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Darcy Paquet
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By Darcy Paquet
People usually think of films as merely telling stories, but good ones also ask questions. They may be questions of identity, such as "Who is the killer?", often the underlying question in Italian horror films. They may be questions of motive, such as "Why is the ghost seeking revenge?", underscored by many Korean horror films. It is the questions presented by a film that keeps viewers interested. Some questions are answered at the end of a film, while others are left unanswered, and after the screen goes dark we carry them with us. I remember a teacher telling me once, "Education is simply learning how to ask good questions." In a similar way, one of the easiest ways to analyze a film is to figure out what kind of questions it is asking. Take, for example, two films that on the surface seem similar: Kwak Kyung-taek's "Typhoon" from last year, and Mimi Leder's "The Peacemaker" (1997). Both films end with scenes where a terrorist is attempting to cause mass destruction: in the former, a Korean terrorist tries to lay waste to the Korean Peninsula, while in the latter, a Bosnian terrorist tries to set off a nuclear bomb in New York. Yet the two films are asking different questions. In "Typhoon," the central question is "Why?" - What has caused Jang Dong-gun's character to turn his back on Korea? The answer to this question is played out in long flashbacks, and returns in the end credits; it's clear that this is the heart of the film. "The Peacemaker" also considers the question "Why?" in a brief flashback, but the film is much more concerned with "How?" How did the terrorist get the bomb? How is he going to set it off? How will the heroes stop him?"How?" seems to be a particularly important question for genre films. It is a practical question that must be asked in the present tense, rather than the past, so films that spend a lot of time asking it are usually filled with memorable details. Characterization is accomplished by showing us how the characters act, rather than explaining who they are. Some Korean directors seem particularly skilled at asking and answering "How?" in an engaging way: Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, Hur Jin-ho, and Hong Sang-soo among them. Choose five minutes at random from any of their films, and the scene will be interesting to watch, even without any background knowledge. "Why?" on the other hand is the most important question for melodrama. Melodramatic films usually center around a character's innocence or guilt, and so the question is crucial. Why did character X betray character Y and run off with character Z? If an answer can be found that demonstrates character X's innocence, then the melodrama is preserved. Perhaps it's wrong to oversimplify in this fashion. But as someone who watches more than 70 Korean films per year, I sometimes wonder if Korean genre films - action, horror, comedy - spend too much time asking "Why?" instead of "How?" So many Korean films seem to lose their energy in the final reel, in a drawn-out attempt to explain the main character's actions. In this sense, it was a pleasure to watch Son Jae-gon's recent comedy, "My Scary Girl [달콤, 살벌한 연인]." The character of Mina commits some heinous acts, but the film expends little energy worrying about why she did it. Another director may have provided flashbacks to a traumatic childhood, in a desperate attempt to convince us that she is, deep inside, innocent. Son Jae-gon dispenses with all this and simply lets us enjoy watching her interact with the other characters. The result is a film that is pure enjoyment, from start to finish. Darcy Paquet is a Seoul-based journalist working for International Screen
