Chan-wook Park’s Tales of Morality
Revenge is a desire that everyone has but no one can realize. So says CwP and then goes on to make three movies based on the premise that revenge intended is always of the nastily violent kind. The trilogy wasn’t intended but after the overindulgence of the second installment Park deliberately chose to close with one more subdued but effectual in asking after revenge what?
If the first, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (SFMV) hints at intentions that were the cause of the bloody, visceral retributive sequences of the flawed characters, OldBoy cares a damn, focusing on building the façade of hopeless sadism. It’s left to Lady Vengeance (LV) to grapple with the uncertainty and expected void that come to the fore once justice has been meted out. It works but Park creates a world of such perverse manipulation that to look beyond and find some logic is a task in itself.
Where is the law
In none of the stories the police actively participate in going after the blood lusting perpetrators. Park doesn’t permit it. He pushes them to the fringe where they merely become spectators, drawn into the action only at the whim of the leads. At first it doesn’t quite make sense but when Park opines that the stories aren’t about the violence but are tales of morality, you got to backtrack through the films. The first and third. The second is designed to deceive. Adaptation of a comic gives it too much leeway. The brutality is just an excuse 
stemming from a sense of guilt. In SFMV, Ryu will not even consider for a moment that the spiraling bloodbath is because of his mistake – the deal with the shady organ dealers. Park Dong-jin has to slay Ryu because his world has been shattered. Yet two episodes – one with the ghost of his daughter and the other in the car with his friend and the kids – kind of insinuate his remorse. Oldboy blinds us in its unfolding of the vengeance saga but it’s in that accusation when in the climax Woo-Jin tells Dae Su that it’s his doing that his sister leapt to her death.
All of them know they aren’t the passive victims here and Park does give them a chance to take responsibility. A knife in hand, Park Dong-jin tells the tied-up Ryu, I know you are a good man, but you understand that I have to kill you right? When Woo-Jin gives that Dae Su that reprieve for his daughter but will not spare the wronged father. Dae Su aware of his partaking. Park isn’t sparing and in Lady Vengeance he makes one look beyond the butchery. Kjeum Ja will have her vengeance but later, crashing her face in the chaste white slab of tofu desperate for salvation, will she get her chance for a new beginning? Seeking forgiveness from Wong-Mo’s ghost, he suddenly stuffs her mouth with the blob exactly as she shuts up Baek when he tries to justify his killings. She knows.
Its all make-believe played out from the minds of the characters. Park superbly designs the stylized action sequences which are only on the superficial level making it difficult to see through. The characters have to work their way out through the mess. All that I am bothered about is what happens when no one takes responsibility for his wrongdoings Park says. Buy why such extremity portrayed? How else do I get the audience of today, stimulated? Very subjective but that’s his language. The stories are a manifestation of this internal struggle, the process of realization and the heavy price to be paid.
The target: The human body
Eventually, it’s the body that has to be annihilated. Park uses the body for every possible covenant. So fingers are cut in atonement until forgiven, kidney is bartered for its ilk or a gun, the heart replaced with an artificial implement and weirdly used as threat. It goes on. If the body is slain it has to be dismembered. It should not exist. The body has to bear torture and writhe in pain before it meets its end. 
The flesh also becomes, horrifically, a tool for redemption. So while Ryu devours the kidneys of the three illegal organ collectors to whom he lost his to, Oh Dae Su bites through an eight foot cephalopod with a gusto that would make him feel alive. Kjeum Ja though when describing the crime she had abetted, assures her young coworker of the opposite for obvious reasons.
Park has commoditized the human body. And none of this seems odd. The body has only this value to serve the need for some gain – materialistic, monetary and psychological. The body is not sacred anymore. It is the price to be paid.
