woman in red,
on the radio, melodious sad love songs.
A pair of delicate hands are slowly approaching...
Rain standing, a
half-naked female corpse,
a golden wheat field under the sun.
A piece of shattered glass led the sunlight into the canal...
The rain
started to fall again, the same
sad love song.
...
"I'm in the crowd..."
This is a film that reflects Korean society in the 1980s, an anti-crime, anti-suspense anti-genre film, a tangled, helpless, and even hopeless film movie of. After experiencing "Memories of Murder" for the sixth time, I still feel thrilled and stunned, and to this day, after thinking about it, I have to write something for this movie.
1. The title of the film - your so-called "Memories of Murder"
must have a subject, who is the subject? Of course, it is the murderer, but the film hardly shows the murderer (except for a few scenes that reflect the process of committing the crime), let alone any memories of the murderer in the film. There is neither a murderer nor a memory, so how can there be a "memories of murder"?
This needs to start from the background of the film. This film is based on real events. Between 1986 and 1991, a sensational serial rape and murder case occurred near Seoul, South Korea. In the five-year period, more than a dozen people were killed, and the murderers' modus operandi was almost the same. In these more than ten murder cases, the highest age of the victims was 70 years old, and the youngest was only 10 years old. In order to solve the case, the South Korean police have used 300,000 police officers to investigate and checked more than 3,000 suspects, but they still could not find the murderer.
Twelve years later, in 2003, director Feng Junhao adapted this serial rape and murder case and created this "Memories of Murder". As soon as the film was released, it immediately caused quite a stir in Korea, with more than 5 million people watching it. Film.
But while the film was released, the killer was still at large. In other words, the murderer who raped and killed more than ten people may also be the audience of this movie.
It is conceivable that on that day, the murderer walked into the screening room with a movie ticket, a Coke, and many audience members. No one would notice him. He looked like an ordinary person, maybe even polite and beside him but when the lights went out, the crimes he committed in those days were presented one by one, and he felt extremely excited...
While the audience next to him was terrified by the murder method of the movie, the real murderer was sitting next to him, In the quiet appreciation of their own criminal process in the past.
Therefore, it is understandable that this film is named "Memories of Murder". I think the so-called "Memories of Murder" was shot by the director for the murderer who was sitting in the movie theater.
At this moment, I seem to hear the director saying to the people in the theater: "Hey, the murderer! This is your 'killing memory', you forgot it, but we didn't forget it"
2. Screenwriter (theme) - Life is the most important thing Good material, the times are the best playwrights.
The turbulent society has caused tragic experiences for everyone.
The real case happened in 1986, when South Korea was under military and political rule. Historically, South Korea was going through a transition and was at a critical period in the democratic movement. At that time, the ruler demanded dictatorship, and the progressive youth represented by students sought democracy. The constant confrontation between the two forces made Korean society turbulent for several years, and the film also fully demonstrated this: demonstrations on the streets continued ; endless air defense alarms; school ambulance drills; military and police were pulled to suppress demonstrations; the chaotic judicial system, the abuse of torture to extract confessions, and the improper protection of evidence, all of which reflected the current situation of Korean society at that time.
Against such a background, the work of cracking down on serial killers and ensuring the personal safety of citizens has become so humble and irrelevant. We just saw it: even though the police have mastered the murderer’s criminal habits and asked the military and police to search and protect the citizens on a large scale, the military and police told them to suppress the student movement and had no time to call the police; even though the police had extracted the murderer’s DNA, South Korea However, DNA testing is not available in China; even if the murderer knew that the murderer committed crimes every rainy night, when the air defense alarm of the rainy night exercise sounded, everyone still closed the door. At this moment, everyone in the house was safe, but the outside became The paradise of crime, the murderer chooses the prey, walks forward, and subdues her... Everything seems so relaxed and casual, because he knows that no one will come out to stop his crime at this time.
The relationship between people in that era seemed so cold and chilling. And this "coldness" is precisely the profound impact on the character of every ordinary citizen in South Korea in that turbulent era.
The era created this series of tragedies, and the director used this tragedy to reflect this era.
