As 2011 goes on, there will be more of you wanting to talk about this one. Let's recap with THE SPOILER TAGS REMOVED...
I Saw The Devil
Dir. Ji-Woon Kim
With the exception of the action direction and fight choreography I can say, without a semblance of misgiving that this is one of the most pointless and despicable movies I've ever sat through. Brutal, mean spirited, nonsensical are all words that come to mind. I'm angry for having sat through this, but I kept thinking there would be some sort of payoff, some way to make it worth the effort. But this is one long, agonizing and intolerable mess that redeems itself in no way. I predict that this is going to have a massive following here on the boards, so I'm planting the flag and staking my claim that I hated it first. I'm the guy. This movie made me angry, can you tell?
Grade F
If I gave F-'s this would be one. This is the movie to beat in 2011 for worst of the year. Well, at least I got it out of the way early.
I'm the biggest KJW fan on these boards, but this reaction does not surprise me. I heard about the film on IFC Podcast and after hearing the plot description, was surprised they liked it. I love him for his timing, performance and use of camera and lighting. The trailer promises a lot of that (plus the cast is superb). The plot, however, sounds like something Eli Roth thought up while watching too many Takashi Miike films. KJW is not a torture porn filmmaker, but this sounds like the worst kind of torture porn. Yet because it's him (and after the trailer) I am very anxious to watch this.
I Saw the Devil will be one of the year's most divisive films, and I can't predict which side of the fence I'll end up on.
The action direction, and much of the photography are really great. The lighting is beautiful, in some stuff. But the plot is so... unredeemable.
Yeah... This will be the major problem people have with the film. Nobody in the movie walks away with a clean conscience, its one of those films where everyone is evil. It desperately needed a Marge Gunderson or sheriff Bell character to serve as a moral voice for the audience to relate to.
Its not just that the characters are all some form of evil. Its that the plot is to my mind, awful. I'd love to go into detail, but its hard without spoiling stuff. Basically all the actions taken by the hero in his plot to exact revenger aren't just misguided in that they are blinded by rage and hatred, they're just dumb... for lack of a better word. And since I hate his actions, not from a moral point of view but a logical one I cannot find any ground to follow this journey.
I Saw The DevilDir. Ji-Woon Kim
Kim Ji-Woon is one of the top filmmakers working today, and his talent leaves its mark on every frame of this movie. Throughout I kept asking myself why he chose to apply that talent to this material. I understood what Haneke was doing with Funny Games. His obvious restraint set a counter-tone to the bleak material. This takes the opposite approach. It's as in your face with the violence and sadism as a film can get, but I never once felt KJW wasn't in complete control. I never thought he was doing the violence to look cool, push your buttons, cross a moral line or gross you out. He filmed it as he felt it should be filmed, with complete competence and professionalism. The film takes its time, but it never feels like he's dwelling in the darkness, just giving it its proper weight.
The story takes place in a complete moral vacuum, and by that I don't mean your typical carpet suction but the deep cold vacuum of deep space. There's a moment about 30min in where our hero takes a wrench to a man's boxer shorts, shattering the man's penis. It's not cool like the gunshot in True Romance. It's not repulsive. It's just the tone the film has set for itself, and I found it all rather thought-provoking. This couldn't be more different from Lars Von Trier or Eli Roth. It charts its own path and (for me) worked better than anything by those other directors.
In short, this is the Best Directed film from one of the Best Director's Working Today. However, I don't know what compelled him to make this picture. Had I read the script first, I'd be completely against anybody filming it. The skill of the filmmaker is the one and only reason to watch. (Even the actors are adequate but not exceptional.) I say that's reason enough.
Subject Matter: D
Filmmaking: A
Grade: somewhere between the two
I Saw The Devil
I never thought he was doing the violence to look cool, push your buttons, cross a moral line or gross you out. He filmed it as he felt it should be filmed, with complete competence and professionalism. The film takes its time, but it never feels like he's dwelling in the darkness, just giving it its proper weight.
Disagree completely. The movie definitely is filmed to be cool, to push buttons, to offend, and to gross out. Its a bloody shameless exploitation film made by a top notch director. Also it definitely dwells on the darkness; murder, torture, and rape are shot with great relish and the camera almost never cuts away. But atleast its honest, nothing I hate more that torture porn masquerading as a timely message about violence in media.
Subject Matter: D
Filmmaking: A
Grade: somewhere between the two
That's where I am.
Also, everything else aside, can we all agree that the cab ride scene with the killer and the two robbers is the most shankalishious thing ever put on film?
I too felt that the film relished in the violence and did everything it could to make it look cool and stylish.
I too felt that the film relished in the violence and did everything it could to make it look cool and stylish.
It looks great, but I wouldn't say it looks cool. Like The American, the film is just well-shot. Every image has great lighting and composition. Not simply above average, but Great. Award worthy photography. But does that make it cool? I don't think so in this case. A Bittersweet Life looked cool, this is just well-lit. The tone, the clinical style doesn't make the violence exciting at all. I'm still kind of chewing on this, but I wonder if one of his themes is to film the violence in a cool style, but make it so extreme it takes the cool out of it. Yet I didn't find it offensive. It lands in some difficult in-between. Not pure unapologetic exploitation like Robert Rodriguez, not procedural. There's a bit of Michael Man, a bit of David Fincher but it doesn't ape the tone of either.