The people, their relationships
None of the characters have a family. A brother and a sister take on the role of siblings and also that of lovers. In OB this idea seemed conspired to up the shock value of the plot; it’s the inclusions in SFMV and LV that are disconcerting. In SFMV, Ryu has a girlfriend yet the closeness to his ailing sister takes a twisted turn in a scene of him giving her a sponge bath. She giggling consciously. Some sparks flying. In Lady Vengeance, when young coworker Geun-shik is introduced to the stunning and cold Kjeum Ja, his first question- Will you be my elder sister? Agreeing to it or not makes no difference because Park ensures that they will break that relation and end up in bed. Geun-shik will then explicitly tell Jenny (Ja’s daughter) that he is her brother and father.
Warped individuals having no familial anchor, they distinguish the family in the one they love sexually and vice versa. Relationships are reduced to such a perverse minimum.
And….
The trilogy is designed to be so visually rich that you don’t get pushed into a kind of dull stupor because of the atrocities. Okay, OldBoy does pull itself down to an extent because of its exaggerated world of personal brutality and that bizarre dose of the supernatural but watch Lady Vengeance (and SFMV too) to discern connections and allegories revealing the characters’ circumstances, their state of mind and intentions.
Park says that making a woman as a protagonist in the third movie was an antidote to the masculinity, impulsive violence and explosions of rage and hate of the first two. It’s very fitting. Yes, Kjeum Ja will have her tormentor butchered but it’s a side story. Her sense of guilt, the atonement, the need to be absolved is the main concern. And how does Park depict these? He colour codes the scenes such that the turmoil within her, her varying moods all take form in the hues of the scenes. Those hauntingly beautiful eyes done up with red eye shadow are just the starters. Her home, dark reds and jet blacks mingling into abstract shapes yet distinct from the other. Her dresses (till the climax when it’s black) too. The red candles. Her delightful dream sequence when Baek becomes a dog to be shot a point blank – white and black. Much later, holding a gun to his head and asking forgiveness to her daughter the red and black become an aura around her- vengeful and guilty. White – the end, the snow, the cake, the relief, yet begging for deliverance. The bakery in white, cream and pale yellow – the colour she was coded in when in prison – the witch and the angel. Park sits backs and paints the scenes such that you have to look beyond the characters. Every scene can be written about, it’d be a different piece altogether. Breathtakingly gorgeous.
If red black and white symbolize Lady Vengeance, green belongs to Sympathy for Mr Vengeance. Beginning from Ryu’s dyed hair, the factory shopfloor, the terrace, the autopsy room, the funeral home 
and so many other scenes are all in shades of green. At times a pale fluorescent, at times a dullish shade. If green usually stood for life, fertility Park here uses it as a colour of death and decay. Not as perceptive as LV but it very well works.
Oldboy is a mix of red and green. The one thing I remember is the wallpaper of Dae Su’s prison. It’s got rectangular blocks of these shades and you’d see the same in the hotel later and in Mi-do’s home. The way his freedom is manipulated; like moving from one prison to another. When Woo-Jin feels the contour of Mi-do’s naked body lain next to Dae Su every object is red. That moment the shock of how horribly Dae Su has been punished takes a backseat. You just want to stare at the painting. Red stays on till the end (Mi-do’s outfit a stark contrast to the whiteness of the snow) depicting love that can’t be done away with. There are shades of gray in the scenes of violence.
The ability to understand and appreciate aesthetics and the academic background in philosophy helps, Park says. No wonder. He films are not passive. If the story puts forth disturbing questions, he is technically so fluent that these interweave to create meaning. The use of background music (SFMV has none while LV chooses a European operatic theme), the actors, their recurring appearances, the dialogues, it goes on. The way Park plays with the camera shots and lightings forms another pattern that adds another layer.
What’s here is just the tip, when I’d seen the films some time back. Another thing, Oldboy, though renowned of the three, gives a truer picture of itself only when one has watched the superbly crafted Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Lady Vengeance.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
There is this image of a scene, in Lady Vengeance, that remains unsurpassed for the shock and mystery impact on me. The scene where all the parents are sitting in those rain coats on a bench with axes and knives in their hands looking right at the camera.
