Creative Skeletons

I'd like to think that I'm a creative individual with at least one creative bone in my body, we all have an element of creativity that is unique to us, our own personal vision and ideas etc.

I've found it fun (I was about to put easy but the last thing I want to be at this stage is complacent) to play about with the theme of 'dislocation'. Over the past week I've been digging out any Korean films I own and rabidly looking for new ones. Something that I've noticed quite a lot in the films I have watched is the theme of 'family' and often how important it is. For me, personally, my family is the most important thing in my life, blood is definitely thicker than water.

I recently watched Park Chan-wook's revenge thriller "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance", a story of a woman who has just been released from prison, having been convicted of the kidnapping and murder of a young boy. As the reasons behind her conviction become more clear, so begins her quest for revenge. Without spoiling too much, it's a brutal film. I'm not a squeamish person by nature, but I did find some of the scenes towards the end extremely hard-going. 'Lady Vengeance' covers the themes of revenge, family, love and possession. Like a lot of revenge thrillers it poses the question, "Do the ends justify the means?", a question I find it very difficult to answer. Again, without spoiling the film, Geum-Ja finishes her quest and reclaims her life, helping others along the way, but she killed to get to this point, so is she truly beyond redemption?

Aside from the tough themes, the film is extremely stylish and beautiful to look at, despite the grim subject matter and on-screen events. Every one of Director Park's films are immaculately
framed and stunningly shot by long-term collaborator Chung Chung-hoon. This is something that really inspires me, that despite the shocking events everything remains artistic and beautiful, almost like standing in the face of adversity.

Another film I watched over the week was "The Host", a creature-feature blockbuster from another Korean master, Bong Joon-ho. The film follows the story of a family who try to survive as a ferocious mutant sea monster ravages the citizens of Seoul along the banks of the Han river. While the film is marketed as a special-effects thrill ride, the monster becomes secondary to the main point of the story, a broken family who are trying to reunite in the face of a great disaster.

Bong Joon-ho is a genius when it comes to tonal changes and merging genre. His films are jam-packed with pitch black humour and moments of raw emotion. 'Host' does this beautifully, along with 'Mother', a personal favourite of mine. 'Mother' follows the same theme of family, with a nameless Mother going to impossible lengths to prove he
r son's innocence. 'Mother' merges family drama with black-as-night humour and noir-esque thriller. This is one thing I love about Korean cinema, it dares to be different, it refuses to be put into a single box, it takes genre elements and plays with them, and defies the classic Hollywood style.