in the middle of watching Chan-Wook Park's "Joint Security Area"

So, this is my first post. I warn anyone who might stray here that I am an academic, and plan on paying a lot of attention to techniques for creating "perspective"--how a scene is conveyed as if from some angle on the events, whether that of the audience (us!), a character, an outside observer/narrator, or somehow blended. Having said that, my field has nothing to do with cinema, and I don't intend to treat my materials from any entrenched film studies tradition. I don't know any. This blog is to amuse myself.

Well, to the meat of the matter.

Btw, since I don't believe anyone will actually read this, I will not really do summaries or warn people about "spoilers." Sorry if you do, and you don't realize that.

It's late, and I should be sleeping already, but Chan-Wook Park's movies compel comments. I've not yet finished watching "Joint Security Area"--a film not on par with his tour de force "Oldboy"--but I'm already intrigued by an element of storytelling. Here's an interesting review, by the AV Club's Noel Murray, if you want a general plot line, with some good comments about technique and Chan-Wook Park's source for the idea. (I didn't realize that the film was released in the States with English dubbing, which I assume is horrible. I'm watching it in the original Korean, with English subtitles.)

On to why I'm compelled to comment. Chan-Wook Park frames two (well, three) extended sets of sequences by taking the audience to the perspective of the (supposedly Swiss-raised Korean) investigator. First, the investigator picks up the deposition of the South Korean soldier, flips it open, and then we go into the sequence which make up the official South Korean version of the "incident." (Just as an aside, the opening scene where Major Jang, the investigator is taken to meet the head of the "neutral" observers, the Swiss-German "armchair anthropologist" is just appallingly bad. It almost feels like a low budget James Bond rip-off, "your mission is very very delicate, the whole future of the world is in your hands" type stuff. Things improve dramatically when the movie switches to Korean.) Then, in parallel, when Major Jang goes across to the North, she similarly flips open the deposition of Oh, and we go into the sequence of scenes that relate the official North Korean version of the "incident."

So, although there are two tokens of this technique, it really comprises one kind, just mirrored on both sides of the border. Of course, this mirroring is crucial to setting up how Chan-Wook Park builds up the muddy issue of the border separating "brothers" (South's term) or "comrades" (North's term), and how the border can still be crossed by an act of generosity (saving Su-Hyok from the land mine) and then some gift exchanges (music, a lighter, food from the South). I.e., the rank and file soldiers don't truly hate each other, and can get along...only when the power of the institutionalized struggle gets in the way does the shit hit the fan.

The next moment of this flashing back occurs when Sung-Shik throws himself out the window of the neutral army's building, and lands on the pavement (I don't know whether he ultimately dies yet, since I haven't finished watching the movie). Here again Major Jang (or Jean, according to IMDB) is involved in framing the oncoming sequences. Which show the "objective reality" of what happened prior to the incident, and which isn't contained in the previously mentioned, official "depositions." Major Jang hears the crash of the breaking window, and rushes to see Sung-Shik on the pavement, and then he goes into the flashback, and the events return to how the soldiers made friends prior to the "incident." (Sung-shik was being interrogated by Major Jang's host in the floor above where she was interrogating Su-Hyok, i.e., in exact parallel, as a pan out of the building and back in shows).

Now, in the first set of flashbacks, cued by Major Jang picking up the deposition and reading, the perspective is entirely the "official story" which will then be criticized by Major Jang as she finds facts inconsistent with it. Indeed, the whole movie is then strung along by the tension of not knowing how the incident occurred, and Chan-Wook Park's James-Bond like intro does give a small red herring, the idea of some great conspiracy or evil occurring...not the prosaic links of friendship between bored soldiers.

The second flashback technique--Major Jang looking down on Sung-shik, then cut to Sung-Shik looking upwards blankly, then cut to the "objective reality" of how the soldiers made friends--complicates the relation of the audience to objective reality infinitely. Because Major Jang, our guide into the discovery of objective reality, doesn't yet know the story, and Sung-Shik's face is the last to be seen. His face suggests that it is him remembering the next (quite long and elaborate) set of scenes showing how the soldiers became friends. And yet there are elements in the sequence that he didn't partake in, since they happened to Su-Hyok. So what is the perspective thus created? Is it Su-Hyok's, via Sung-Shik, once he has told the latter the whole story? Is it also not a bit of Major Jang's, as she is slowly coming to realize that there's more to the story?, and thus is continuing her quest for the objective reality--to the point that Sung-Shik throws himself out a window as evidence is compiled against him. Is it not also a bit of an omniscient story-teller, who saw the whole thing develop? We the audience are of course party to all of them.

In the end, the tension of the movie isn't what the awful intro, with the armchair anthropologist/general, set it out to be--it isn't the possibility of igniting war between the heavily armed Koreas, and possible other interested countries. The tension comes from the lack of knowledge about how the "incident" occurred, and the investigator's attempt to troll the memories of the shocked and troubled soldiers, who once spared each others' lives enough to befriend one another, and now went back to killing each other. It is the impossibility of sharing one's perspective that ultimately provides the oomph to this flick, and Chan-Wook Park's framings of flashback sequences are crucial to ratcheting this up.

From the midpoint of the film, the question is whether Major Jang's truth will actually help in any way to bridging past and present?

Stay tuned...