For some strange reason or my lack of googling expertise, I’ve never been able to find that image. I know I saw it on the DVD box that I’d rented years ago, never found it again.
I see something similar in here. Wonder if this was the picture you wanted. Scroll down, it’s way down on the page…
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/FILM/DVDReviews20/sympathy_for_lady_vengeance_dvd_review.htm
This is snap taken as proof after the bloody cleanup…
The one oz is talking @ comes a moment after this when all are ready..
http://www.listal.com/viewimage/616532h
couldnt find it though…
I must admit I stayed away from Park. Zinda spoiled it for me. I wanted to start watching Park with Old boy but I could never do that because I had seen Zinda. Now, your review definitely wants me to reconsider my abstinence
Recently, I finished the vengeance trilogy and also Three extremes. Lady vengeance was a bit weak. The rest made it to my all time favourites!
Hail CWP!
Old Boy is enough for me. I need another year before venturing out to another vengeance movie. There is a distinct sympathy for the villain – kind of perverted, running against the typical, established morality of cinema – the kind of which I have never seen. Oldboy is the strongest case made for refrain from ‘eye for an eye’ – yet made in a way that would delight lovers of MA rated video games. Undeniably a piece of most inventive cinema I have seen for years and yes the color schemings you have mentioned, the red and black – that replace the ‘usual’ black and white we are most used to in revenge movies is apt and very thoughtful.
When the more illuminated white snow comes in the end – it strikes as so empty – unfulfilled delivering a very poignant message – The loss of Oh-Dae-Su’s voice in the end indicates the silence that is achieved after the end of the violent retribution. A Remarkable piece of cinema that wants one half of me to jump and revisit – while the other half is too terrified to find out what might leap out if I do so. Very few movies can achieve that.
VPJ, you wanna get OB out of your system and see exactly what its @, you’ve got to watch Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Lady Vegeance which for me is the best of the three…The blood, the gore all then just become some distant bitter lingering taste which u wudnt mind bcz of these two….
Park is a master of his art…
Can anyone tell where can i get the DVD…in bangalore..i hav searched a lot..
You can find oldboy in cinema pardiso. It had Sympathy of Mr Vengenace too, but it seems they have misplaced it now.
Arthi, Thanks for the analysis… pushes me to watch them again…
Oldboy, the most revolutionary of the trio, has a winner theme, an amazing story, fully loaded with a twist which could pleasurably sustain the attention of any so-called average movie-goer…
But CwP chose to build in content in the form of visual elements speaks of a filmmaker’s passion and also, of why cinema is so superbly sensitive a medium…
this is the dumbest ever review i have read of my fav trilogy. Its probably the reviewers lack of understanding the nuances of vengeance n sadism, that makes him/her write so poorly about such cinematic brilliance. i would have watched the three movies even in black n white.
Old Boy- its picked straight from Count of Nonte Cristo, the lonely prince on the high tower, and shows the patience required to complete vengeance, but like the count the lead character turns into a sadist monster, and love in its so called immoral form wins over. ( i am not surprised by so much hatred towards vengeance as its absence itself has lead to such moral degradation of our society). Watch Gankutsuou u losers,and revel in Count of monte cristos vengeance.
Sympathy for Mr.Vengeance. It shows both the sides of the seeker of vengeance n receiver, and half tgh u feel sympathy for both of them. Its a rare literary work too, i would read its book if there was one.
Lady Vengeance:- ITs the best one for me, as it shows how parents of even killed children cant kill the person who inflicted so mch pain to their lives, it shows the gandhism and lack of vengeance that has perpretated our lives for our over reliance on a corrupt law n police system. Vengeance is always personal, how can you expect a police who is a somebody to punish the person who killed your child, why cant you do it urself. I LOVE this one the most. Amazing music and theme. Reminds of LAdy snowblood a bit tgh.
hmmmmmmmmm……
heck oldboy will go down in history as one of the best asian movies ever made…