THE BIG PAYBACK
By Travis Crawford
PARK CHAN-WOOK'S SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE.
Since inaugurating his “Vengeance” trilogy with the acclaimed Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance in 2002 (finally given a belated American release last year), South Korean director Park Chan-wook has gone from local hero (his 2000 breakthrough film Joint Security Area remains one of Korea’s biggest box office blockbusters) to international film fest icon and fan-cult darling, with much of this fame being linked to the success of the middle entry in his trilogy, Oldboy (2003).
Park concludes the trio with his newest film, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, the bleakest and most experimental of the films. As with the two earlier entries, Lady Vengeance spins a horrific yarn of obsessive revenge, a quest whose culmination provides little psychological catharsis for its seeker. (Park claims that his fascination with the theme of revenge lies in its inherent self-destructive futility, and that it is a useless emotion unique to humans among all living creatures.)
With Lady Vengeance, Park shifts the normally masculine focus of his thrillers to Geum-ja (Lee Yeong-ae), a young woman released from a 13-year prison sentence for the alleged kidnapping and murder of a preschool boy. However, Geum-ja’s incarceration was simply an injustice thrust upon her by the real criminal, schoolteacher Mr. Baek (Oldboy star Choi Min-sik), who cruelly framed Geum-ja for his heinous acts. In addition to spotlighting a female protagonist for the first time, Park also distinguishes this concluding chapter by transforming the quest for revenge into a collective, as opposed to a purely individual, obsession: the bleakness of Lady Vengeance is highlighted by intertwining not only Geum-ja and Baek in the spiral of violence but also Geum-ja’s former inmates and a group of bereaved parents whom Geum-ja has enlisted to aid in her retribution.
Park’s meticulous and hyper-realistic style is very much in evidence throughout Lady Vengeance, though the film is considerably more restrained in its visual pyrotechnics than its predecessors. Its compositions are every bit as striking as the two inaugural “Vengeance” titles, but the overall effect is not nearly as self-consciously dazzling. (Park’s original intent was to also have the film gradually fade from color to B&W, an effect preserved only on the film’s Korean special-edition DVD).
Lady Vengeance is the most challenging and least audience-friendly of the “Vengeance” films — Park cites John Boorman’s Point Blank, one of his 10 all-time favorite films, as a notable structural influence, and even claims that he initially had a direct reference to the film in Lady Vengeance but omitted it. Yet in many respects it’s the most accomplished and mature of the trio (and also the best of the three, according to Park, though he claims Mr. Vengeance is his own personal favorite), and it serves as yet another testimonial to Park’s bold cinematic virtuosity and his increasing status among today’s Asian auteurs.
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