The very form of the title Human, Space, Time and Human (Inkan, gongkan, sikan grigo inkan) evokes Kim Ki-duk‘s Spring, Summer, Autumn Winter… and Spring (2003), and promises a similarly cyclical view of human experience. This time, however, life unfolds not on and around a monastery floating on a remote lake, but on a shabby…
The Burden of Guilt and the Long View of God: Kim Ki-duk’s Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring first published by Little White Lies, as part of a series of short responses to the question ‘Can films change the world?’. In the centre of a remote lake surrounded by mountains, there is a floating world:…
Edges, Silence and Cycles: a brief guide to the outsider cinema of Kim Ki-duk first published in the programme for the London Korean Film Festival 2014 Kim Ki-duk is an outsider in his own native land. Born in 1960 in North Gyeongsang Province’s mountainous Bonghwa County, he dropped out of agricultural training school in his teens, and…
Review first published by EyeforFilm “I, Chuang Tsu, once dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering between here and there, in all its aims a butterfly. I just knew that I followed my moods like a butterfly, and was unconscious about my human nature. Suddenly I awoke; and there I laid: again ‘me myself’. Now I…
Review first published by EyeforFilm “There are many people waiting for your movie. Make a film. Film whatever you want.” This is the advice which Kim Ki-duk offers himself in a probing, unapologetic interview-cum-character-assassination that the filmmaker conducts with himself (the interviewer distinguishable from the interviewee by having his unruly hair tied back). A third…
3-Iron first published by EyeforFilm Young, mostly harmless loner Tae-suk (Jae Hee) breaks into houses whose owners are away, makes himself at home for a night or so, does some cleaning or minor repairs, and then goes, leaving little trace of himself. On one of these uninvited visits, he fails at first to notice that unhappily…
The Isle (Seom) first published by Movie Gazette On a misty lake, a woman (Suh Jung) is caretaker for a fleet of houseboats, silently providing the men who hire them with fishing tackle and occasional sexual services. Drawn to a mysterious new arrival (Kim Yoo-Suk) who seems less interested in fishing or sex than in isolation itself, she…
Review first published by Movie Gazette While plying his trade in a busy square, a seemingly impassive sketch artist (Ju Jin-mo) is videotaped by a young woman with a camcorder (Kim Jin-ah) as he endures abuse from both his clients and some small-time racketeers. She then leads him to a theatre (emblazoned with posters for…
This is, more or less, the text for my on-stage introduction to Kim Ki-duk’s One On One for the London Korean Film Festival on Sunday, 9 November, 2014. “Who am I?” Those three words appear in text at the end of Kim Ki-duk’s 20th feature One On One, challenging us to decide where our allegiances…
Crocodile (A-go) first published by Little White Lies Kim Ki-duk is always courting controversy. His films (including The Isle, Bad Guy, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring and 3-Iron) are often violent, cruel and shocking, and have even been accused of misogyny; yet they also typically manifest a visual poetry and a spiritual resonance that offset their unpleasant…
Moebius first published by Film4 Synopsis: Korean bad boy (and Buddhist) Kim Ki-duk writes and directs a story of emasculation, self-torment and enlightenment. Review: Furious at the affair of her husband (Jo Jae-hyeon) with another woman (Lee Eun-woo), a wife (also played by Lee) tries vengefully to remove his penis with the knife that they…