Director Lim Kwon-taek’s Movie Picks

Movie director Lim Kwon-taek

“Every time someone asks me which of my films I think are my best, I always answer I don’t have one. After I finish shooting, recording and watching them at premieres, I rarely watch them at all afterwards. Even if I may have thought I did my best with filming the movie at the time, all turn into faults over time. Maybe it’s just me, unable to look past such things because of my greed.”

That was the answer director Lim gave when asked to recommend some of his most noteworthy films for 10Asia’s Movie Picks. This may just be Lim being excessively modest for no words suffice this great creator of masterpieces, the point proven with his past in which he saw numerous achievements with numerous films during career which has lasted for over half a century. For example, his film “Seopyonje” (1993) became the first movie to attract over one million viewers in the country, creating a social syndrome at the time and “Chunhyang” (1999) competed at Cannes International Film Festival. This is further proven through the challenges he is currently undertaking. But it seems more appropriate to presume that he managed to stay a master craftsman in the world of films because of who he is, not because he had an unquenchable thirst despite his extensive filmography. “I have spent my whole life making films but I will probably never shoot a film I deem perfect. I’ll probably die while slowly working toward achieving that.” This is why this veteran director's calm confession is different from bluffing disguised as modesty.

Hence, in due respect for the great director, 10Asia chose the movies considered to have seen objective achievements and listened to what the director has to say about them. This is not a matter of convenience. It is something that had to be done because this is the one person we cannot refute when he says he finds it impossible to choose and recommend films.

1. "Aje Aje Bara Aje"
1989 | Lim Kwon-taek
“I used to shoot lots of action films in the 60s. But those films were all mimics of western films at the time, not the kind that reflected everyday life here. After shooting such films for over a decade, I decided that I would no longer go that path and in order to survive as a film director, decided to try a new kind of Korean film that is different from the speed seen in western movies. That's when I made and submitted film 'Aje Aje Bara Aje' and other films to various film festivals. In that process actress Kang Soo-yeon who starred in this film won the award for best actress at the International Moscow Film Festival. But that only made me anxious. Actresses were winning awards through my work every year so it made me feel like I'm not accomplishing anything."

High school girl Soon-nyeo (Kang) whose father is a Buddhist monk named Yoon-bong, becomes a female monk just like her father with Monk Eun-sun as her teacher. But after rescuing a man named Park Hyun-woo from a near-death incident, she gets entangled in wordly matters for which she gets abandoned by her fellow monks. However, through that agony and karma she learns about love for another human being and the pain that accompanies it, and realizes that true teachings for life comes from the world instead of a temple.

2. "Kilsodeum"
1985 | Lim Kwon-taek
“I have been portraying various eras of Korean history, from Joseon Dynasty to the Japanese colonial times, and through "Raging Years" (2004), Korea in the 60s. That has been how I witnessed the past. You have to see my movie within that full context. You’ll never get it if you break down my work one by one. 'Kilsodeum,' which portrayed the pain of those times, the pain of a country divided and families that got separated through the family searching event, should also be understood through the wider context of my work."

The launch of a family finding program on KBS back in 1983 showed what a big pain South Korea had been harboring as a divided nation. “Kilsodeum” begins from that search of family members in order to show what kind of effect the national division has on the lives of individuals. Hwa-young who used to live in the Kilsodeum region of North Korea’s Hwanghae Province, manages to find her old lover Dong-jin and Sung-woon, whom she believes is their son. But rather than accepting this fact happily, the father and the son try to erase her from their lives for a trauma is not something that can be easily healed.

3. "The General's Son"
1990 | Lim Kwon-taek
“If I may pick up from what I said about 'Aje Aje Bara Aje,' just when I was thinking I need to create results, Taeheung Film asked me to direct a film called 'The General’s Son. I turned down the offer on the spot. I thought at the time that I was only recovering from shooting shot low-quality action films 20 years ago and there would be no way that I'd go back to that path. At the time however, I had a producer who kept asking me to do a film about a real man during the times there wasn’t such a film. Now that I think back on it, one good thing that came out of 'The General’s Son' series was that I was able to film 'Seopyeonje' without any limit."

To director Lim, it was not such a pleasant experience to shoot “The General’s Son,” not to mention up till season 3. But the story of guys like Kim Doo-han, Shin Ma-jeok and Ssangkal who tried to uphold last remaining chivalry as a fighter during the colonial times, comes with more weight than the common gangsters that appear in other numerous films in the 21st century. One might say they are still all the same in regards to beautifying the outlaws on the screen but the most important thing the movie tried to point out may not be Kim Doo-han looking good on the screen but that right and wrong matters even during the times when people try to resolve matter through fists.

4. "Seopyonje"
1993| Lim Kwon-taek
“When I first suggested this work to the producer he said this story will never appeal to the public. Even the director had no encouraging words for it. But we decided to go ahead and went down to work. I realized that the young crew didn’t like when I turned on the pansori tape. But by the latter half of the shooting I realized that they were starting to move their shoulders little by little in sync with the music and thought ‘Perhaps I will be able to save my face if I collect some 50,000 audience.’ But then I attracted over one million. I really have no talent for evaluating box-office value.’

We are not sure if “Seopyonje’” is Lim’s best work. But if we were to choose one film that helped to spread the name of the already-great director Lim as he deserves to be, “Seopyonje” definitely tops the list. In the story which was an adaptation from writer Lee Chung-joon’s book, Lim tells a story of a father and a daughter who tried to capture that “ultimate sound” of pansori through “Han (恨)” a special Korean word for a “deep sorrow.” A father’s dedication to reach the ultimate sound which leads him to make his daughter blind could have been shown as a sheer madness but Lim, but by building up the story of a father and a daughter, he managed to convince the viewers that such is part of the heart-aching effort to reach to the perfection of art.

5. "Raging Years"
2004 | Lim Kwon-taek
“I believe some of the viewers misunderstood this as the newest action film from me since ‘The General’s Son.’ If that’s how they view it this film is probably beyond par but that wasn’t my intention to begin with. I just wanted to portray lowly lives of the 1960s, a guy who used to be a punk who then by hanging around the U.S. army base was like a parasite that can’t live on its own. If I wanted to shoot action film I would have come up with an entirely different structure for the story.”

Cho Seung-woo now stands as a star actor in both the film and musical industry but when he was unknown, it was Lim who first chose him as the main lead Lee Mong-ryeong in his film “Chunhyang.” Once again, Lim was able to bring out the face of a man living in rough times, mean but pathetic, strong with his fists but helpless in front of power and the times -- the face of the lowly life itself. That face and the setting of the film is hardly beautiful, dreary to the core but a deep-rooted sin of our modern history which we can never ignore.

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Reporter : Wee Geun-woo eight@
Editor : Heidi Kim heidikim@