Fiume O Morte!

 

Gabriele D'Annunzio

D'Annunzio (in the middle with the stick) in Fiume, 1919

D'Annunzio (in the middle in uniform) with Italian publisher Arnoldo Mondadori

Director Igor Bezinović

Gabriele D’Annunzio, September 1919

Elon Musk Roman/fascist salute during Trump inauguration, January 2025

FIUME O MORTE!               B+                                                                                         Croatia  Italy  Slovenia  (112 mi)  2025  d: Igor Bezinović

Director Statement, Igor Bezinović

By making this film I wanted to get to know the past of my hometown Rijeka/Fiume, but also to get to understand its present state from a new perspective. During this process I’ve met hundreds of my fellow citizens who wanted to work on the film in front of the camera or behind it. I’ve met drivers, politicians, dustbin collectors, archivists, doormen, cooks, musicians, professors, translators and waiters who all had ideas about what this film should be like. I’ve also met historians of all kinds, from those who saw D’Annunzio as the crazier version of Mussolini to the ones who saw him as the Italian Che Guevara.

Besides meeting new people I’ve also read thousands and thousands of pages on D’Annunzio in Fiume, and while doing it I was not only gathering facts but was also shaping my own political ideas.

One idea, however, stayed clear to me all the way. That idea is formulated in a political pamphlet published in Fiume in 1922, soon after D’Annunzio’s departure: “Long live Fiume, free and independent from any kind of rescuers, liberators and protectors!”

I made a film with my fellow citizens and for my fellow citizens, building a chronological story that we’ll be able, I hope, to retell to new generations. I also hope that our film will help the audiences outside of Rijeka think about how much they know about the histories of their own hometowns and about how these histories got remembered and retold.

In his lesser-known essay from 1960, Pier Paolo Pasolini calls D’Annunzio’s occupation of Fiume a “pagliacciata narcisistica,” “a narcissistic farce.” D’Annunzio saw Fiume as a personal playground, as a place where he could experiment and practice everything that came to his mind.

By making this film I wanted to keep D’Annunzio’s idea of Rijeka/Fiume as a playground, but this time the citizens of Rijeka are the ones who are playing.

Far-right authoritarianism is on the rise around the world, threatening democracies everywhere, with its fascist clutches gripping even the United States, as this film conveys a timely warning against the rise of global far-right authoritarianism.  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the blueprint model for the American right wing, apparently enthralled by the ease in how he systematically dismantled the country’s legal system and changed the election system to ensure future election victories.  By rigging the elections and at the same time stripping the nation’s legal authority to challenge the results, Orbán was also withdrawing media licenses for independent journalists, with ownership of the media increasingly shifting to oligarchs allied with Prime Minister Orbán’s government, making state-owned broadcasters controlled by the ruling party.  If this doesn’t sound like what’s happening in America right now, then you haven’t been paying attention.  But it’s not just happening here, as there are examples throughout history, with this Croatian filmmaker taking a look back at his own country’s turbulent history one hundred years ago, where he decides to recreate a little-known moment in history, while having a little fun in the process, creating a visionary, boldly inventive work of art that is original and genuinely eye opening, while at the same time informative.  Coming from the last generation of Tito’s pioneers, Union of Pioneers of Yugoslavia, Igor Bezinović is a filmmaker born in Rijeka, graduating in film directing at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb and in Philosophy, Sociology, and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb.  Nestled in an inlet of the Adriatic Sea, Rijeka/Fiume is now the third largest city in Croatia, but it has frequently changed hands throughout history, changing its country of origin at least nine different times in the 20th century alone, as just after WWI it belonged to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, before that partly the Kingdom of Italy and partly the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and before that the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, before that the Free State of Fiume, before that the Italian Regency of Carnaro, and before that the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

