PIETA D+
South Korea (104
mi) 2012
d: Kim Ki-duk
Senselessly appalling and repugnant throughout, this
pathetically dreary film features overly brutal, utterly despicable human
behavior from start to finish, yet it stupefying won the Venice Film Festival,
which makes one wonder what else was in competition? Actually, this was not the initial choice, as
while the speakers were at the podium announcing their awards, they initially
awarded Best Film to Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master
(2012). However, the festivities were
interrupted from a live telecast when a festival official whispered something
into the ear of the speaker, where Venice rules only allow any given film a
maximum of two major awards, and The Master
had already been issued Best Director and Best Actor, awarded jointly to Philip
Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix. So
after a brief but embarrassing delay, the Jury, headed by American director Michael
Mann, handed out the Golden Lion Best Film to Kim Ki-duk’s PIETA ("Venice
Film Festival Jury Yanks Top Prize from 'The Master' (Exclusive)"). Other overlooked films at the fest included
the latest from Harmony Korine, Takeshi Kitano, Brilliante Mendoza, also Marco
Bellochio’s equally dreadful Dormant
Beauty (Bella addormentata) (2012), Ulrich Seidl’s downbeat Paradise:
Faith (Paradies: Glaube) (2012), Terrence Malick’s To the
Wonder (2012), which had the critics thoroughly confused ("Terrence
Malick's To The Wonder confounds Venice press"), but also the near
brilliant 2012
Top Ten List #7 Something in the Air (Après mai), Olivier Assayas’s
autobiographical account of the political slide after May ’68. Apparently the Italians held little interest
in the French student movement, although in March of ’68 Italian students shut
down the University of Rome for 12 days during an anti-war protest. Kim Ki-duk is one of the few directors to
receive more praise abroad on the festival circuit than he does at home, as
he’s never been embraced by Korean critics or audiences, and was attacked
ferociously in the press by film critic Tony Rayns in a November/December 2004 Film Comment article entitled Sexual Terrorism: The Strange Case of Kim
Ki-duk, claiming, among other assertions, that he’s a purveyor of
gratuitous violence and misogyny purely for shock and that he “shamelessly
plagiarizes,” something Western filmmakers quite commonly do. Largely self-taught, from a lower class
background with no formal training in film, Kim usually focuses on marginalized
characters leading morally questionable lives that seem to exist in a universe
all their own.
What apparently captured the attention of the festival was
the completely uncompromising aspect of the film, where at least on the
surface, the film presents an artificially exaggerated view of a descent into a
mercilessly brutal world that only exists in the world of movies, displaying a
sadistically crude human quality that has come to be known as torture porn,
where the audience is treated to endlessly repetitive sequences of sad and
pathetic humans at the bottom of the food chain who are subjected to ruthless
cruelty, where Lee Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin) is a collector for underworld loan
sharks, and if the money is not there he savagely breaks bones, feeding arms
and limbs into industrial machines, or cracking them himself, turning his
victims into cripples in order to collect the insurance money needed to repay
their debt, subjecting each individual to excruciating pain and a lifetime of
dependency on others. This is shown in
such a dispassionate manner, including all the desperate pleading followed by endless
screams, that one quickly grows disgusted with having to sit through this
nonsense. The picture of Lee Kang-do is a
pathetic wretch of a man, someone with no scruples whatsoever, that trolls the
bottom of this Hellish existence by terrorizing weak and thoroughly moronic
creatures who would idiotically stoop to borrow money from such an inhumane
brute that prowls the neighborhood inflicting nothing but pain. Out of nowhere, an older woman, Cho Min-soo,
arrives at his door claiming to be his long-lost mother, apologizing profusely
for abandoning him in childhood. At
first he finds it ridiculous and throws her out, calling her an “Evil
bitch!” But when she persists, he treats
her with the same callous disregard he shows everybody else, viciously raping
her on the spot. Despite her prolonged
agonizing moans of despair, she doesn’t leave him.
Somehow this new mother in his life becomes an Angel of
Forgiveness, pathetically sobbing her apologies, absolving him of all crimes,
cleaning his house, buying him food, and regularly cooking for him. Her presence suddenly alters his mindset,
where he worries about her and begins to depend upon her kindness. But she is more of an Avenging Angel, a kind
of Satan in disguise complete with her own agenda, which sets him in an
existential turmoil. Due to the
relentless monotony of neverending brutality, the film bears a similarity to Mel
Gibson’s dreadful THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004), as both are mindless and
nauseating films that are little more than sadistic displays of human
torture. The problem here is the
exaggerated tone, where every emotion is so over the top, where characters yell
and scream at one another all the time, constantly bickering, calling each
other names, making threats, carrying out their threats, screaming in pain,
where the film is one long, continuously procrastinated revenge saga, ugly,
grotesque, and mercilessly brutal. Lee
Kang-do comes to personify the lowest form of human existence, evil
incarnate. Some have suggested he’s
supposed to represent the ruthlessness of capitalism, a heartless economic
system that doesn’t care who it destroys, that hears no sympathetic pleas, but
simply bulldozes and lays waste to people’s lives in a momentary frenzy of
violent, catastrophic destruction, and then moves on to the next person. Others find meaning in the title, where the Pietà is a masterpiece of Renaissance
sculpture by Michelangelo, a subject in Christian art depicting an all-forgiving
Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, the first of a number of Michelangelo
sculptures with the same theme. Anyone
who’s seen Kim’s SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER…AND SPRING (2003), where the
director himself plays the part of a monk, knows his familiarity with Buddhism
and reincarnation, where this overly simplistic parable of evil incarnate seems
to suggest that even the lowliest, most despised and hateful creatures on earth
have redeeming qualities, where their lives can earn redemption, if not in this
life, then the next, much of it underscored by the Kyrie eliason (Lord, have
mercy) section of a Catholic mass. The
quietly poetic qualities expressed in the final few moments of the film offer a
peaceful visual transcendence, completely at odds with the gruesome violence that
comes before, where death chants in a state of perpetual darkness bring the film
to a close.
