Few directors have left as indelible a mark on our modern cinematic landscape as Park Chan-wook. Slick with beauty, violence and dark humour, the celebrated South Korean director’s movies are sumptuously twisted experiences. They meticulously fuse style and substance to explore the inky depths and desires of the human heart, each one crafting a transportive moral universe.
While Director Park’s films may be renowned for the way they drip with bloodlust, they’re also deeply concerned with intimacy. Be it across ‘enemy’ lines that divide South and North Korean soldiers in Joint Security Area; in the passion unleashed between a vampire priest and a trapped housewife in Thirst; or the scrappy lovers tunnelling deeper and deeper into the all-consuming maw of revenge in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, these films orbit around the romance-stricken idea that we find both darkness and liberation through each other.
The director’s latest, Decision to Leave, crystallises the idea that percolates throughout his illustrious filmography. Having premiered at 2022’s Cannes Film Festival and garnering him the award for Best Director, Decision to Leave follows a detective that falls in love with the primary suspect of the murder case he’s investigating — and though it sees Director Park take a supposedly more somber, restrained turn, it’s been touted as the most romantic movie of 2022.
Now, it’s time to get (re)acquainted with the thrills, horrors, and romance of Park Chan-wook. Here’s where to start.
The entry point is… The Handmaiden (2016)
The kind of all-timer that makes you wonder why anyone on earth would try to make movies after this, The Handmaiden (a.k.a the ‘Korean Gothic Lesbian Revenge Thriller that Captivated Cannes’) is an electrifying, erotic masterpiece. Korean pickpocket Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) attempts to swindle Japanese heiress Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) out of her fortune by becoming the lady’s handmaiden — yet this is merely the introductory veneer to a dazzling and narratively intricate puzzle-box of a film. Refracted through infinity mirrors of deception and double-crossing, it explores just how destabilising and liberating intimacy can be. Devilishly beautiful and elegantly twisted, The Handmaiden sees Director Park at the apex of his powers: deep in the delicious underbelly where eroticism, brutality, pleasure, horror, and a good dose of love-can-save-us meet.
Necessary viewing? Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and Lady Vengeance (2005)
If we’re talking Park Chan-wook, we have to talk about the Vengeance Trilogy. Comprised of three films (narratively unrelated) that each chart a different bloody exploration of the magnetism, contradictions and self-annihilation involved in clawing out an eye for an eye, the Vengeance Trilogy lays thematic ground for much of Director Park’s oeuvre. The two titles bookending it, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance (we’ll get to the centrepiece in a bit), deftly showcase the director’s stylistic daring and range.
The first — following a young couple (Shin Ha-kyun and Bae Doona) who become ensnared in the grotesque economies and criminal networks of the organ black market — is relentlessly brutal, depicting revenge as a nihilistic and circular endeavour that ultimately renders its pursuit pointless. The latter is about a beautiful mother (Lee Young-ae) wrongfully incarcerated for the murder of a child, newly released from prison and seeking — you guessed it — vengeance. It’s still bone-crunchingly violent, but where Sympathy buries itself deeper into bitterness, Lady Vengeance hits different notes of tragedy with its ferociously maternal perspective. Also, this eyeshadow look? A cultural reset, it’s true.
The one everyone’s seen is… Oldboy (2003)
Oldboy, the crown jewel of the Vengeance Trilogy, sent shockwaves through cinema. Homages to its infamous corridor scene — one of the most memorable and most imitated fight scenes of all time — span across Marvel’s Daredevil, Kpop idol U-Know’s music videos, and, some even say, Luigi’s Mansion. This ultra-gnarly film is a force of nature, one which follows a man on his quest to find out why he’s been imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years (and fuck up whoever’s responsible). It’s Director Park’s most famed work, seeing him inventively turn up his signature violent excess — and sickening narrative twists — to the absolute max. A visceral rollercoaster of a film that holds your body captive to its own roiling gravitational pull, Oldboy smiles a toothy, bloodied grin in the face of tidy moral absolutisms.
The underappreciated gem is… Thirst (2009)
Thirst isn’t necessarily underappreciated per se, but we think it deserves to be raved about from the rooftops. Who wouldn’t be on board with a movie starring Parasite’s Song Kang-ho as a Catholic vampire priest who licks armpits, sucks toes and skulks around a hospital having very hot, very not-in-the-name-of-our-lord sex with an unhappy, repressed housewife? The latter, played by a feral and wide-eyed Kim Ok-vin, is one of the best and most quintessentially Park-esque lead performances in the director’s canon. Of course, after a brief honeymoon period, our duo of sinners have a monstrously tragic path ahead of them — one which sees Director Park right at home exploring both the liberation and tragedy of letting someone under your skin. A captivating blend of silly and strange, violent and romantic, Thirst is a must-watch. One of the director’s most delectable offerings.
The deep cut is… I’m A Cyborg but That’s Okay (2006)
Director Park’s rather zany follow-up to the Vengeance Trilogy, I’m a Cyborg but That’s Okay, is set in a psychiatric hospital and introduces us to a woman who believes she is a cyborg. She licks batteries, talks to radios, and tries to recharge herself with live electricity — and a fellow patient soon strikes up an odd romance with her, intrigued by her behaviour. The offbeat, genre-hopping romantic comedy is quite the outlier in Director Park’s violence-drenched filmography, but it’s a film he made for his daughter, who at the time was too young to watch her father’s other films in cinemas. That anecdote alone is reason enough to venture into the weird and endearing world of I’m a Cyborg, but many of the director’s fans also cite this title as his masterpiece — and in preparation for Decision to Leave, this eccentric and romantic film might just prove a rewarding double bill.