3-Iron (Bin-jip, 2004)

Kim Ki-duk

Korea

95 min, color, Korean (English subtitles)

By far the best of the eight films I saw at this year's Sundance Film Festival, 3-Iron continues Kim Ki-duk's cinematic meditation on themes he began developing in his earlier (and more violent) The Isle, and his recent (and more didactic) Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring: the search for love to imbue meaning in one's life, the attendant loneliness as people drift disconnected in and out of other people's lives like ghosts, the Zen-like realization of the characters who find inner peace utterly incomprehensible to outsiders (audience and "regular" people in their reality alike), and silence as the essential means of communication. All this comes wrapped in absolutely stunning cinematography that is so gorgeous as to be forbidding, as if Kim wants to deny us, mere imperfect mortals, entry to his worlds.

The story. Every morning, Tae-suk (Jae Hee) rides his motorcycle to some area of Seoul and places take-out menus on front doors such that it would be impossible to enter the residence without removing them. He returns the next day, locates a home with the flyer intact, rings the doorbell, and then breaks in. After listening to the answering machine message that helpfully informs him if the owners are vacationing (and for how long), he makes himself at home: taking a relaxed bath, cooking elaborate meals (provided there's food in the fridge), drinking expensive liquor, and sleeping luxuriously and apparently without a care in the world. Before leaving, he snaps a photo of himself posing in front of something that seems to have an especially personal value to the unknown owner (a family photo, for example). What appears to be simply an unpleasant invasion of privacy is rendered ambivalent by Tae-suk's strange behavior for a criminal: he steals nothing, and even does some minor household chores (like doing laundry, watering plants, or fixing some appliance). Although this does not exactly make his behavior OK, it does make one wonder about his motives: after all, he rides an expensive BMW motorcycle (so he's not exactly a beggar), and later we find that he's got a college education (so he's not exactly homeless either). Why does this man live like a ghost drifting in and out of other people's homes, leaving strange traces that would probably alert them to his presence but in such a surreal way that they would not even think of it as real despite the sense of uneasiness it will create.

One fine day, Tae-suk enters yet another opulent residence (after meeting its annoying owner the previous day). But this time, its emptiness is only apparent: inside is Sun-hwa (Lee Seung-yeon), in self-imposed isolation with bruises on her face from a beating she has received from her husband whose frustration from his inability to communicate with her has found expression in rape and violence. Sun-hwa is a former model who now spends her days as a shadow of a human being, enduring her rich husband's maltreatment in silence but without resistance. Like Tae-suk, she is disconnected from the reality of others, for reasons unknown, and she is profoundly alone as well. At first she watches him as he makes himself at home, and finally reveals her presence just as Tae-suk is having a rather intimate moment with a picture of her former (naked) glory. The startled Tae-suk flees but later reconsiders and returns to the apartment where they exchange roles as he watches her take a bath amid barely controlled whimpering. As they establish their first link (by passing a golf ball back and forth), the husband returns and immediately invades Sun-hwa's passive body. This Tae-suk cannot endure and he challenges the husband to a confrontation by wordlessly and brazenly playing golf in his very backyard. When the husband comes out shouting and dialing the police, Tae-suk methodically batters him with golf balls until the guy lies prostrate on his own lawn nearly incapacitated and unable to breathe. Tae-suk calmly walks out and revs up his motorcycle as Sun-hwa lightly steps by her husband to join him on the bike.

The rest of the film depicts the growing bond between the two people who never exchange a single word and who proceed to resume Tae-suk's strange lifestyle, undeterred by the beating he receives when a couple (with a boxing husband) unexpectedly returns home, or even when they discover a dead body (which they proceed to bury with care and honor). The tacit understanding soon blossoms into love and Sun-hwa offers herself to the willing Tae-suk.

