Dream (2008)

Being a self-taught filmmaker, in a way the majority of Kim Ki-duk’s films could be seen as experimental in that it could be said that Kim is always approaching the medium with an outsiders perspective. What’s astonishing about Kim’s lack of “formal” filmmaking training is that its impossible to notice given Kim’s impeccable sense of framing and his knack for arresting imagery. With a background in fine arts, Kim’s films are ripe with striking visual compositions, often symbolic in nature and would put many a film school graduate to shame. Kim also has an eye for the bizarre and grotesque as evidenced in films like The Isle (2000), Real Fiction (2000) and Moebius (2013), films which also demonstrate one of Kim’s key experimental characteristics, constant silence, with Kim often preferring his characters to say as little as possible or in the case of Moebius, nothing at all. The symbolism found in Kim’s films has tendency to be rather oblique, such as the final image seen in The Isle or the motif of a certain photograph in Bad Guy (2001), touches that take Kim’s films into surrealist territory and demonstrate a clear appreciation for the fantastique which begs the question of what would a full-on genre film from Kim be like? Perhaps the closest answer could be found in Kim’s 2008 film Dream, a beautiful and poignant film and Kim’s most fantasy based yet.

After waking from a dream in which he causes an accident, Jin, who has been dreaming more frequently, is astonished to discover that the accident actually happened. What’s more, the police arrest Ran, a young woman Jin has never met, after video footage shows her to be the cause of the crash. As both soon discover, despite being complete strangers to each other, whenever Jin dreams, Ran acts out the scenario in her sleep which soon proves to be detrimental to both, making both Jin and Ran desperate to uncover the cause and to put an end to the strange phenomena.

Dream centric films had been a long beaten dead horse before Kim approached the idea of Dream (Bi-mong, 비몽), however Kim manages to completely sidestep all the clichés that have become associated with films focused on dreams with a highly original film with his signature style all over the material. Rather than have the film be a continuous question of what is or isn’t a dream like the majority of similarly themed films, Kim goes the opposite route. While the lines between dream and reality are blurred slightly during the later half of the film, for the most part Kim makes it explicitly clear what is a dream and what isn’t, making the main focus of the film Jin and Ran uncovering the source of their predicament, what Jin’s dreams mean to Ran and why she plays out his dreams. The solving of this puzzle is particularly fascinating as it leads to the concept of the double or doppelganger that Kim played around with in Bad Guy and in one of the films most memorable moments, the characters find themselves face to face with both the subjects of their dreams and themselves. The relationship that develops between Jin and Ran throughout the film is rather sweet and Kim does allow time for some light comedic moments between the two, however the film inevitably takes a turn for the bleak with the intense emotional torment shared between the two manifesting itself physically, in proper Kim fashion, by the sticking of sharp objects into skin.

An interesting thing regarding Dream is its bi-lingual dialogue with lead actor Joe Odagiri speaking Japanese throughout the film while the rest of the cast speak Korean. Its also worth noting that Kim won best director at the Korean Association of Film Critics Awards which, considering Kim’s pariah status in his home country couldn’t have been more ironic. Dream was also the second film Kim directed in 2008 with the first film being Breath and it would be three years before Kim would direct again after a near-fatal accident on the set of Dream did a number on Kim’s psyche. During the filming of a crucial scene, lead actress Na-yeong Lee was nearly killed and the event had such a lasting impression on Kim he retreated from public life. This intense period of self-reflection was captured on video by Kim and turned into the documentary/self-portrait Arirang (2011) which documents Kim’s personal crisis following Dream. In the film, Kim repeatedly interrogates himself, directly referring to the scene in question asking himself “Hey Kim Ki-duk, why have you been living like this for three years since 2008... Is it because of that accident while shooting that jail scene in Dream… Frightened you, didn’t it?” Thankfully Kim overcame the trauma and continues to make original and daring films like Dream that strike a perfect balance between pain and beauty, leaving many a susceptible viewer completely shattered.