3. Acting - the best acting is that you can't feel the performance.
In the film, the performance of the two protagonists is impressive. After many years, you may forget the plot, but you will never forget the performance of the two. Their performance, through a series of opposites in character and appearance, is passed on to the audience. In order to show the audience's deep character image, these opposing items mainly have the following parts:
Appearance:
Detective Park is fat and rough.
Detective Xu is thin and handsome.
Beliefs:
Detective Park, born in a small town, with a low level of education, believes in superstition when the case is not progressing, visits the goddess, and tries to find the murderer with magical runes.
Detective Xu, from the big city of Seoul, is highly educated. "Data won't lie" is his mantra. He believes in science, and through a series of inferences, sums up the murderer's criminal habits.
Dealing with people:
Detective Park is impulsive and reckless. When he met Detective Xu for the first time, he mistakenly thought he was a rapist and beat Detective Xu indiscriminately.
Detective Xu, rational and calm, listened to the clues of the little girl's story when he went to the school to investigate, and put a Band-Aid on her kindly.
Case- handling techniques:
Detective Park, extorting confessions, enticing confessions, judging cases perfunctorily, trusting intuition. Under the pressure of solving the case within a time limit, he determined that the idiot son of the owner of the barbecue restaurant was the murderer. What's even more absurd is that in the case, based on the situation at the crime scene, the only inference he made was: when the murderer committed the rape crime, there was no YM left at the scene, so the murderer must have no YM to stay, so he did not distinguish day or night. The whole body soaked in the bathhouse, trying to find the murderer. There is a scene where he was soaking in the bathhouse, his eyes suddenly lit up, he found such a person, but the person approached, but it was a child. In Detective Park, such dark humor can be seen everywhere, making the image of such a small person more lifelike.
Detective Xu believes in data and is good at reasoning. He insisted on his own opinion, and disdain for people like Detective Park. After he appeared, he quickly predicted the murderer's crime habits through the data of the weather forecast and the patterns of the victims, and locked several suspects.
Through the above summary, it is not difficult to find that the actor's shaping of the character focuses on reflecting the character's character through "opposite items". During the performance, this sharp contrast has shaped the image of the character very well, making the image three-dimensional and vivid. Vivid, it is difficult for you to see that the actor is performing, because you really can't find his "acting track".
4. Themes - masterpieces of postmodernist thinking
If the shaping of themes and characters is merely to reflect the character of the characters through "opposite items" and to highlight the theme of the times, then such shaping can only be called "good", but It's not called "best," and this film is clearly more than "good."
Through the above analysis of characterization, we can summarize the symbolic meaning of the characters in this film: the native Agent Park symbolizes "ignorance and ignorance", the foreign Agent Xu symbolizes "advanced and scientific", the whole The process of chasing the murderer is a contest between ignorance and science.
In this contest, we have seen the power of "science" and the historical trend that "science" is destined to change "ignorance".
Through the rationality and science he brought, Detective Xu ruled out the possibility of the idiot's crime in the barbecue restaurant, successfully predicted the murderer's crime habits, found the surviving victims, extracted the murderer's DNA, and locked the suspect.
The local "ignorance" has also been gradually changed by foreign "science". In the process of solving the case, the violent and superstitious Detective Park saw that Detective Xu used scientific thinking again and again to make the case progress. On the other hand, the "violent and ignorant" forces represented by himself did not help the case in any way, so his beliefs slowly began to change. With such a move, he tore off the photos of the suspects that were locked by intuition, and began to take the initiative to communicate with him. Detective Xu cooperated and abandoned the ignorance and ignorance of the past.
In addition, there is another sign of this abandonment in the film. The violent Detective Cao often beats the suspect with a shoe cover on his right foot. During a beating, his right foot hit an iron nail, and finally because of his unbelief Science, disbelief in modern medicine, and amputation without cooperating with treatment, but when Detective Park signed the amputation for Detective Cao, he finally understood that "science" was their only way out.
So far, science has changed ignorance and seems to have pushed the case to an end. The climax of the film finally arrived. Detective Xu, who represented "science", took the suspect to the entrance of the railway tunnel. A DNA report was also sent back from the United States, which symbolized "advanced and scientific". Those who abandoned ignorance and embraced science. Detective Park hands the report to Detective Xu.