Trying to guess what Kim wants to "say" with his films is probably a futile, and definitely a misguided endeavor. Ambitious critics will probably find meaning in every little detail (I have heard Tae-suk's break-ins being likened to rape... of all things), but I prefer to let each detail carry its own significance, perhaps detached from the overall picture, and quite possibly sometimes contradicting it entirely. Kim's films are not narrative in the sense of being a sequence of images whose unified purpose is to tell a linear story one could then summarize in a report. Rather, they are meant to evoke reflexive reflection, a kind of uncalled-for state of awareness where even the slightest effort to rationalize would startle the gentle flow of feeling and would jerk one back to reality and logical explanations that have little to do with the meaning Kim is after.

As with his other films, it is foolish to seek easily explicable motives behind the character's actions. Most of their behavior will appear unrealistic, unbelievable, and possibly ludicrous. But it is this incoherence that makes one intuitively feel that perhaps there is something beyond the obvious that one is missing. Kim's films are quire demanding in that respect because while being ostensibly realistic, they require a suspension of disbelief usually reserved for overt fantasies. It is a delicate balance: on one hand, one should not dismiss the characters as simply inhabiting an alternate reality where their behavior makes perfect sense while remaining closed to us; on the other hand, one should not attempt to straight-jacket it with a pedestrian interpretation.

[Warning: some major spoilers follow.]

In light of all this, my own take is probably intensely personal and may be very much away from what someone else would take away from the film. For example, what was that all about with Tae-suk's "golfing" addiction? His seemingly innocent hobby involves tying a golf ball to a tree, and then taking a swing at it with his club (hence the title reference to 3-iron, which I totally missed at the time). He apparently does this in his spare time (of which he has plenty), until Sun-hwa tries to put a stop to it by placing herself right in front of the possible flight path of the ball. Now, the ball is tied so it is not supposed to go anywhere, and Tae-suk's seemingly harmless swings should not hurt her. And yet he refuses to hit the ball while she is in the way, dimly aware of the inherent risks of the action. One day, his unseen (to passers-by) behavior finally results in tragedy when the tether breaks and the ball hits a passing car, severely hurting its passenger. Tae-suk is forced to face up to the real consequences of his behavior, and he abandons even the potential for violence by becoming totally passive himself.

With the exception of a single purging burst (when he attacks the crooked cop who had allowed Sun-hwa's husband to beat him up while he was handcuffed), Tae-suk retreats further from active existence and attempts to enter a world of unreality and shadows. His exercises in jail (reminiscent of training of a monk) seem to render him nearly invisible to others. While he languishes incarcerated, Sun-hwa becomes proactive: she first visits some of the places she and Tae-suk had been to together, this time in full view of their occupants, who nevertheless accept her silent presence without so much as a murmur. She also gathers the strength to resist her bullying husband who suddenly finds himself denied not just communication, but sex, and with slapping to boot. The ending is absolutely stunning and quite metaphorical: as the raging husband waits for the recently released Tae-suk to come and claim his wife, he is completely unaware that his rival has not only come, but is in fact living with them, and that his suddenly obedient and loving wife lavishes her affection not on him but on Tae-suk who, like a ghost, lives unseen by the husband in their home. In an especially provocative scene, Sun-hwa utters her first words in the film, "I love you" and seems to embrace her husband, only to reach out to Tae-suk and kiss him while still hugging the oblivious hubby.

It is a matter of conjecture just how real the ending is: it would work equally well if Tae-suk now exists only in Sun-hwa's imagination, giving her solace and letting her accept her existence. Sun-hwa has finally escaped from her past, whose shadow has haunted her for so long. Throughout the film, she is constantly violated by the gaze of various males who only see her as this beautiful naked photo model: a picture hangs in her home (where her husband seems to treat her as a supplier of free sexual favors), Tae-suk himself is initially attracted to her photos to which he masturbates, and they find another photo of her in an apartment they visit (tellingly, she cuts up the picture and rearranges the pieces in an abstract jigsaw puzzle that obscures her persona, only to have the original owner to put them back together, all except one piece).

Altogether, a beautiful film that is wonderfully shot and that can be profoundly touching. It makes my trip to Salt Lake City worthwhile all by itself.

January 28, 2005