That’s a bit of a swallow, so to make things easier to comprehend, Bezinović asks citizens of his own city if they know who Gabriele D’Annunzio is, getting many different answers, but most do not, as he’s a forgotten footnote in history, which the filmmaker delightfully brings back to life with the participation of around 100 non‑professional actors and extras, not unlike what Robert Greene constructed with Bisbee '17 (2018), where it’s 30-minutes in before the title card appears, named after his political slogan.  What defines our identity?  What makes us who we are?  Combining archival footage of one of the most photographed events of the time, including video footage, interviews, and reenactments, Bezinović engages about three hundred locals to re-enact a rather surreal 16-month occupation in 1919 when D’Annunzio declared himself the de facto dictator of Fiume, the Italian name for the city, as the decadent Italian poet, playwright, orator, journalist, aristocrat, flamboyant public persona, and Royal Italian Army officer during World War I preached an ultra-right Italian nationalism after the war that was a predecessor to Benito Mussolini’s full-blown fascism.  Bezinović ironically remarks at the beginning of the film that the “film represents a mirror of today’s time,” while visually exploring buildings and streets that bore D’Annunzio’s name during the fascist period, noting “My Italian colleagues warned me not to mention fascism too much in the intro for the sake of Italian viewers, so I’ll stop here.”  But if truth be told, he doesn’t exactly heed their suggestion, as the film is praised in Croatia while attracting little attention in Italy, where D’Annunzio is still celebrated in Italy as a national hero, erecting a statue in Trieste about seventy kilometers away on the 100th anniversary of the occupation of Fiume, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni photographed in front of it, praising D’Annunzio as a man who ruled “with courage and audacity,” while in Croatia he is remembered as a megalomaniacal fascist occupier. 

Amusingly shot by Gregor Božič, there are seven different bald-headed actors drawn from the city streets who play D’Annunzio, with Bezinović announcing each change, while the narrators keep changing as well, each adding a different aspect.  The story of D’Annunzio’s occupation is narrated in the local Fiumano language, a variety of the Venetian dialect historically spoken by the Italian community of Fiume, yet as Bezinović notes in the first parts of the film, this is “no longer spoken or understood by most people in Rijeka,” yet the changing languages is a realistic aspect that reflects upon the city itself, part of the cosmopolitan, multi-cultural history of Rijeka and part of the linguistic tapestry in present-day Croatia, where that diversity is something D’Annunzio despised yet the film revels in, pretty much rubbing our noses in it.  Like Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude, it’s the irreverent absurdity that stands out, where modern-day re-enactments show how the events of the past are still a living reality, yet restaging history in this way also makes it easier to remember, as despite the dry facts on display, what stands out is the mocking tone of the filmmaker, who is not making fun of history, but how it can be remembered today, as the film is much more entertaining and fun than any description implies, where D’Annunzio is a model for contemporary right-wing populists across Europe and elsewhere.  Nearly ten years in the making, Bezinović draws from a treasure trove of 10,000 archival photographs while also using ordinary citizens from town to restage those same images, starting in the present, showing historical pictures of demolished bridges and buildings, and then showing those same sites in Rijeka today, a port city on Kvarner Bay in the northern Adriatic Sea, with plenty of cars and pedestrian traffic buzzing by.  Yet it’s the tongue-in-cheek narration that stands out, continually conveying a message where reviving interest in the city’s history is an essential message, as it makes us pause and take notice, reminding us this has happened before, so maybe we should pay attention to see how this plays out. 

Employing a hybrid, experimental format and satiric restaging technique used in Radu Jude’s I Don't Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Îmi este indiferent daca în istorie vom intra ca barbari) (2018), this is a performative historiography that reconfigures memory through reenactment, documentary observation, archival reappropriation, and collective performances in which contemporary residents of Rijeka restage the historical events.  Focusing on the 1919–1921 occupation of the city of Rijeka/Fiume by the Italian writer and political rabble rouser Gabriele D’Annunzio, who ruled without being elected, the film critically examines the tactics of performance, manipulation, and propaganda employed during the siege, as D’Annunzio was one of the biggest masters of ghastly political showmanship of his time that would ultimately lead to Mussolini, using political theater as a staged reality where the power of pageantry is showcased through a masquerade of images, gestures, and myth as much as through force, exposing the constructed and contingent nature of historical narratives by fragmenting identity, transforming the city into a living memoryscape, FIUME O MORTE! Clip YouTube (1:29). Reflecting on the persistence of extremist ideologies in contemporary society, this is skillfully achieved through participatory performances involving those who live in the city today, as history and memory emerge, skillfully and cohesively edited together by Hrvoslava Brkusic.  At the same time, the film articulates a critical stance towards militarism, political spectacle, and nationalist imagery, positioning memory as a site of communal engagement and critical confrontation with both the past and the present, subversively diagnosing the legacy of fascism.  Winner of the 1st place Tiger Award and Fipresci Prize at the 2025 International Film Festival of Rotterdam, this is the most-watched film in the sixteen years of existence of Rijeka’s 300-seat arthouse Art-kino Theater, and the most-watched documentary in Croatia of all time.

