{"id":2268,"date":"2013-05-27T00:00:49","date_gmt":"2013-05-27T04:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=2268"},"modified":"2013-05-27T00:02:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-27T04:02:00","slug":"pieta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/pieta\/","title":{"rendered":"Pieta: How To Pander To A New Audience Without Losing Your Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pieta\"
\n

\nPieta<\/a> (2012)<\/b>
\nWritten and Directed by Kim Ki-duk
\n104 min.<\/p>\n

Spoiler-free.<\/i><\/p>\n

Kim Ki-duk is one of my absolute favorite filmmakers. And I only even like about half his movies. Some of them are just awful. But the ones I like, I really<\/i> like. And a few of them, I fucking love.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

A lot of people use the word \u2018love\u2019 lightly when it comes to movies. These people have most likely never truly been in love with a movie. When you truly<\/i> love a movie, it becomes a part of your body. The movie finishes, and you look down, and suddenly you have another arm or something. And you\u2019re like, \u2018Well, that\u2019s there now.\u2019 You have no impulse to amputate it. It\u2019s truly a part of you, just like every other part that makes up your whole. To rid yourself of it would be to rid yourself of yourself.
\n
\nThat\u2019s how I feel about the movies Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring<\/a> and 3-Iron<\/a>. Do you want to know me? Do you want to really, truly know me? Watch those two. They\u2019re integral pieces to the great cosmic puzzle that is Cody Clarke. And maybe to your puzzle too\u2014you just don\u2019t know it yet.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also a fan of Breath<\/a>, The Bow<\/a>, Time<\/a>, and Bad Guy<\/a>, but you probably won\u2019t learn much about me by watching them. They\u2019re very good though, and should definitely be watched. As should Pieta<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pieta is a very good movie. But unlike those, it\u2019s not fully a \u2018Kim Ki-duk movie\u2019, just like you wouldn\u2019t call The Untouchables<\/a> a \u2018Brian DePalma movie.\u2019 It is, technically, but it\u2019s not completely indicative of his soul\u2014although his soul is certainly somewhat present in the film, sprinkled smartly here and there.<\/p>\n

With Pieta, Kim Ki-Duk goes outside his niche comfort zone and into more accessible territory. This is him playing around in a popular sub-genre with a built-in, global audience\u2014Korean revenge\u2014and doing so without selling his soul, or dumbing things down.<\/p>\n

Korean revenge became a sub-genre in and of itself largely because of one filmmaker\u2014Chan-wook Park. His \u2018Vengeance Trilogy\u2019 of Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance<\/a>, Oldboy<\/a>, and Lady Vengeance<\/a> is known all over the world, and is probably still as much a rite of passage for teenaged cult film geeks today as it was when I was of that age. (Wanna feel old instantly? Oldboy came out ten fucking years ago.<\/i>)<\/p>\n

In the wake of those films\u2019 success\u2014especially Oldboy\u2014countless other Korean filmmakers tried their hand at that sort of thing, and the country exported films of that kind like crazy. Most are pretty forgettable, and have very little \u2018shelf life\u2019 so to speak, but they certainly scratch an itch, if that\u2019s what you\u2019re itching for at the moment.<\/p>\n

Pieta, on the other hand, is solid. It even won the fucking Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival in 2012, making it the first Korean film ever to win top prize at one of the major international film festivals (Venice, Cannes, Berlin). That\u2019s huge. If you ask me, he should\u2019ve gotten it for any of the other movies of his I listed earlier\u2014particularly my two favorites\u2014but whatever. I\u2019m just glad he got it.<\/p>\n

The man deserves accolade. It\u2019s a fucking travesty he\u2019s not better known. And I\u2019m not even talking \u2018mainstream audiences\u2019\u2014I mean folks aware of foreign films. It baffles me how often I encounter people who have never even heard of him, or heard of him but never seen any of his stuff. He\u2019s seriously one of the most important filmmakers working today.<\/p>\n

