From The Host of The Chaser.
The Korean Wave endlessly spoof on our western coasts of strange films, plastics, violent, in a word, amazing. Memento mori Kim Tae-yong and Min Kyu-dong (1999), Peppermint Candy, Lee Chang-dong (2000), The Coast Guard Kim Ki-duk (2002), Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho (2003) or Old Boy by Park Chan-wook (2003) shook the nerves of moviegoers during the last decade. Through the films of young filmmakers, THE RODEO Korea, and is emerging for some, a place almost unprecedented in the cinema, the capital of the Morning Calm, Seoul.
Between 2006 and 2008, two films, apparently somewhat comparable staged the city, the character of inducting their own story. The Host Bong Joon-ho and The Chaser by Na Hong-jin and take root in a symbolically strong topology (the Han River and the old neighborhood Mangwon), abandoning the modernist imagery of Seoul for a plunge into the arcana of city.
A Long Quiet River
The Host tells the intrusion of a monster sailor on the banks of the Han River, upsetting the quiet life of a Korean family not really perfect. The father, slightly retarded, sees her daughter kidnapped by the creature. He never stopped, helped by his sister, his brother and father, pacing the banks of the river and the sewers to find the girl.
The film opens with a sequence sunny open between picnic and paddle boats, with séoulite skyline in the background. But the modern view (and expected) of the Fourth World megalopolis quickly leaves the room for a less touristy side. It sinks into an atmosphere deleterious the tunnels unsafe city. Maze of concrete, moisture creeping, Seoul view from below is enough to instil unease. The bowels of the city gradually reveal their mapping. Digesting the urban detritus, such as actors, it is the relief of a landscape half natural, half-city, consisting of Abyss (holes gaping mouths sewer), arteries desert (the huge halls) promontories (bridges) and ditches (the pantry of the monster).
Playing as the verticality underground cesspool as its horizontality labyrinthine Bong Joon-ho Dizzy Seoul. The hidden becomes visible, the inside is externalized, the belly of the city explodes at the sight of all. Single point of balance between the two worlds, dorsal "good behavior", the Han River. Crossing the capital from east to west, Han draws also the natural border that separates South Korea from its northern neighbor. Political symbolism and mythology, it is in The Host, the source of evil, but also its horizon escape. Ballad horrific underground, the film ends where it all started: on the banks of the River. But the snow has replaced green lawns, delivering a vision unusual cooling of Seoul.
Running Man
In 2008, another district of the capital into the film world geography. The Chaser depicts the hellish pursuit of a serial killer in the alleys of the old district Mangwon. Located in the foothills of the Han (almost totally absent from the film, then it is omnipresent in the city), Mangwon resembles a San Francisco areas. Ultra steep streets, interspersed with stairs that would take steps to montmartois easy. Tangled alleys forming a maze of old buildings eaten by brambles. Mangwon evokes uncontrolled urban, left to itself, forming a self-apparent anarchy. From the hill, we glimpse in the distance, the contemporary world, bristling with skyscrapers glow. The characters travel a few times in modern areas, but driving their car at any speed. Once they enter Mangwon, they become pedestrians. The car chases (panting) recall the heyday of Hollywood goings, but reduced to another reality, more Cartesian. Indeed, it continues to walk in The Chaser, leaving the viewer time to invest the scene of his imagination. While the city is known for hosting one of the biggest traffic jams in the world (more than 3 million vehicles) in Mangwon, fast cars are rugged or simply parked (parking of vehicles acting as a lookout to find the victims).
behind the economic success of Korea and its twinning with the West (the U.S. presence there is for many), is revealed through the camera Na Hong-jin, a Seoul more mixed. The walls will ooze Asia on a human scale, made of stones, not steel and glass. Overprinting his scenario of investigation to dead ends, dead ends and other rows of streets, the developer creates a semantic space. Mangwon appears in 3D, the twists and turns to places viewers to project themselves. We recognize here an alley, where a store. It appropriates subtly (and partially) a priori wild geography, as it progressively locates the killer's lair. Playing on two levels (the fragmented puzzle of space that comes together, the investigation has slowly), The Chaser takes the form of a set of concentric tracks , who, by dint of markup reveals finally its epicenter, marked with a scarlet cross from the beginning, but the obvious is never what we distinguish a priori.
Seoul mirror.
one side of the river, on the other hill, we could reasonably think that The Host and The Chaser each build their Seoul. If neighborhoods are not alike explored, yet the films share a strange family resemblance. Monster movie and thriller, apparently, the films are both working the cinégénie of stalking in a hostile environment. Handheld camera, directors personify the city, allegorically to incorporate the scenario. Sewers evoke the low-lying areas of the company implied Korean Bong. For Na, her character tries to locate a murderer, the urban labyrinth functions as a narrative as much as a cog symbol.
As for atmosphere, they fit perfectly in tune. Torrential rain chant the two stories, blurring the attempted retrieval of the beholder. And if by chance it has not yet completely lost the North, we systematically plunges into darkness. The nighttime sequences in the open (The Chaser) or underground (The Host) nimbent mystery city, often cataloged "City of Light," but mostly erased the traces of modernism to colonize areas unknown, virgin of all pre-existing stereotypes.
Cinema Korean implements a new step in our imaginary city. Amalgamating dizzying palimpsest form and substance, The Chaser and The Host have created a film worthy of geography work of Scorsese or Ferrara. If New York was the "world city" to probe the twentieth century, the new millennium may well turn his attention toward the west where the sun rises calmly on a virgin ground cinematically.
Posted: http://www.critikat.com/The-Host-The-Chaser-vs-Seoul.html
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