I Saw The DevilDir. Ji-Woon Kim
That's right, I watched it twice.
I'm glad I did, too because I really wanted to see what Chris was railing against and I think I get it. It's not the violence or the way the brutality is filmed or the moral stance per say. But I do see how you can make a strong case against the film's intelligence. KJW keeps a tight, white-knuckle grip going for 140 minutes, but there's a strong lack of realism that makes me question if the film is meant to be taken as a parable. By the conclusion, there is morality in it though you can't see it till the final scene. This is the closest a film has taken me to the reaction I had with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. In that one I went back and forth for a bit wondering which character was meant to be "Mr. Vengeance". Here, there is the question of which of our leads is meant to be "the devil". The answer becomes rather obvious, but not until after the 2-hour mark.
Watch me work magic with the non-spoiler speak.
There are two ways to take this story and neither one is truly insightful. One is that there is pure evil in the world. Unrelenting, unemotional, Anton Chigurh evil and every time you pause for some humanity, it attacks. That's interesting to watch, but nothing that hasn't been done better before. The other angle, the fable, is that evil exists in equal balance with good. It isn't just a few lone nuts, but an equal amount to the amount of good in the world. They exist like tectonic plates, pushing against each other and sometimes causing rumbles. The problem with this approach is that it makes things a bit silly. To quote James Coburn in Maverick, "Everybody's got a gun." Regarding the cab ride, it perfectly illustrates Kim's tone. In a film trying to be cool, this would be a very cool moment. He even employes a Michael Bay style spin around the action. But the hits are so brutal, it doesn't feel cool at all. It's one step short of silly overkill, and that perfect pitch is what I like best about I Saw the Devil.
I've now found two ways to look at I Saw the Devil and neither one is completely satisfying the way I want a Kim Ji-woon film to be. What the film has to say about revenge has been said better in better films. I push and root for Kim because I say he's the best director working in South Korea, and there's a lot of proof of greatness here. (There's also a cheap "jump out of the dark" scare moment I really didn't like this time.) However, this is not his best film.
GRADE: B-I Saw the Devil (Expanded thoughts)
By the time I watched this I had heard enough "controversy" about it to be prepared for the worst. In complete honestly, I was really surprised with how tame I found it. This is a (very) relative tame, but I was lead to expect much worse. It is a very dark, graphically violent movie, yes, but I don't see it as any darker or more violent than other movies in the same vein (The Vengeance Trilogy, for instance). This isn't yet a defense of the film, I'm just stating that I don't think it pushed any boundaries or crossed any lines.
This is the defense of the film. I Saw the Devil actually shows a great deal of restraint in it's violence. It is not used joyfully, gratuitously, or pointlessly. It takes a very direct and brutal approach, but at the same time it very deliberately holds back from going for shock-value. Perhaps most importantly, the entire premise of the movie rides on the darkness it portrays. I will say I think there are a few moments where it would have benefited from a bit more subtlety, but for the most part it nails a very difficult tone.
Okay, so onto what I actually loved about I Saw the Devil. Earlier I made a comparison to my experience with Black Swan, and I think it's an appropriate one. This is another movie that kept me completely off-balance the whole way through. It is super-intense, and it just keeps building and building, never letting you settle in and feel "comfortable" with where it's going next. There is also a killer performance at the center of it. Min-sik Choi is absolutely amazing in this. Byung-hun Lee does his thing well, and he gets some great action-beats to show off in, but Min-sik Choi is just a force of nature.
The storyline is rather simple, it is essentially a thriller framed around a premise, and there is not a lot of depth beyond that. Luckily, I think the premise is a suitably interesting take on the revenge story, and I admire the commitment to that rather tricky premise. But it's effectiveness as a thriller is what most kicked my butt. If I wasn't impressed by Ji-woon Kim before, I certainly am now.
Well said. I also didn't have trouble with it, though I'm not about to say this isn't troubling material. It's very dark, but not needlessly so like some of the recent French Horror. Then again, who am I to say if violence is 'needed'. I certainly see it turning away some people (like Chris) if only because the film has a strange byline of multiple maniacs. (Maybe we should start a spoiler thread because I'd love to hear your take on the guy in the cab and Choi's friends. I like it, but I really can't say I understand it with any logic or even as a metaphor.) It's tough, and maybe it's not easy to dismiss because it's not obvious exploitation like Robert Rodriguez, but it's not completely realistic either.
I hope this pushes Kim Ji-woon into the upper ranks of
South Korean directors, where he certainly belongs. Even though this won't find a wide audience, it's a film people will hear about and possibly be less afraid to tackle since it isn't the punishment of Lars Von Trier a la Anti Christ. Perhaps his next film will be something along the lines of The Host and then it'll be easier to praise him.
I'll definitely be seeing I Saw The Devil again sometime this year.