on Kim Ki-duk. The two sides of the interrogation are like two people who are separated from Kim Ki-duk's illusion. They both try to learn something from the other, the reason, the process, Results, food, freedom. . . . . The cruelest thing is not the torture method itself, but a series of uncertainties - you can't be sure that the other party can give you what you want, you can only push him to the limit of tolerance and let him degenerate into the most primitive person. , a man with no secrets and no scruples. And this kind of heart-to-heart questioning may be the visualization of Kim Ki-duk's autistic split. We can see Kim Ki-duk's harshness and indifference, and he has not shy about embodying this in "Arirang". As he gets older, he is like a monster wandering the world and mumbling constantly, but don't doubt his cruelty because of his quietness, because a person who is so cruel to himself can probably shoot anything.
The sexual affairs of men and women, the girl's body, and the depressing and crazy urban demons in the mirror are slowly disappearing. Instead, they criticize the current situation, tease politics, and question the identity of the Korean nation. This kind of political care is confidently thrown to the neighboring countries ("Made in China", "Stop") - this kind of clumsiness in exchange for the confusion of fans.
In this world with Western aesthetics as the main point of view, domestic political themes are often used by new directors from the East to gain attention; and as Kim Ki-duk, who has long been a god, actually does not need to be like this at all. People don't praise his madness more because of works such as "The Net" and "One on One", but Kim Ki-duk has determined that "politics is more crazy than sex", which makes people worry whether his stubbornness will be like his. Like most of the characters under the mirror, leading their own artistic path to destruction?
Originally scheduled to premiere at the TIFF Toronto Film Festival, "Net" was moved to Venice ahead of schedule. It was nearly 10 years ago when he was in high spirits here. At the premiere, people surrounded him, cheering one after another. In the eyes of most people, he has almost half-stepped into the ranks of "fallen masters" such as Herzog. Unlike the latter, Jin Jied has more crazy factors full of uncertainty. Next, a Chinese privately funded production of "Godless" (but rejected) seems to have been put on the agenda, is this a bad end, or a worse start, except for the taciturn gray-haired The head, I am afraid no one can figure it out.
——Originally published in "The Paper, Idea Market"
View more about The Net reviews