The end of WWI transformed Rijeka/Fiume into a politically contested terrain, where at the time the Rječina River divided it from Sušak, an adjacent town with a predominantly Croatian population which has now been united into one larger city.  Entering the city in a caravan of trucks carrying guns, ammunition, supplies, and soldiers, the so-called legionnaires, D’Annunzio wanted to annex the city for Italy in defiance of his own government, dissatisfied with the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference which proposed handing over the city to the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), angered by what he considered to be the surrender of an Italian city.  Italy had not, however, made any demands on Rijeka/Fiume, but had instead forgone it in favor of Croatia, leading to a transitory period, the rule of D’Annunzio, where the Italian Regency of Carnaro was a self-proclaimed independent state, as they were successful in seizing control of the city and forced the withdrawal of the Allied occupying forces.  The Italian government opposed this and attempted to pressure D'Annunzio into withdrawing by initiating a blockade of Fiume.  When Italy sought a referendum in Fiume on D’Annunzio’s government, he first agreed but, realizing the vote was against him, sent in the troops to disrupt the vote and nullify the result.  Is anyone in America paying attention?   The song Giovinezza (Youth) is frequently performed, a piece sung by D’Annunzio’s legionnaires during the occupation and later adopted as the anthem of Mussolini’s Italian National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista), anthem of the PNF (1924 lyrics, two verses only) YouTube (2:29).  In what was a dry run for fascism, developing in the early stages, D’Annunzio was never formally a member of the fascist movement, though virtually the entire ritual of fascism was invented by him during his occupation of Fiume where he popularized the black shirts (the Arditi), the Roman/fascist salute, the cries of “Eia, eia, eia! Alala!” taken from Achilles’ cry in The Iliad, and the balcony speeches featuring flamboyant rhetoric engaging with a frenzied crowd, all of which later became symbolic pillars of fascism.  

Later ruling with similar charismatic flamboyance, Mussolini was impressed, adapting many of the same strategies, from D’Annunzio’s authoritarian interventions like censorship and violent repression, to the regulation of public life, including the prohibition of the Rijeka Carnival, strikes, and unauthorized public gatherings, while also having his hand in the promulgation of ambitious charters and the entire choreography of uniformed street parades and ceremonies.  Yet while amassing his authoritarian power, D’Annunzio also personally enjoyed cocaine and lavishly eccentric parties, which the Italians reduce to avant-gardism and an eccentric personality, always considering him a great poet, completely overlooking the violent impact of his fascist rule.  While he’s the star of the show, the protagonist in every sense of the word, and a worshipped celebrity, the film is really about the city of Rijeka, the city’s historically fluid and multi-layered identity, and how it survived this occupation, where over the end credits we see the cast celebrating the lively Carnival together after the shooting ends.  In embodying this more complex plurality, the filmmaker subverts the exclusive and homogenizing nationalist agenda advocated by D’Annunzio himself, who described the non-Italian residents of the city as “Slavic bastards” and “filthy Croats,” destroying their buildings in a hate-based agenda aimed at a radical Italianization of the city.  A true “essay film,” Bezinović foregrounds the instability and performative construction of historical identity, while at the same time reveals how interpretations that focus exclusively on the aesthetic or eccentric dimensions of D’Annunzio’s occupation ultimately lead only to confusion, obscuring its darker sides of violence, repression, the dangers of political idolatry, and especially its protofascist tendencies, foreshadowing the many other authoritarians who are yet to come, where we are reminded that billionaire Elon Musk performed the Roman/fascist salute at the second inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump.   

A Traveler's Needs (Yeohaengjaui Pilyo)

 

Writer/director Hong Sang-soo

receiving Silver Bear at Berlin

Hong at Berlin with Isabelle Huppert

Korean poet Yun Dong-ju

Hong with Kim Min-hee

A TRAVELER’S NEEDS (Yeohaengjaui Pilyo)      B                                                             South Korea  (90 mi)  2024  d: Hong Sang-soo

Wishing not to have                                                                                                                        so much as a speck of shame                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Toward heaven until the day I die,
I suffered, even when the wind stirred the leaves. 

