Busan 2014 Review: The Vengeful Ripples of Bong Joon Ho’s MOTHER

Originally part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013), this article is reposted in light of its new B&W print being screened at the 19th Busan International Film Festival. Though the new version is not discussed here, I can say that one of my favorite Korean films is now even better!

Outside of a few clear candidates, pinpointing revenge films isn’t quite as easy as it seems. Case in point is Bong Joon-ho’s Mother (2009). When I first considered it, I hesitated, but after watching it again this past weekend, it became clear that this is a film teeming with revenge, yet not for the reasons that I had at first considered.

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Revenge Week: Conclusion

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

All good things must come to an end, and after nine days (roughly a week) and 30 articles, Revenge Week is winding up on MKC. It's been a great journey and I would like to thank everyone who contributed and of course all of you that have visited the site this week. It wouldn't have been possible without you.

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Revenge Week: Reader's Top 10 Korean Revenge Films

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

We began Revenge Week with the MKC's Top 10 Korean Revenge Films and now as the feature comes to an end, here is the Top 10, as voted by you! Thanks to all who took part and if you leave a comment with your favorites, we may still just include them in the list. ;)

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Revenge Week: Hell Hath No Fury... Part II - Diary of June

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

By Paul Quinn, founder of the excellent Hangul Celluloid.

Shortly after being teamed up to work together, veteran Seoul police detective Ja-young (Shin Eun-kyung) and rookie cop Dong-wook (Eric Moon) are assigned to investigate the death of a high school student who is thought to have committed suicide. An autopsy is performed, revealing a small, pill-like capsule inside the boy's body which contains a scrap of paper from a diary, with the details of a previous murder (of another high school student) written on it. When a similar capsule is also found in that victim's body, Ja-young and Dong-wook realise that both boys were, in fact, murdered by a serial killer and, convinced that the writer of the diary is the perpetrator, they set out to track him down. The only problem is, he too is dead...

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Revenge Week: MKC Thought Leaders' Corner (July 2013)

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

Revenge Week has been a great success and though it's nearly over there are still a few voices to be heard. Read on to learn what the experts had to say about Korean cinema's most popular export.

To what would you attribute the prominence of revenge films in Korean cinema?

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Revenge Week: Hell Hath No Fury... Part I

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

By Paul Quinn, founder of the excellent Hangul Celluloid.

Ask almost anyone with even a vague knowledge of Korean cinema about continually prevalent K-film genres or themes and at some point in their response they'll likely mention more than one example from a near plethora of Korean revenge thrillers and cinematic tales of bloody retribution. While any discussion of genre predominance is of course multi-faceted, the fact that a country's cinema can almost not fail to be influenced by its nation's psyche - inherently reflecting trials and tribulations faced nationally - to my mind speaks volumes about the origin of Korean cinema's regular and ongoing use of revenge narratives: By its very definition, revenge comes as a direct response to wrongs suffered, oppression and/or repression and with Korea historically having had to endure not only decades of occupation by Japan - during which time repeated efforts were made by the Japanese to completely eradicate Korea as a nationality, including the banning of Korean language films from 1942 until 1945, when Korean independence was finally secured - but also subsequent years of stringent cinematic constraints and censorship instigated by the Korean government itself, the revenge genre has since provided opportunities for filmmakers to produce searing entertainment at the same time as, perhaps subconsciously, allowing a kind of audience catharsis by way of indulgence in fictional tales of vengeance and retribution where no national revenge could or would ever be sought in reality.

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Revenge Week: Filmic Self-reflexivity and Revenge in Park Chan-wook’s Cut (2004) - Part II

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

By Rowena Santos Aquino

Continuing the collapse of the boundaries between filmmaking and real life, when the director comes to, he finds his hands tied behind his back and cinched at the waist with a red band to curtail his movement and his wife gagged and her seated body woven into the piano as if condemned to play the instrument for all eternity. But as a shot reveals, what looks to be their home, where the unnamed avenger first appears, is actually the film set used at the beginning of the film. Who is the director and who is the actor now?

