Festival Conclusion

The Film Comment Selects series closed yesterday with a terrific wind-up, Memories of Murder (2003).  It's a tight, beautifully executed police procedural that started making the festival rounds--and gathering critical praise--a couple of years ago.  As of yet, it has not lined up a theatrical distributor in this country, principally because it's a South Korean film, which US distribution outfits consider as equivalent to saying "may cause bubonic plague."  Pity: it's perfectly accessible, utterly compelling, and far superior to most homegrown policiers. 

The time is 1986, and there have been a couple of rape/murders in a provincial Korean town.  The ranking local detective on the case, Lieutenant Park, is a big, tough guy who has convinced himself that he can determine infallibly whether or not a suspect is lying to him.  If, in his judgment, it's a lie, he lets his goon go to work on the putative perp, twists and even manufactures evidence, all to nail someone who is, after all, guilty--so he believes.  But along comes Detective Seo, an experienced and objective cop from Seoul who sees the evidence a different way and explodes Park's case against some of the suspects.  But while they seem to be getting closer to a solution, the killings go forward and panic is spreading in the populace.  A Korean audience does not need to be told, of course, that 1986 was smack in the middle of the Chun military dictatorship, and though Bong has little to say about it overtly (we see briefly one anti-Chun demonstration), its traces are everywhere.  Indeed, Memories of Murder is really about the way in which the regime's corruption and rule by coercion have seeped down into the criminal justice system and out into the provinces.  Park and his people are unable to run down the killer because the easiest weapon for them to use is force, and it's unavailing.  Even Seo finds that the case has become personal for him, and he starts cutting corners, with disastrous results.  In the hope that Memories of Murder will find its way to US screens, I won't go any farther, except to say that there are lots of surprises along the way.  Moreover, Song Kang-ho's performance as Park is complex, energetic, and rewarding. 

In my judgment, the best new films that I caught in the series were all South Korean: Park Chan-wook's Old Boy and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (my reactions here) and this beauty by Bong, far less explicitly violent than Park's films but disturbing and vastly entertaining all at once. 

Comments

[Hozee]

I disagree with you about the film -- which I found a betrayal of fascinating material -- but such discussions should await its wider exposure. However, as to the matter of its US distribution: that sure looked like a Palm Pictures logo gracing the print shown yesterday at the Reade.

[Steve]

Palm plans to release it straight to DVD.

[Josh]

I agree completely about Memories of Murder. Check out my review on All Movie Guide. The South Korean films were pretty much all I saw this year at Film Comment Selects. I was impressed with all of them, but I think Oldboy was substantially more interesting than Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and Memories of Murder, which I saw at the NY Korean Film Festival last year, may be the best policier I have ever seen. Certainly, it's one of them.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about Izo and Vital. That says something, I guess.

[Alan]

I disagree with you about the film -- which I found a betrayal of fascinating material -- but such discussions should await its wider exposure. However, as to the matter of its US distribution: that sure looked like a Palm Pictures logo gracing the print shown yesterday at the Reade.