Samaritan Girl (2004)

Although it may seem fairly one-note on paper, the revenge film can be quite the versatile medium given the various angles the idea of revenge can be viewed from. Clearly the most well know and popular style of vengeance based films is the rape/revenge film, wherein sexual assault survivors enact righteous justice on their attackers, a formula perfected in films like Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45 (1981) and Takashi Ishii’s Freeze Me (2000). An interesting twist on standard rape/revenge trajectory can be found in Ingmar Berman’s The Virgin Spring (1960) and the film it subsequently inspired, Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972), which finds the parents of the victims seeking the vengeance. There’s also of course the vigilante justice revenge genre with the Death Wish series being the most famous example. Personal vendettas are yet another common prototype used to springboard a revenge film as seen in films like the exploitation classic Johnny Firecloud (1975) and Larry Clark’s blistering true crime saga Bully (2001). South Korean maverick Kim Ki-duk first tried his hand at the revenge film with the one-take experiment Real Fiction (2000), a highly original, self-reflexive film-within-a-film following a street artist getting even with all those who’ve wronged him. Four years later, Kim would again tackle the subject of revenge and so much more with Samaritan Girl, a deeply affecting film featuring Kim’s typically challenging approach to difficult subject matter.

In an attempt to afford two plane tickets to Europe, Jae-yeong and Yeo-jin, two high school students have turned to prostitution with Jae-yeong actually meeting the clients while Yeo-jin arranges the appointments and keeps the books. During a police raid, Jae-yeong jumps from a window as a means of escape and later dies from her injuries. As a tribute to her late friend, Yeo-jin begins seeing all the clients in her record book herself, sleeping with them then refunding their money. During one of her appointments however, Yeo-jin’s father Yeong-ki, a policeman, spots her with a client and soon begins following her clients, embarking on a camping of escalating violence.

Although billed as “a dark tale of revenge” on the DVD cover, it must be said that, while the film is indeed a dark tale and revenge does eventually play a major part in it, Samaritan Girl (Samaria, 사마리아) is still so much more and anyone going into it expecting something along the lines of I Spit on Your Grave (1978) are bound to be disappointed. Split up into three chapters, Kim covers a lot of ground with Samaritan Girl. The first chapter, “Vasumitra”, not only establishes the relationship between Jae-yeong and Yeo-jin but also introduces the various religious allegories that will hover over the rest of the film, namely Yeo-jin’s very Catholic mentality in regards to shame as it relates to her and Jae-yeong’s business practices. The films religious overtones are even more explicit in the films second act, “Samaria”, but also become a bit more obscured with Yeo-jin prostituting herself but returning the clients money as some sort of bizarre penance for her dead friend and as a way to feel less guilty. This second act also sets up the actions of Yeo-jin’s father and its during the films final third, “Sonata” where Kim lets Yeo-jin's fathers rage boil over into murder. What’s equally important, and for that matter emotionally cathartic, about the last act is the time spent alone with Yeo-jin and her father, in effect turning the film into a coming of age story of sorts, resulting in some of the most poignant moments in all of Kim’s filmography.

Like many of Kim’s other films, Samaritan Girl sees Kim shining a light on a darker aspect of South Korean society, a tactic which has made him a pariah in his home country. His main target in Samaritan Girl of course being teenage prostitution and naturally he was criticized for his portrayal and amazingly some critics even accused Kim of glamorizing underage sex work which is utterly asinine to anyone with a working brain, with Kim mentioning the issue in several interviews promoting the film. A 2012 study claimed that half of the 60% of teenage runaways in South Korea have turned to prostitution, citing academic and home pressures as their reasoning for turning to the streets. Its interesting to compare and contrast Samaritan Girl to Kim’s earlier Bad Guy (2001), which used the world of prostitution as its backdrop as unlike in Bad Guy, who’s main female character was forced into sex work whereas in Samaritan Girl Jae-yeong and Yeo-jin are acting of their own free will and although prostitution is used as the catalyst, Kim again has other things on his mind as well. Although it doesn’t seem to be as regarded as 3-Iron (2004), the other film Kim released the same year, Samaritan Girl is an essential Kim film and one that might be difficult to decipher but nevertheless gives another good example of Kim’s take on the human condition.