I can think of no other filmmaker as skilled at making an audience feel the feelings the characters are going through. Watching a Kim Ki-duk movie is like going through a personal journey. You think back on the experience much like you\u2019d think back on an unusual and very affecting dream you had one night that changed you in some way forever.<\/p>\n

There are moments in Pieta that are so visceral and twisted that you can\u2019t even believe what you\u2019re seeing. Your jaw drops not out of shock per se, but out of amazement at how he is able to milk deeper emotion out of that shock. He\u2019s like a guitarist turning his guitar so fucking loud that you start to hear notes within the notes. Your hold on reality erodes, and beautifully so. It\u2019s like seeing a fractal for the first time.<\/p>\n

And even without those huge moments, the film works, because the characters, although certainly cartoonish, are just plain three-dimensional. A lesser filmmaker would\u2019ve but their focus solely on the shock moments as though they were all the film needed, but Kim Ki-duk knows better. He knows that shock means nothing without people that truly feel like people. If that crucial factor isn\u2019t there, the actors are basically just action figures being flung around and banged into one another.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a film you\u2019ll be rewatching often\u2014the vibe is a little too dour for that\u2014but it is one you\u2019ll think back on frequently. It\u2019s not his best work, and probably shouldn\u2019t be the first thing of his you see, but it\u2019s probably the best example I can think of of a filmmaker deciding \u2018hey, my kind of movies aren’t doing well, and people seem to really like a certain other type of movie, so maybe I should make a movie like that, but with my own vibe in there too\u2019, and actually succeeding.<\/i><\/p>\n

I\u2019d be curious to see what other sub-genres Kim Ki-duk could bring his particular slant to. Maybe an action movie? He\u2019s written a few of those for other directors, so it\u2019d be cool to see what they\u2019d be like solely in his hands. Maybe an all-out horror? I think he could have the chops for that. Who knows. Whatever he decides to do next, the world is his oyster after that crucial Golden Lion win. Congrats, Kim!<\/p>\n

4 out of 5 Codys.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"pieta\"<\/p>\n

Pieta<\/a> (2012)<\/b>
\nWritten and Directed by Kim Ki-duk
\n104 min.<\/p>\n

Spoiler-free.<\/i><\/p>\n

Kim Ki-duk is one of my absolute favorite filmmakers. And I only even like about half his movies. Some of them are just awful. But the ones I like, I really<\/i> like. And a few of them, I fucking love.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

A lot of people use the word \u2018love\u2019 lightly when it comes to movies. These people have most likely never truly been in love with a movie. When you truly<\/i> love a movie, it becomes a part of your body. The movie finishes, and you look down, and suddenly you have another arm or something. And you\u2019re like, \u2018Well, that\u2019s there now.\u2019 You have no impulse to amputate it. It\u2019s truly a part of you, just like every other part that makes up your whole. To rid yourself of it would be to rid yourself of yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1],"tags":[135,1683,1682,1685,1680,987,1691,1690,32,1674,1692,1170,1673,1678,1675,1677,1676,104,185,1679,1689,1684,1681,1688,1686,1687,1693],"class_list":["post-2268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysreviews","tag-3-iron","tag-bad-guy","tag-bad-guy-kim-ki-duk","tag-breath","tag-breath-kim-ki-duk","tag-brian-de-palma","tag-chan-wook-park","tag-chanwook-park","tag-cody-clarke","tag-kim-ki-duk","tag-lady-vengeance","tag-oldboy","tag-pieta","tag-pieta-kim-ki-duk-review","tag-pieta-kim-ki-duk","tag-pieta-movie-review","tag-pieta-review","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-spring-summer-fall-winter-and-spring","tag-sympathy-for-mr-vengeance","tag-the-bow","tag-the-bow-kim-ki-duk","tag-the-untouchables","tag-time","tag-time-kim-ki-duk","tag-vengeance-trilogy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2268"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2282,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions\/2282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}