With my heart singing to the stars,
I shall love all things that are dying. 

And I must walk the road
that has been given to me. 

Tonight, again, the stars are
brushed by the wind.

—Foreword or Seosi, Yun Dong-ju poem inscribed on the rock memoriam, from Sky, Wind, Stars, and Poetry, 1941, [POEM] "Foreword" by Yun Dong-ju (1941) - in the 1930s ...

Another inter-generational movie that examines the nature of relationships, but in an atypical way, as it provides so little information, where things are merely hinted at on a surface level, requiring viewers to make up their own minds about what they see, where the changing locations are unique to this film, giving viewers something more to think about, with Hong always in search of greater meaning, where the banalities of ordinary existence are illuminated like a Haiku poem, where each new film may feel more like chapters of a new book Hong is writing.  A minimalist film without a plot or a story, the filmmaker’s eighth feature in just over four years, coming just before By the Stream (Suyoocheon) (2024), where the mystery is that it exists at all.  Nowhere else will you find a film like this, as subtle as anything you’re going to see, existing only in the imagination of Hong Sang-soo, who examines the very nature of identity, but not in the traditional sense, as everything remains hidden beneath the surface, where you must sense, or infer, what you think you comprehend.  It probes the existential dilemma, asking if this is how we view ourselves, or how others see us, inevitably a combination of the two, yet either way, there’s no definitive right answer.  This marks Hong’s return to making a film with the incomparable French actress Isabelle Huppert, having done so twice earlier with In Another Country (Da-reun na-ra-e-seo) (2012), arguably among Hong’s weaker efforts, and the more engaging Claire's Camera (La caméra de Claire) (2017), which was shot in only two weeks entirely in and around the neighborhood surrounding the Cannes Film Festival while it was taking place, with the actress’s sunny disposition matching the sun-drenched charm of the city.  While this may be the sparer of the three, like those films, this was also shot mostly in English, supposedly a universal language around the globe, with some noticeably struggling to express themselves, which may as well be what this film is about, shot in various locations around Seoul, including neighborhoods in the Gangbuk-gu district, with mountain peaks seen off in the distance.  Huppert’s lighter-than-air performance is about as far from Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (La pianiste) (2001) as you can imagine, as Huppert is equally adept in ultra-serious roles.  Hong’s fourth award at the Berlin Film Festival in just five years, winning a Best Director Silver Bear for The Woman Who Ran (Domangchin yeoja) (2020), a Best Screenplay Silver Bear for Introduction (Inteurodeoksyeon) (2021), a Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize (2nd Place) for The Novelist's Film (So-seol-ga-ui yeong-hwa) (2022), and another Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for this film.  Amusingly, when awarded the Silver Bear in 2024, Hong wondered on stage what the Berlinale jury saw in the film, acknowledging that he doesn’t fully understand what people see in his films.  Many of Hong’s films deal with the awkwardness of human behavior, failed relationships, and an inability to articulate inner thoughts, even in their own language, as failures of communication exist in abundance, so this simply accentuates a theme that is prominent throughout Hong’s films, where you have to search to find his films, which remain relatively obscure, generating a wide array of opinions, where critics did not embrace him early in his career, even though his first five films remain among his best, but today his filmography is rightly deified by a growing part of the world’s cinephilia.  A traveler’s needs are money, food, drink, and a roof over their head, but there’s also a need to be part of something larger than yourself.  What’s unique to this film is the prevailing sense of innocence generated by the traveler’s wanderings, as she enters and exits people’s lives with regularity, drawing differing reactions, yet has no apparent agenda, which some find suspicious, but this leaves her more open to explore the world around her with unbiased eyes, which some might find more genuinely honest, as she’s not carrying any cultural baggage around with her, making her a true seeker who is open to surprises.    

