Filmmaker Jang Hun discusses the tension between him and his mentor, Korean auteur Kim Ki Duk.
By Eugene Yi
Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk recently emerged from a self-induced exile in the Korean mountains with the film Arirang, which premiered to a standing ovation at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. It’s essentially a 100-minute video blog, wrenching and profane, that explains his absence from filmmaking.
He first ascribed it to an actress’s near-death during the shooting of a suicide scene in his 2008 film Dream. But then, Kim went on to explain how his ability to trust had been shattered by The Frontline director Jang Hun.
Jang had long worked with Kim, starting in the production department and eventually becoming one of the assistant directors. But during the pre-production phase for a Kim film, Jang and a producer left to work on Secret Reunion, the young director’s sophomore film.
“They left like cowards,” Kim said in Arirang. He called Jang an opportunist, and the film ends with Kim [spoiler alert] assembling a gun, shouting “I’m coming to kill you!” and “Traitors!” as he drives into the city. [The film then veers abruptly into fiction, with Kim entering a series of buildings, each of which rings out with a single shot. The revenge fantasy ends with his own suicide.]
“It was the worst thing that happened to me. Not Arirang, but whatever happened before that, and the situation with [Kim], everything from that time,” said Jang haltingly, as a bossanova cover of No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” played over the speakers at the cafe where we met before a November 2011 screening of The Frontline, Jang’s Korean War epic, in Los Angeles.
“I should have explained myself, but I didn’t,” continued Jang. “It was a big mistake. And I suffered greatly because of it. I haven’t said this to any of the Korean press, but I really didn’t understand the situation at the time.”
Jang has now established himself as a commercial director, one who has made three popular films in the last three years, with his latest vying for an Oscar nomination as Best Foreign Language Film. Meanwhile, Kim, who has always struggled to find an audience in his native land, has been creatively blocked for three years. Despite their diverging fortunes, Jang cites Kim as his biggest influence, particularly the quietness in the elder filmmaker’s movies, and his approach to filmmaking.
“I learned how to follow my aim, even in the worst circumstances, to the end,” he said.
Jang still refers to Kim as gamdoknim, which when spoken in the second person is the default term of address to a director, but when used in the third person, comes off as something a bit loftier, like saying The Director. Jang said he would love nothing more than to rigorously study The Director’s films. Jang added that he looked forward to the day when they’d be able to put the incident behind them, and to just talk it out.
Kim’s Arirang ends with the director singing the titular song twice. The song is, at its core, an impotent revenge lament. The spurned lover in the song curses a once-paramour to pending foot disease, which, barring sorcery or coincidence, is unlikely to occur. It can be read as both celebration and condemnation of human bitterness, a fitting ending for the vitriolic film.
For whatever it’s worth, Arirang marked the end of Kim’s dry spell, as his latest film, Amen, started its festival run this fall.
The fates of the two filmmakers seem still so intertwined. Jang is famous for his exploration of complex male relationships in his films, and, he and his estranged mentor almost seem like they could be plucked from one of them.
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