Memories of Murder: Parasite Director’s 2nd Feature Offers Insight Into His Craft… and is Awesome
By Linda Barnard
Rating: A
For those curious about how writer/director Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-dominating (and winning) Parasite came to be, his second feature Memories of Murder acts as something of a moviemaking origin story.
Fans have been able to dive into the varied pleasures of the South Korean auteur’s unpredictable filmmaking style with his previous work, including genre-defying monster movie The Host (2007), murder-mystery Mother (2009) and 2013’s series-spawning Snowpiercer. The pleasure of Boon’s films come from his unlikely mix of black humour, social commentary and satire with action, empathy, deft camera work and tense drama.
Memories of Murder has long been the missing element. The 2003 crime drama wasn’t easily accessible to North American audiences, an oversight that’s finally rectified with the remastered film’s release in a limited number of theatres starting October 25, before moving to VOD.
Written by Bong and Sung-bo Shim from Kwang-rim Kim’s stage play, Memories of Murder is based on true events around the hunt for South Korea’s first serial killer in the mid-1980s. The drama follows two small-town detectives as they first clumsily then doggedly try to solve a string of vicious sexual assaults and murders.
Chain-smoking Det. Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho, the grifter family patriarch in Parasite) believes he has “shaman’s eyes” that give him the power to stare deeply into a criminal’s eyes and identify a guilty soul. He keeps a grimy notebook on his desk, the lined pages filled with photos of suspects that he’s snapped with his Pocket Instamatic camera. His partner, Cho (Kim Roi-ha) has more direct methods, donning a fabric shoe covering when needed.
Neither has any experience with an investigation this significant or crimes this grisly. The community has never seen anything like it, either. Initial attempts to secure a rural crime scene after the discovery of a woman’s bound body verge on slapstick.
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The police station is run with a lax hand. Park dismisses everybody as a moron or a punk and he’s fed up with all of them. His investigation style is based on deciding who could have committed the crimes and working them over until they confess. A mentally challenged young man is hauled in and tortured in scenes that are disturbingly cruel and violent.
But despite his failings, Park isn’t a buffoon. He’s desperate to solve the case and can’t admit that he and Cho are in way over their heads with a killer who seems sure to strike again. He’s not pleased when Det. Seo Tae-Yoon (Kim Sang-kyung) arrives from Seoul to help out, a big-city cop who starts doing the legwork of a proper investigation. He uncovers similarities in when and how the killer strikes and rules out prior suspects. He’s fond of reminding Park and Cho that documents never lie.
As with Parasite, the film is powerfully cinematic. Bong skilfully manages significant shifts in mood and tone. Darkly comic exchanges are followed by tense drama that’s often wound in a sense of dread. A character bursts out of nowhere into the side of the frame like a jackrabbit. Scenes filmed in and around a dark train tunnel are starkly beautiful, while a trio of cops in a foot chase echo a Hollywood musical crossed with a chariot race.
Bong also includes social commentary, with scenes taking place during air raid drills typical of the period and the jarring realization the entire police force is tied up quelling a street protest and unable to assist at a crucial point in the investigation.
Powerful, unrelenting, and with excellent performances — especially from Song who is never less than outstanding — Memories of Murder is unforgettable and justifiably described as a masterpiece.
Memories of Murder. Directed by Bong Joon-ho. Written by Bong Joon-ho, Sung-bo Shim and Kwang-rim Kim. Starring Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung and Kim Roi-ha. In select theatres October 25, then available on VOD.