5/30/2023 0 Comments Memories of murdersIt’s hard to come across a movie nowadays that plays into what kind of dramatic potential could possibly emerge out of deviating entirely from the traditional formula and its widely accepted conclusions. Twists, turns and revelations hit like sledgehammers - they have nothing to do with finding snippets or red herrings leading to a resolution, and have everything to do with a system’s colossal failure taking a devastating toll on the individuals participating in them. Focusing on the collaboration of two fictional detectives - Park Doo-Man, played by Song Kang-Ho, and Seo Tae-Yoon, played by Kim Sang-Kyung - both loosely based on several real-life investigators involved in the case, the film initially portrays their contrasting personalities and incompetent interrogation methods in a morbidly comedic way before slowly beginning to sow seeds of doubt in both the characters’ and the audience’s mind.Īs more and more women are raped and murdered by a constantly elusive and faceless killer, the possibility that neither of their methods may ultimately solve the case begins to break down and turn the investigators against each other in genuinely shocking and unexpected ways. For those familiar with the Hwaseong murders in South Korea - much like America’s near-ubiquitous familiarity with the notorious Zodiac killings - the conclusion feels almost like a foregone one, but for this movie, the process is at the heart and forefront of everything, and the process itself is unforgettable. “Memories of Murder” employs these same narrative devices here. Rather, it ends up shifting its focus on what these tapes and the locations depicted in them end up meaning to the people who are receiving them, as well as what it ends up saying about these very same recipients.ĭaniel Auteil (left) and Juliette Binoche (right) in Michael Haneke’s “Cache”. Each of the tapes reveal the fact that they are being spied on in various locations, but the premise doesn’t focus on who’s sending or filming the tapes. One of the first movies that comes to mind is Michael Haneke’s 2009 film,“Caché”, another similarly clinical and procedural thriller about a family being threatened by a series of tapes sent to their house. By the time the film reaches its third act, you’re not watching regular police procedural anymore - you’re watching the failures of an entire institution gradually disillusion and demoralize the people who had so much faith in its lackluster methods, both within and outside of the institution itself.įew movies ever really do this sort of premise deconstruction correctly, and when they succeed at it, the execution is unbelievably polished. What makes “Memories of Murder” such an apotheosis of subversive modern mystery filmmaking is how it ends up telling a story which peels back the investigation methods of South Korean law enforcement during the late 1980s, gradually removing the alluring premise of arresting the murderer, and instead replacing it with a skin-crawlingly terrifying possibility that the murderer may never be caught. I’m convinced that “Memories of Murder” is Bong Joon-Ho’s best film so far (yes, even beating out “Parasite”), and I feel confident in saying that if he ever ended up topping it, the result would possibly beat Lee Chang-Dong’s “Oasis” - one of the most distant yet intimate and socially poignant romance films of all time - for the best Korean film I’ve ever seen in my life. Song Kang-Ho (front left) in “Memories of Murder.” Bong would specifically state in the interviews that followed its release that he had imagined and drawn the Hwaseong killer’s face, preparing a list of questions to ask him in case he was ever found, and secretly hoping that he would even go so far as to watch the film. It became the highest-grossing film of the year in South Korea, saving its production company from bankruptcy, and receiving a warm welcome in various foreign countries and international film festivals. While the production of the film itself was fraught with a myriad of difficulties that drastically extended its duration, the film was received universally positively. On May 12th, 2003, then-unknown yet distinctly sui generis South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho, following the release of his commercially and critically disappointing debut feature ,“Barking Dogs Never Bite”, released his sophomore film, “Memories of Murder” - based on a play written about the Hwaseong serial killings- to an unprecedented amount of acclaim. Director Bong Joon-Ho, on set for “Memories of Murder”.
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