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Revenge Week: Recent “Women's Revenge” Films and The Curious Case of Bedevilled

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

By Kyu Hyun Kim, Associate Professor at UC Davis and koreanfilm.org contributor.

Revenge is a mostly human behavior (I am loath to call it “uniquely” human: who knows, maybe there really is a killer whale like Orca, who chased and eventually knocked Richard Harris' brain all over an Arctic glacier, because the latter killed his pregnant mate. No idea what movie I am referencing? Can’t say I blame ya). Animals retaliate but do not dwell on the feelings of resentment, the sense that an injustice was done to them, the way humans do. An ant colony fights back when it is invaded by other colonies. However, when they lose a territorial war, they either get exterminated or absorbed into the winning side's community: there are no “buts” about the outcome. I doubt a soldier ant goes after the queen ant of the invading colony in a suicide mission of avenging her own queen, or deaths of her sister larvae.

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Revenge Week: The Vengeful Ripples of Bong Joon-ho’s Mother

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

Outside of a few clear candidates, pinpointing revenge films isn’t quite as easy as it seems. Case in point is Bong Joon-ho’s Mother (2009). When I first considered it, I hesitated, but after watching it again this past weekend, it became clear that this is a film teeming with revenge, yet not for the reasons that I had at first considered.

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Revenge Week: Filmic Self-reflexivity and Revenge in Park Chan-wook’s Cut (2004) - Part I

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

By Rowena Santos Aquino

We all know what revenge is as an act: a self-serving system that goes beyond in the absence of, or rejects, institutional justice. In short, when one has been wronged physically and emotionally or has witnessed another experience, and acts privately and accordingly, based on one’s ethical line, to punish who has committed that wrong. As film scholar Steve Choe writes, ‘Vengeance requires the existence of a past transgression or trauma, which demands that it be met with equal compensation in the present’ (30). Even more summary still, revenge is about personally ‘getting even’ and (idealistically) bringing about a moral parity but often through immoral ways.

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Revenge Week: Trailers of Revenge! Day 6

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013). This daily series comes courtesy of Tom Giammarco, the author of the Seen in Jeonju website, surely one of the best resources for information on classic Korean cinema on the web. Enjoy!

This will be the final entry that I have for REVENGE WEEK and I wanted to save the best for last. Yesterday’s theme of having a hitherto unknown family member exacting revenge on a victim touches a little on today’s theme of a stranger in the house.

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Revenge Week: Vengeance Trilogy DVD/Blu-ray Giveaway!

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

Just a few days left in Revenge Week now and the very kind people from Palisades Tartan have reached out to us to give a few lucky readers the chance to win Park Chan-wook's entire Vengeance Trilogy on DVD or Blu-Ray!

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Revenge Week: Trailers of Revenge! Day 5

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013). This daily series comes courtesy of Tom Giammarco, the author of the Seen in Jeonju website, surely one of the best resources for information on classic Korean cinema on the web. Enjoy!

Incest as a tool of revenge must surely be one of the most shocking methods of achieving vengeance. The role it played in the most popular of Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy shocked audiences around the world with both its venom and its creativity. The more recent Dirty Blood features a young woman intent on getting revenge on her father and begins a sexual relationship with him without him knowing her real identity. Are these cases unique in Korean cinema? The answer, of course, is ‘No.’

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Revenge Week: THE REVENGE LIST

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

If Revenge Week has achieved anything, it's confirmed beyond any doubt just how prevalent the theme of revenge is in Korean cinema. But exactly how many are there? That's a hard question to answer but here's our shot at a list covering every Korean revenge film we could think of.

This list is far from exhaustive and we encourage suggestions to improve it! Let us know what you think is missing in the comments below, on facebook or on twitter.

We also hope to create a user list of the best Korean revenge films this week so please use this a resource and tell us five of your favorites.