But in the end, science betrayed them. The suspect to whom all clues and reasoning pointed was denied by a DNA report that symbolized "science", and the case returned to its original point. His belief collapsed, he no longer believed in science, he believed in himself, and his intuition told him that the suspect was the murderer. At the entrance of the tunnel, he raised a gun and shot the suspect, and Detective Park stopped him. The suspect walked into the dark tunnel, and the truth was once again drowned in the darkness.
At this point, we see the exchange of the characters of the two protagonists. Because of the betrayal of science, Detective Xu, who believed in science, began to believe in self-consciousness, advocated violence, and used lynching to solve the suspect, while the ignorant Detective Park finally believed in science and stopped Detective Xu.
The two protagonists are struggling, the exchange of characters, and the ruthless denial of "science" by "science" pushes the film to its climax at this moment. I have never seen a film that can handle character and scientific doubts and criticisms like this; never seen a director with such doubts about modernity; never seen a film that can do this Shock my worldview.
The "ignorance and barbarism" represented by Detective Park is naturally spurned by modern people, but the scientific democracy represented by Detective Xu is also unreliable. So far, human beings have truly fallen into absolute isolation and helplessness.
From this perspective, this is a masterpiece of postmodernist thinking.
5. Photography - skills serve the theme.
Throughout the entire film, warm tones are used at the beginning and end, with a golden wheat field reflecting each other, while at other times, cool tones are used, in line with the theme of the film. At the same time, carefully analyzing other shots of the film, it is not difficult to find that the interrelationships between shots are very close and intriguing. Here are some of them as examples:
1. Two contrast shots in the title
Scene 1: A golden wheat field, a group of children chasing a tractor, a scene of harvest and joy.
Shot 2: The protagonist bows his head beside the wheat field, the camera enters the ditch with the protagonist's field of vision, and a female corpse appears. The framing is dark and cold.
The strong contrast of two consecutive shots has great visual impact, and it grabbed the audience's attention from the very beginning.
2, two-minute long shots
From 6 minutes and 45 seconds to 8 minutes and 40 seconds, there is a two-minute long shot, and the photographer follows the camera with the camera in his hand. The police, the driver of the tractor, the children wandering around the crime scene, the person from the forensics department fell, the female corpse was lying in the center and no one was dealt with... A scene of watching the lively scene in the countryside, and the camera followed the protagonist. The path moves, such follow-up and long shots, just rightly show the messy situation of the scene, and at the same time it also shows the social background that the theme wants to reflect.
(Nausea in front ……………………)
3. Two sets of instant cuts at 36 minutes and 20 seconds
During the autopsy of the third deceased, the camera suddenly turned downwards and shot the deceased directly. The deceased was white and rotten, lying on a flat autopsy board, which was extremely disgusting. Then, cut to the next shot of roasting meat in an instant, (note: there is almost no gap between the two shots), the meat is red with blood, and it is poured on the black roasting meat plate, and the police who have finished the autopsy are roasting the meat.
I have to say that the switching of these two shots is disgusting, but you have to admire the director's imagination: one shot embodies evil, the next shot immediately embodies beauty, but the combination of the two shots presents an amazing Nausea effect.
4. A group of subjective shots at 111 minutes
Shot 1: Flat shot, two women met on the road at night.
Shot 2: Overhead shot, silent, the camera swings between two women walking in opposite directions, and after a few swings, it finally stops on the female student. Then the murderer strikes...
The advantage of this set of shots is that all the actors did not have a line in the whole process, but they reflected the tangled process of the murderer's inner choice of the target of harm. The camera swayed between the two women, representing the murderer's The eyes looked back and forth between the two women, making a choice inwardly. The final choice is complete, and finally start.
Careful analysis of the shots in the film, we can also find many of the director's careful design.
Above, I talked about my views from the title, screenwriter, theme, performance, photography, etc. I have watched a lot of movies over the years, but I have never seen such a movie. Even after watching it six times, I still can't find it. It is a great honor for me to meet such a film with obvious flaws!
Qian Zhihao
2016.7.30
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