Lady Vengeance : Chan-woo Park’s best
The dozen odd men and women sit on the bench in the lonely hall of the house hidden far away in the hills. They all are wearing transparent raincoats, each going through a range of deep intense emotions. They all have small pieces of paper with a number on it.
Lady Vengeance walks in the hall and hands the weapon to the person who holds the paper with the least digit on it. As both walk into the hall next door, the person wearing the transparent raincoat and holding the weapon comes face to face with the murderer. The murderer is motionless, but his eyes scream fear. He’s tied to a chair and his mouth is tightly shut by tape.
Fear, anger, nervousness, revenge, sorrow flow through the person’s face, as Lady Vengeance motions to strike using the weapon in hand.
Gut wrenching, mesmerizing scene. The thing about Chan-woo Park is that he can suck you into his world if you dare to submit to his story. And once you are in, it’s a roller coaster ride he takes your mind through. You identify with the characters, so dangerously, that as they go through different emotions, you end up mirroring them, right there while sitting on your sofa watching a story that is sinking deep within you or you drowning into the story – it gets blurry, you don’t care.
There’s a lot of Kubrick, Scorsese and another director (that played artistically with blood, but his name escapes me as of now) – in Park’s works. An eye for imagery and portraitisc shots – that gets stamped in your brains for a lifetime – that speak to you on an emotional level in their silence, Park is one guy who one imagines may be a brilliant painter or an excellent photographer.
And his stories will either hit you or miss you, there’s no room for middle ground. It’s quite a strange observation, but perhaps Park is unique and the rest of the world is just waking up to this fact.
On a personal level, Lady Vengeance, the last in his trilogy is perhaps much more digestible than the first two (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Old Boy)
Mr. Vengeance the first – just did not work for me. In fact it was emotionally draining. How could one take such a bleak view of life? I guess that Park isn’t afraid to face the sadness and tragedy of life unlike me.
Old Boy – the second in his trios, opened my eyes to his technical wizardry though again there were elements that I just wanted to turn away and walk out. We were connecting but still there was a long way to go. Park needed to tell a story that could squeeze inside my miniature acceptability hole while I needed to open up a bit more to Park’s grotesque view of the world.
Lady Vengeance helps to connect at many more levels. I’m still not there, but nevertheless, Lady Vengeance is one movie that deserves at least one viewing by the aggressive movie maverick. Those who relished Mr. Vengeance may find Lady Vengeance the weakest in Park’s trilogy. On the other hand many like me may find the Lady much more polished and better than when Park gave us Mr. Vengeance.
Lady Vengeance begins with Geum-ja Lee (Yeong-ae Lee) being released from prison after a dozen odd years. She was convicted at the age of 19 for the kidnapping and murder of a small child. But the truth is something else that the movie steadily opens the viewer’s eyes to. Using the help of her ex-prison mates, Geum-ja sets out to seek revenge, one she has been planning for the last 12 years in prison.
Park has this element of speaking in abstractness that disconnects me from his works. But in Lady Vengeance it is kept to the bare minimum. Watch out for the way Park uses some techniques like the long drawn out silences or the flashbacks jumping in and out. And of course the snow – which has never looked so sad.
The sudden singing of Happy Birthday in the bakery shop, points once again to Park’s ability to rip your heart out, as and when he pleases. Besides the one where the children’s parents sit in the dark hall viewing the videotapes of their dead children that can make you cry insanely for hours together.
And that’s why he is Chan-woo Park. You may still not have connected entirely with his stories but the few minutes you do – it’s a storm blowing right across your living room.
oz stamp:
Only for the hardcore movie fanatic or Chan-woo Park’s big fans. Have a drink in hand to be able to fend off the strong wave of emotions the movie may unleash on you. For fans with a lens eye, watch out for ample of some mind blowing cinematography. A screenwriters paradise to tap the emotional extraction.
Cinematic emotion: High.
Sadness residue: 85/100
Not for children
Party Movie?: You’ve got to be kidding me.
Watch with loved ones?: Possibly will lead to divorce, mind blowing sex or getting kicked out of the bedroom on to the sofa.
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
thanks for reviewing this one oz ….
i saw oldboy and was blown away by everything ….
Chan wo park does seem to make films which grab u by ur ass and give u a kick !!!! before u can recover completely … there comes another gut wrenching scene !!!!
im desperately looking for this now … ‘lady vengence’ … my next to watch
OZ
How can u like this more than the other 2?
Sympathy for Mr VENGENCE is one of the best movies ever. I’m a huge huge fan of Park. I think he has created his own grammer of film. I don’t think there is anyone other than Tarantino who can claim that in recent years. OLDBOY was so fuckin rocking. The music, the editing, the intensity.
SYMPATHY for me was perfect. Its exactly the kind of mindfuck films that i would wanna make one day. There are just 2 shots in the movie that was a bit off for me. But that would be too much detail for a comment.
LADY VENGENCE didnt work for me that much like the other 2. One can see that sequence of his films. He was high on emotions when he started with a really great style. In OLDBOY he got that perfect balance with his style at its peak. But LADY V just lost a bit of the emotions for me. It was more of a style.
I loved the way he shows frames of what is going to happen & then show us the whole incident in detail.
Has anyone seen 3 Extremes?
Its a three 30 min horror films by 3 Asian Directors -
DUMPLINGS – Fruit Chan (Shot by Christopher Doyle – the best) HONG KONG – Extremely creepy. There is a full length feature also.
CUT – Chan-Wook PARK – KOREA. Total Park style mindfuck. My fav of the 3. It just blew my mind.
BOX – Takashi Miike JAPAN. The weirdest. Good but my least favourite of the three.
Guyz get this DVD. I dont like horror at all. And i’m highly recomending this. Its awesome.
I too am a huge fan of Park and loved the first two parts of the trilogy. I haven’t gotten around to seeing this film yet.
I watched three extremes and thought it was OK. Dumplings was pretty good, Cut seemed a little bit over the top and Box too too long to develop and the payoff wasn’t quite worth it.
BTW, I would strong recommend the following Korean films:
Save the Green Planet (warning: not for the squeamish)
Memories of Murder
Tale of two sisters
Oasis
I enjoyed all three movies, but SFMV was the standout for me. The concept of a film from the perspective of a death mute is genius, and allows Park to tell a story unlike any other