A Brief Movie Review
Yesterday, I watched Oldboy (2003), winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury at the recent Cannes Film Festival. Like Pulp Fiction (1994), Fight Club (1999), and Memento (2000), it belongs to the you-can't-figure-it-out-till-the-end gangster genre of film, in which the way the story is told is more important than the story itself. And like those other films it was filled with disturbing and disgusting violence.
The movie was infinitely more violent that the most difficult scenes from The Passion of the Christ (2004), and unlike that film the violence was gratuitous, serving no real function other than to disgust the viewer. Furthermore, Oldboy deals with one of civilization's most basic taboos, but in the end has very little to say about it.
Yes, the film was stylish. Yes, the sets were nice and the camera work innovative. Yes, it was good to see a new side of Yu Ji-tae, to be introduced to pretty Kang Hye-jeong and see some more good work from Choi Min-sik. Overall, however, the film did very little for me.
While it captured the heart (if he can be said to have one) of Quentin Tarantino and the other jurists at Cannes, I will forget most of it in a few months, only to be left with a vague sense of the film's creepiness. That's quite a different impression from the last film I saw, made some sixty years before, The Song of Bernadette (1943), a truly unforgettable film about the life of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. Owning the DVD, I've already gone back and watched several of the key scenes again.
They might not have had method acting, tricky camera work, or stylish sets back in the 1940s, but they knew how to make a film about universal truths. The tagline of the movie says it all: "For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible."
Yesterday, I watched Oldboy (2003), winner of the Grand Prize of the Jury at the recent Cannes Film Festival. Like Pulp Fiction (1994), Fight Club (1999), and Memento (2000), it belongs to the you-can't-figure-it-out-till-the-end gangster genre of film, in which the way the story is told is more important than the story itself. And like those other films it was filled with disturbing and disgusting violence.
The movie was infinitely more violent that the most difficult scenes from The Passion of the Christ (2004), and unlike that film the violence was gratuitous, serving no real function other than to disgust the viewer. Furthermore, Oldboy deals with one of civilization's most basic taboos, but in the end has very little to say about it.
Yes, the film was stylish. Yes, the sets were nice and the camera work innovative. Yes, it was good to see a new side of Yu Ji-tae, to be introduced to pretty Kang Hye-jeong and see some more good work from Choi Min-sik. Overall, however, the film did very little for me.
While it captured the heart (if he can be said to have one) of Quentin Tarantino and the other jurists at Cannes, I will forget most of it in a few months, only to be left with a vague sense of the film's creepiness. That's quite a different impression from the last film I saw, made some sixty years before, The Song of Bernadette (1943), a truly unforgettable film about the life of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. Owning the DVD, I've already gone back and watched several of the key scenes again.
They might not have had method acting, tricky camera work, or stylish sets back in the 1940s, but they knew how to make a film about universal truths. The tagline of the movie says it all: "For those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible."
Redeemed by Our Savior, I work out my salvation with fear and trembling in Pohang, South Korea, where I live with my wife, daughter, and son and teach English at a science and technology university. Baptized a Methodist and raised a Missouri Synod Lutheran in Buffalo, NY, I spent six years as a guest of the Anglican Communion before being received by the Grace of God into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church on the Feast of Saint Andrew, my patron, anno domini 2002.
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