Director Lee Myung-se's Movie Picks

Director Lee Myung-se [10Asia]

Lee Myung-se's movies dance. Actors are not runners dashing to the finish line. They are dancers dancing to rhythms that cannot be reproduced. They race through an alley under the moonlight, pass rented rooms on the seaside, walk through clouds, wander foggy cities and dance on and on whether it be in the rain, in a bamboo grove or in mud. From his debut pic "Gag Man," to "My Love, My Bride," "First Love," "Affliction of Man," "Their Last Love Affair," "Nowhere to Hide," and his most recent "Duelist," a single line or several pages of a synopsis is not enough room to explain Lee Myung-se's films. They also cannot and should not be explained by text. They are films because they cannot be anything. You cannot read nor hear about them. All you can do is to watch everything that occurs on screen throughout the running time of his movies.

Hence it may be only natural that he decided to recommend "films by directors who shoot movies as movies." The following films are barely the keys that open the door to their great worlds.

1. "Mr. Hulot's Holiday"
1953 | Jacques Tati
“Watching this makes me feel like I've been on a holiday. And what's a holiday? The inexplicable vibe about it that you get all over your body, the sweet but sad emotion that you feel when it's over and the happiness you feel over life. All of these aspects to it are embedded into the ending of the movie."

It is summer. Mr. Hulot leaves for a vacation that everybody leaves for. But he somehow does not fit into the bustling crowd by the sea. Through "Mr. Hulot's Holiday," the audience will get to meet with the trench coat donning gentleman Mr. Hulot who represents director Jacques Tati's lonely persona as well as being the representative character of his movies including "Play Time."

2. "Late Spring"
1949 | Yasujiro Ozu
“I think there's an 'absolute shot' to every movie that encompasses what that movie is about. The only close up in 'Late Spring,' of when the father is peeling an apple, is that shot. The moment that it shows that the father will have to peel his own apples since he has married off his daughter. It's like poetic diction that has been compressed, showing what one person's life and an entire movie is about.

"Late Spring" is about a father who struggles to marry off his daughter who is worried about him being alone after losing his wife. After watching other movies of Ozu's, all with similar characters, lines, house structures and even shots, you may become confused which scene you saw in which movie. Maybe he was aiming to shoot a single movie throughout his career.

3. "Roma"
1972 | Federico Fellini
“If I ever got to make a film school, director Federico Fellini is someone I'd like to invite as the head professor to it. And 'Roma' would be its textbook. When I first saw this movie in the U.S., I felt that it contained everything that movies are about. The scene showing Rome's fancy and noisy market in particular is very interesting. And there's a scene where you'll see a young woman's face in the mirror an old woman sells, which made me feel about time passing by us. Movies are supposed to make us think about how time flickers by us and that that is how time goes by in life.

Everything about Tome. Everything about Federico Fellini. Or everything about which existed and has now disappeared. "Roma," director Federico Fellini's tribute to Rome which is where he was born and raised, pushes ahead which experiments in terms of both plot and structure by mixing the present with the past, history with current affairs, fantasy with reality, the city with individuals and reportage with fiction.

4. "The Circus"
1928 | Charlie Chaplin
"It's a movie that shows what 'movement' is. Chaplin used to be an extreme perfectionist and it's said that he used several tens of thousands of feet of film to shoot 'Circus.' People who've watched my movie 'Gag Man' say that its main character Lee Jong-se, played by Ahn Sung-ki, reminds them of Chaplin but I actually hadn't seen not even one of his films at the time. The people I rather got my ideas from were comedians Nam Chul and Nam Sung-nam. I found out later on that they had imitated Chaplin. (laugh)"

"Circus," about the sad love of a man who lives a wandering life on the backdrop of a circus, is also a portrayal of how modern day people are used like tools by their employers. The sight of Chaplin's back as he leaves behind the system in which he walks a rope under the comfortable tent of the circus for a hungry and chased yet free life, leaves a lasting impression.

5. "The Cameraman"
1928 | Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton
“I watched Buster Keaton's movie at a theater in Brooklyn of New York in 2001. And it felt like I had met someone that I can say I truly love. He was someone who within him, held the things I had wanted to say and the vibes I wanted to deliver. 'Cameraman,' which talks of movies through a movie, I think is probably the first movie containing poetic fantasy."

An intense debate on who is greater -- Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaten -- takes place in film "I Sognatori." Of course, trying to compare the two masters is a reckless attempt to make. Chaplin may be more famous but Buster Keaton is a great artist who has elevated body language into a form of art. The scene where the man struggles with the camera with all his might after falling for a woman who works at a film company at first sight, makes one realize how great silent movies are.

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Senior Reporter : Beck Una one@
Editor : Jessica Kim jesskim@