South Korean film makes for compelling viewing
Blink and you’ll miss a vital clue
Decision To Leave (139 mins) Screening in cinemas now
In Korean with English subtitles
Directed by Park Chanwook
Reviewed by Jen Shieff
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W.. hen Parasite (2019, Bong Joon Ho) made movie history by becoming the first non-English language film to win a best picture Oscar, Patrick Brzeski, who covers South Korean cinema for The Hollywood Reporter, described Bong’s win as a landmark.
Before that win in 2020, no South Korean film had ever even been nominated for an Oscar in any category, despite the industry having been established for 20 years and some outstanding movies and TV series having been produced.
Things have changed. Parasite and then the Netflix series Squid Game (2021, Hwang Dong-hyuk) have helped bring about Hallyu, the Korean wave which has brought South Korean film and TV to the fore. Better late than never.
Decision To Leave (Park Chanwook, 2018 TV series The Little Drummer Girl), with its universal truths about ambition, greed, failure, loyalty, love and even about truth itself will appeal to audiences all over the world.
The characters are intriguing, drawn to inescapable attractions or threats, imagining things, making imaginings real. The story is fascinating.
Seo-rae (Tang Wei, 2007 Lust Caution) is the beautiful, mysterious, murder suspect from China. Her current husband has fallen off a South Korean mountain. Or was he pushed?
Enter ambitious, determined, very cool detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il, a star in South Korea since he was 24 back in 2001). Hae-joon’s own marriage is clearly going to be a casualty of his obsessive focus on enigmatic, bewitching Seo-rae.
The stage is set for a classic tale of lust, errors of judgment, risk taking, secrets, lies and of course, untimely death.
Actually, many untimely deaths. It’s a blend of tragedy, crime caper, action thriller, horror, with dollops of comedy, both black and romantic, to ensure nothing is heavy going.
We probably shouldn’t be laughing at Hae-joon’s efforts to communicate with recent immigrant Seo-rae, who doesn’t understand Korean. Clever scriptwriting by Park Chan-wook and Chung Seo-kyung.
The characters are compelling viewing. You can’t blink, or you’ll miss somebody’s expression, a twitch, a text message, that might be key to what’s going on. You’ll pay attention for nearly two and a half hours, even though you feel absolutely nothing is predictable and as it turns out, you’re right.
Gentle scenes provide moments of sanity amidst scenes with the speed and craziness of Killing Eve (2018-2022, Phoebe Waller-Bridge).
A relatively stable underpinning comes from the Confucian saying, quoted by Seo-rae near the beginning, “the wise man admires water, the kind man admires mountains”.
Water and mountains are strong features of the look and meaning of the film. Production designer Ryu Seong-hie has created stunning rural and urban landscapes, backdrops for the main characters as they struggle with life’s challenges and eventually reveal whether they are wise or kind, destructive or wicked, or all of the above.
Smart, avant-garde filmmaking. Guaranteed to entertain.
Highly recommended.
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The first person to bring an image or hardcopy of this review to Starlight Cinema Taupō qualifies for a free ticket to Decision To Leave.