Director Kim wins praise after self-imposed exile
Source: Agencies |
October 24, 2012, Wednesday
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THE near-death of an actress in an accident while filming nearly ended director Kim Ki-duk's career four years ago, but after making "Pieta," which took best picture at this year's Venice film festival, he is now South Korea's most feted auteur.
The incident, in which an actress playing a character who hanged herself fainted with the rope around her neck and was cut down by Kim himself, shook Kim so badly it changed his views on mortality.
Hit with a subsequent wave of staff departures, he retreated from the world to live in a rough wooden shack he built himself about an hour outside of Seoul.
"For the past two to three years, I believed there was no value in my life any more and did not make any movies," said the soft-spoken 52-year old, his hair tied back and wearing shabby chestnut-colored traditional Korean clothes.
"I hated everything. Then I thought life was way too long," Kim said.
But the working-class Kim, who has been tagged by some feminist critics as "all evil, no good," a misogynist or even a psychopath, picked himself up to make "Arirang" in 2011 and then the ultra-violent "Pieta."
"Pieta" depicts the relationship between a heartless loan shark and a middle-aged woman who says she is his mother. Although critics say it is less brutal than Kim's other films it still features mutilation, sexual violence and cannibalism as the loan shark feeds the woman his own flesh and rapes her.
The movie, which Kim said he made as a comment on capitalism in South Korea, scooped the Golden Lion award at Venice, where one critic termed it "intense."
"I felt that people still overlook the essence and that they are overly judgmental about a certain scene or a person," he said when asked about the frequent negative comments about his movies or his personality.
The movie is shot in the Cheonggye district of central Seoul, once a maze of factories and sweat shops that has now been largely bulldozed. The newly shiny urban area in the film is a place where people are so poor they are prepared to barter their body parts for cash.
"Extreme capitalism is a global phenomenon... 'Pieta' asks its first question about these issues and secondly, it raises the problem of how money dissolves family and human relations," Kim said.
The incident, in which an actress playing a character who hanged herself fainted with the rope around her neck and was cut down by Kim himself, shook Kim so badly it changed his views on mortality.
Hit with a subsequent wave of staff departures, he retreated from the world to live in a rough wooden shack he built himself about an hour outside of Seoul.
"For the past two to three years, I believed there was no value in my life any more and did not make any movies," said the soft-spoken 52-year old, his hair tied back and wearing shabby chestnut-colored traditional Korean clothes.
"I hated everything. Then I thought life was way too long," Kim said.
But the working-class Kim, who has been tagged by some feminist critics as "all evil, no good," a misogynist or even a psychopath, picked himself up to make "Arirang" in 2011 and then the ultra-violent "Pieta."
"Pieta" depicts the relationship between a heartless loan shark and a middle-aged woman who says she is his mother. Although critics say it is less brutal than Kim's other films it still features mutilation, sexual violence and cannibalism as the loan shark feeds the woman his own flesh and rapes her.
The movie, which Kim said he made as a comment on capitalism in South Korea, scooped the Golden Lion award at Venice, where one critic termed it "intense."
"I felt that people still overlook the essence and that they are overly judgmental about a certain scene or a person," he said when asked about the frequent negative comments about his movies or his personality.
The movie is shot in the Cheonggye district of central Seoul, once a maze of factories and sweat shops that has now been largely bulldozed. The newly shiny urban area in the film is a place where people are so poor they are prepared to barter their body parts for cash.
"Extreme capitalism is a global phenomenon... 'Pieta' asks its first question about these issues and secondly, it raises the problem of how money dissolves family and human relations," Kim said.
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