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Revenge Week: Exploring Themes of Vengeance in Small Town Rivals (2007)

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

(By Connor McMorran)

Two childhood friends have grown up to be very different people. Choon-sam, despite being popular at high school, has amounted to very little in life and has reluctantly accepted the position of village chief. On the other hand, Dae-gyu, who was something of an outsider at school, has just been elected as the local magistrate. As these two reunite to fix aspects of Choon-sam’s village, their memories of various wrong-doings, coupled with manipulation from outside sources, causes them to become rivals. They begin a game of one-upmanship, both of them too proud to admit defeat. This all comes to a head in the third act of the film, and the two come to blows. Their battle carries a sense of tragedy, as they have both been corrupted to the point of betraying their closest childhood friend.

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Revenge Week: Webcomics Harbor Old Grudges in Killer Toon

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

Every summer, Korea pumps out a handful of horror films for people looking to catch a few scares and respite from the hot and humid summer. Unfortunately, the industry’s yields over the past few years have left much to be desired. So poor have recent offerings been that some are ready to write off K-horror altogether. This summer we have four new entries to sample and they were all released in the month of June. Among them, Killer Toon, the first one I’ve had a chance to see, seemed to hold the most promise.

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Revenge Week: Trailers of Revenge! Day 4

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013). This daily series comes courtesy of Tom Giammarco, the author of the Seen in Jeonju website, surely one of the best resources for information on classic Korean cinema on the web. Enjoy!

It was only a matter of time before I had to touch on the kung fu craze that dominated Korean action films for more than two decades. They are unavoidable when discussing revenge and Korean cinema unless you are limiting the discussion to just recent films. From the mid-60s to the late-80s, literally hundreds of these martial arts action films were created either as co-productions with Hong Kong film companies or as imitations of that popular style. The background of the movie could be different – set in the distant past the film would often be about an evil bandit or warlord and his gang that are terrorizing the countryside and who may have killed the hero’s family. Or it might be set in pre-World War II Asia where the Japanese army is moving gold or supplies through the region and the best friend of the hero’s, more likely than not working for the Independence Army, is killed fighting for a cause that the hero will pick up. Set in modern times, the movie was likely to involve drug trafficking where, once again, the family and/or friend of the hero is killed or the movie would be about two martial arts academies/temples/schools of thought that are rivals and the bad school winds up killing a student or teacher from the good school, so revenge becomes the goal of the day.

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Revenge Week: Amour Noir - The Tragic Outcome of Happy End

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

Amour noir as a genre in film has always been popular with Korean audiences. From as far back as Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid (1960) to present-day period erotic thrillers like The Concubine, the archetypes and storylines found in these films have been fodder for countless melodramas, love stories and crime pictures. For those that may be unfamiliar with this unique genre subset, an amour noir encompasses unhappy marriages, adulterous spouses and an eventual conspiracy to murder.

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Revenge Week: Dirty Blood's Dangerous Payback

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013).

As a society Korea has been slow to change despite its economic growth. At times it can seem like a gigantic, perpetually simmering pot of discontent that seems dangerously close to boiling over. One aspect of Korean society that is often brushed under the carpet is repressed sexuality and while it isn’t something you will encounter much in TV dramas, music and the news, the Korean film industry, of late, has been vocal in its depiction of the widespread abuse that rages through the country. Truth be told, it is often used opportunistically and many of the works in question tread a very fine line.

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Revenge Week: Trailers of Revenge! Day 3

Part of MKC's Revenge Week (July 8-14, 2013). This daily series comes courtesy of Tom Giammarco, the author of the Seen in Jeonju website, surely one of the best resources for information on classic Korean cinema on the web. Enjoy!

It is day three of Modern Korean Cinema's REVENGE WEEK and I continue looking back at forgotten movies of past decades where vengence plays a major role. Today's film is the awkwardly titled Report of the Daughter-in-Law's Rice Flower as it is called on the KMDb but also known as Report of Cowwheat (Daum). It is a film from 1989 directed by Ryu Jae-moo and starring Na Yeong-hee. In this film, Soon-yi has tragedy after tragedy heaped on her before she finally snaps and seeks revenge.

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