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My editor at Rebeller recently requested I write a column on Park Chan-wook’s so-called “Vengeance Trilogy”. I had watched and written a review on OLDBOY long ago but never managed to get around to Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance. I am glad watched them and was able to dig deep into them. This is a column in which I delve further into the topic, and because it is so interesting, I am reviewing it anyway for posterity.
For those like myself, who have heard 18 years of praises for Mr. Vengeance without knowing what it is actually about, here its story. It tells the tale of Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun, THE VILLAINESS), a mute and deaf school dropout from an art school, who is currently working at a factory due to his sister (Im Ji-eun) being in need of a kidney transplant. He’s not a donor match, but he’s working hard and doing everything in case a suitable donor is found. The storyline flows through the letters he sends to a DJ with the promise that he will play them on air, and then listen to it with his sister whom he will be with.
While the thin walls do affect them in a negative way, they still live together in a terrible apartment. A huge part of this world’s detailed ugliness is where he shows four young boys that live next door to him, furiously pleasuring themselves, thinking that the loud noises they are hearing through the wall are people having sex. But the camera zooms through the wall, only to showcase Ryu’s sister who is furiously moaning in pain due to an underlying illness. Ryu also does not have an understanding of this too, because he is not in her line of sight. There are many people who live such close to each other, totally ignorant of everyone else’s pain.
Ryu has a much more lively girlfriend called Cha Yeong, who is portrayed by Bae, Doona from Host, Cloud Atlas, and Jupiter Ascending. Cha Yeong has a bit better apartment where she keeps a collection of nice books, a mannequin and a few posters of an anarchist collective that she spends time putting up. In the movie, she provides humor but for the worst part, she does come up with a plan that puts many lives in danger.
An extensive sequence showcases Ryu’s gruelling schedule in the factory, one of many that reinforce the ambient sounds as if to make sure we remember what he’s missing out on. However, when he is fired, he becomes frantic. He has a bright idea of walking into a black market organ dealer with all his life’s savings and purchasing a kidney that matches his blood type.
The exchange happens in one of the great examples of the seedy side of modern cinema, a physician’s office thrown together in an office building so dilapidated I thought at first that it was a parking garage. To my surprise, they did not appear to be very professional, they took his kidney and money and departed without returning anything to him.
Once again, the registered physicians get a donor, and Ryu pays them the exact sum he owes them. When Yeong-mi discovers what he did, she slaps the hell out of him. But then, she offers her real clever plan kidnap the daughter of that factory manager who sacked you. She claims he is wealthy enough and would pay a good ransom. He suggests that when they eventually return the girl, the family will be so elated, it would bring everyone closer together. Arguably, this is doing them a favour.
In a dark example of just how ‘twisted’ the world is, when they go to do the kidnapping, there is another unemployed and desperate factory worker already confronting the boss, who ends up standing in the middle of the street stabbing himself in self-protest. It is decided that since Ryu is an ex-employee too, he will be interviewed by the police regarding this, so they play it safe and abduct Yu-sun (Han Bo-bae) the daughter of a different rich manufacturing company president that they spot with the ex-boss.
They are not being sinister, so they persuade the young girl that her father told them to take care of her. It looks like she is enjoying herself. They struggle to think of ways to make her sob for sufficiently long amounts of time to capture a ransom photograph. They get Ryu’s sister to look after the kid without telling her she is a captive, which is unethical or at least discourteous, in my opinion.
If this were a Coen brothers film, the scheme would go sideways in a funny or deeply disturbing manner. This is South Korean cinema, so if I can generalize from my limited sampling of their wares it goes wrong in a very disturbing way that, when I say spoiler alert, leaves the innocent sister and child dead, with rocks piled on top of them and submerged in a riverbed.
The focus of the narrative gradually pivots to Yu-sun’s father Park Dong-jin (played by Korean cinema superstar Song Kang-ho from The Host, Snowpiercer, Parasite), who, in my belief, is Mr. Vengeance. But Ryu manages to get a dosage of Vengeance himself he tracks down the new base of operations of the organ traffickers who had kidney him and ends up in that catastrophic kidnapping scheme. And he prepares for them in shocking ways that catch them completely off guard. Sure, it has a bit of a bloody kick to it, but it’s not the same cool-action-scene vibe of OLDBOY’s famed hallway hammer fight. It’s more of a “Oh fuck, this is a mess” feeling to me.
Here is a fun fact my favorite part of the movie is when Yeong-mi is glued to the organ traders as they try to market some of her fliers. She shouts catchphrases like, “Drive Out American Products!” It then transitions to one of the dealers in the bakery Robin’s ice cream. He throws it onto the street and then proceeds to use the ice box to carry the kidney. This raises the question, how are you going to drive out thirty-one Flavors when there are kidney-carrying boxes?
A different good irony lies with the investigator that Park employed to locate the kidnapper. Lee Dae is aware that the TA of Two Sisters will require the same amount of money as Ryu so he is not shocked when Lee requires ten million won for an operation for his son. He will also not resort to kidnapping him anywhere, not in the way we expect to see him. But what the fuck is he going to resort to?
I always love the catharsis a good fun revenge story brings, but in reality, getting ugly and brutal violent revenge isn’t something that feels good, and (if I can generalize again) some of the South Korean directors are wonderful at showcasing something so beautifully tragic and disturbing in nature.
Park’s fury towards the unknown fuckups that ended up killing his daughter, is quite easy to understand. But even if we approached this scenario from the overly stupid perspective of the people he is after, regardless of their intentions or the desperation that drove them to attempt a life-saving crime, there is no clear reason behind his electroshock torturing Yeong-mi while Ryu is missing. What is the sadistic vengeance behind these motives? When I first saw her get the sheet placed on her head, I anticipated him to feel disgusted by himself. On the contrary, he appears unbothered by the urine puddle on the floor Epidemic is about losing all self-control.
He appears to feel sympathy for Ryu now. Instead feels an overwhelming urge to carry out his plan. And somehow wishes that Ryu can validate him.
You remember the surprise twist and who arrives to carry out yet another revenge killing. That is an ending that I loved not only for how shocking it was to not understand the reasoning behind it and learn at the same time he does but also for how it changes our perception of Yeong-mi. It is obvious now that she truly showed remorse for what happened to Yu-sun, but when she said to him I am the leader of a terrorist group and if I die there will be people coming to kill you, I took it as (like he did) a pathetic lie that was told to allow her to escape. She was very much telling the truth and in that regard, she was trying to save his life by taking his attention away from her. Perhaps that is what sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is all about.
As I mentioned in the column, South Korea switched to single-payer healthcare two years after this movie was released.
(“I’m not giving the movie credit it was considered a flop at the time”. This quote stood out to me as I have always sketched an idea of dystopian films in my head and this quote rendered it into words. Ryu is an artist whose sister is sick and is not a match for a transplant. Instead, he ends up committing murder. Operatic desires sure, but paints a sobering picture of a world dominated by a capitalistic system, devoid of life and sanity. )
The rumors were right, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance is no doubt one of the best films I’ve seen. It tackles some recognizable concepts but does not attempt to follow any structure I am familiar with, replete with confidence, style, unusual features, deep sentiments, changes in tone, and flawless perfection in every actor’s performance. It feels good to be caught up to speed on everything.
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