MEMORIES OF MURDER – in THEATRES IN THE 05/07/2017

Memories of Murder spring meeting in a copy 4K. The opportunity to return to a cinema masterpiece, full of despair.

Who knows , Bong Joon-Ho in 2004 ? Not a great world. Responsible for a screwball comedy called Barking Dog, it is known by a restricted circle of insiders in the Korean cinema. Moreover, the film will be released in us only on DVD much later (in 2007), once the guy is really a name in our region. This anonymity makes the arrival of his second film, Memories of Murder, even more impressive. All of a sudden, we see a filmmaker almost born under our eyes, with a proposal to frank, a master of mind-blowing. More than that, you can squarely say that the film marks the beginning of the new wave of south-Korean cinema that emerged in the early 2000s. It is necessary to remember the year 2004 because it is important. In addition to Bong Joon-Ho, Park Chan-Wook we ravaged the mouth with Old Boy and Kim Jee-Woon released his horror Two Sisters. It is a symbol to see these 3 names, now recognized massively by the press and the public, get out at the same time their movie while they are each almost at the beginning of their career (Park Chan-Wook was a bit more popular since it had started a year before his trilogy of vengeance with Sympathy for Mr Vengeance). Clearly, something important was beginning to emerge in Korea. If you had not realised yet the scale of the movement at the time, it’s safe to say today that all of the markers that now define this cinema were present.We sometimes forget but the Memories of Muder is inspired from real facts. It is here a question of the conduct of the first – serial-killer in south korea that prevailed during 4 years. The case is crazy, since the killer has never left clues. Despite the massive mobilisation of the police and the multiplication of suspects, the arrest never occurred. Through this survey impossible, it is a ray of South Korea, at a time T, it takes to see it. A country beset by doubts, frightened by the possibility of a war with the rival north-Korean. We see this very clearly in the film that the schools practiced drills of emergency to ensure it can respond in the event of an attack. Against this backdrop, in withdrawal, but this is one of the many facets of a feature film rich in content. Memories of Murder is therefore the story of a hunt desperate. Except that unlike a pure B-series intentions to be limited, the film rises toward of other heavens and deviates from its roadmap to introduce lines of thoughts on life, disjonctant the conduct codified in this type of film. Totally the image of what South Korea has for years, it is necessary to take the premise for granted, knowing that there will always be more of a matter of the arrival.

In this case, it is understood here from the first minute that we are not in the presence of a polar basic. The opening, soft, punctuated by the laughter of children playing in the fields, denotes with the discovery of the body of the young woman murdered. This victim exists, however, the film spread quickly throughout the extent of its resources. Of course there is this framework, this campaign, which gives a stamp incomparable to the plot and moved away from the blocks dull. On these lands, not of sophisticated technologies to solve the schmilblick, the means are limited. There too, Bong Joon-Ho describes to the perfection the delay that had the country in its investigative methods. The inspectors are unable to keep a crime scene intact, they torture suspects to hope for a confession and the DNA test required the help of the USA. This reality is the opportunity for Bong Joon-Ho to distill a sense of humor burlesque contrasting with the hardness of facts, such as the hilarious scene where the police officer local beats his future team-mate from Seoul that it takes for a pervert assaulting a woman. Become today one of the trademarks of south-Korean cinema, these breaks in tone are handled to perfection by Bong Joon-Ho since the beginning of his career. And it is found that the time where Okja fate, he continues to infuse with insistence in his work a touch of humour pronounced.Let’s go back to this famous introduction because it is important : the whole essence of the film is condensed. In parallel to the initial discovery of the first victim, the cop is dumb is faced with a kid having fun to imitate. At first glance, one thinks of a simple gag introducing the hints humorous that will punctuate the whole story of Memories of Murder. There is some of that. And many more. In these exchanges of glances, the police officer is confronted to his own image, accentuated by the play of imitation, but are all pretty close to reality. This is the opening in the film a whole existential reflection. If it can be me, then who am I ? And most importantly, the child acts as a distorting mirror that accentuates the defects of the person who projects his image. What the inspector sees and what the mind in the behavior of the child, it is his side, idiot. It is often said that the child is a harsh judge, devoid of calculation, demonstrating a franchise brutal. Unquestionably, the inspector Doo-man Park suffers the costs. The investigation becomes a huge metaphor highlighting the impossibility of the intellectual and physical human to resolve issues that go above and beyond. In this case, it is the Evil itself which stands opposite to them. The inspectors are reduced to small bodies, destitute, in turn employing violence to express the impotence that works. In this sense, it is akin to what I Met the Devil or The Strangers will say years after : the border between good and evil remains fine. This is on the grounds that the south-Korean cinema is probably the strongest in this ability to render the behaviour of each individual to extract of how visceral the complexity of the human being.I saw the devil ? Not really. Bong Joon-Ho takes the party to hide its killer (except for the time of a few seconds in a plane at night, in the rain, which does not identify) to give it a ghostly appearance. Indescribable, at once everywhere and nowhere, untraceable, and yet now, this figure of evil becomes almost fantastic by its absence. Each new suspect is a means of even more further away from the truth, so that the final revelation in the scene on the railroad becomes terrassante as it imposes a nihilism implacable to the whole. We go out of Memories of Murder with a bitter taste in the mouth, plagued by a feeling of defeat. And the prologue is not there for nothing. The inspector Doo-man Park, now converted, returns to the scene of the first crime. There he meets a young girl, taken aback by his presence and we learn that the killer is also income to be in these places without committing a crime. At the time of the describe, it can’t find anything else to say that “his face was ordinary.” In a stroke of genius – the last of a brilliant long series – Bong Joon-Ho abolishes the fourth wall with a look-camera-to-store in the pantheon of the plans, the most significant of the 21st century and comes directly challenge us, warn us. The Evil was there, it still is today and probably will tomorrow. Without a way to eradicate it, it remains only to watch it occur not in the privacy of our insignificant lives. It may already be closer than we think.

Maxime Bedini

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MEMORIES OF MURDER – IN THEATRES IN THE 05/07/2017
Original title : Salinui chueok

Achievement : Bong Joon-Ho

Scenario : Sung Bo Shim, Bong Joon-Ho

Main actors : Song Kang-Ho, Kim Sang-kyung, Hie-bong Byeon

Release Date : 5 July 2017 (exited)

Duration : 2h10min

5.0final Score
Notice to readers 2 reviews

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