Isabelle Huppert is Iris, a roaming French teacher in Korea with an unorthodox teaching method, whose motives are never clear, where the film is a series of improbable encounters, each featuring a different person playing a musical instrument, a piano, a guitar, a harmonium, and a recorder.  Iris is not in the habit of using textbooks, or grammar rules, and does much more than translating common words or phrases, but instead invents her own style, making it personal, asking students to examine their own feelings, and think of a thought or a series of thoughts that express something meaningful and write it down in French, repeating it often.  In this way, the purpose of learning a language is to unlock meaning, where a new language becomes a way of understanding life itself, as her goal seems to be that to hear your own personal thoughts in another language flips a switch, making it a warm and wonderful experience, not difficult or troubling in any way, where it’s essentially a way to use language to better understand yourself.  With the teacher posing a single question, the student tries to describe how they feel about it, but not just a single feeling, digging deeper into something meaningful so that it sticks with you, providing a greater appreciation of who these people are, feeling a sense of belonging.  Iris then transcribes those thoughts into French on little index cards and asks that they read and reread these passages regularly, becoming intimately familiar with them, informing them, “You’ll love your true emotion expressed in a foreign language.”  For some strange reason, she is well paid for providing these services, though from what we can see, it feels more experimental that reliable.  There’s a sense of curiosity about why she’s in Korea, and how long it’s been, wondering why she felt a need to leave France and travel abroad, obviously seeking something uniquely different, but we never get a handle on what that is, as she remains aloof and unreadable for the most part, but always friendly and even flirtatious with men, with a strange habit of craving makgeolli, a milky white rice wine drink that offers a kick, yet also provides beneficial medicinal properties.  The tremendous screen presence of Huppert is always a treat, especially honed down to the bare essentials as she is here.  The simple rhythms are in harmony with Hong’s other films of the same period, like old familiar faces, but this feels more enigmatic, and in something of a surprise, there are no alter egos of Hong himself.  At the core of Hong’s artistry is language, and the ability to look under the surface, beyond the barriers of misunderstanding that must be overcome when you’re conversing with strangers in a language that is foreign to you, where your words don’t carry the same weight as when native speakers converse among themselves.  For instance, Iris doesn’t speak Korean, so her interaction with Korean characters takes place mainly through gestures, facial expressions, and stunted English.  This creates a constant sense of alienation, but also a more exposed vulnerability, which becomes a powerful metaphor of the human condition. Huppert is capable of communicating an infinite range of emotions, making the gap between what is said and what is understood palpable, where Hong’s interest lies in this expressive display of interaction and emotion which end up generating greater depth, where the goal is always finding deeper meanings.  There are very few filmmakers as distinctive as Hong Sang-soo, a true independent in a society where that doesn’t exist, so he’s carved out his own career path, using a style that is not easy to pin down and describe, where his greatest strength lies in his simplicity, so subtle that it often eludes critics, compounded by the director’s reticence to publicly discuss the meaning of his work. 

Told in three segments, the film opens in a living room in front of a heavily stocked bookshelf with Iris and the much younger I-song (Kim Seung-yun, the girl from In Water (Mul-an-e-seo) and the documentarian filmmaker from In Our Day (Uriui haru), both from 2023) discussing the lesson plan, but as they decide to walk outside, I-song stops to play a short classical piece on the piano as Iris sits and smokes outside while listening, asking her afterwards what she was thinking about while playing, attempting to reach a much deeper realm, which can be challenging.  The choice of an international female protagonist offers an unprecedented point of view in Hong Sang-soo cinema, offering the film a unique evocative quality.  Iris is a mysterious, free-spirited woman who delves into her students’ hidden feelings, asking insistently, “What do you really feel inside?” which could just as easily have been asked of any character in a Hong film.  For her, it’s all about getting her clients to reveal their thoughts and feelings, which she jots down in French on index cards, and asks the students to repeat the phrases with regularity until they identify with its meaning.  From the philosophical introspection in Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON (1950) to Sofia Coppola’s meditative Lost in Translation (2002), filmmakers have regularly examined the nature of identity, in many cases the juxtaposition of Eastern spiritualism with Western individualism, where who knows how much of this is getting lost in translation.  A candid observation of the cultural differences between East and West, the free spirited Iris is an example of Western behavior that contrasts with the mostly reserved body language of her Korean counterparts.  As they walk through a nearby park, I-song shows her a memorial with her late father’s inscription on it, a reminder of his importance in her life, but also a reminder that he’s gone, leaving a giant hole in her heart, as she’s deeply affected every time she walks by.  Dressed in her flower-print dress with a green cardigan and familiar sunhat, Iris blends into the natural world around her, reflected by the manner in which she crosses a small stream, first taking her shoes off and then soaking her feet in the water, apparently getting some needed relief, "A Traveler's Need" (Yeohaengjaui pilyo) | Clip | Berlinale 2024 YouTube (1:05).  Her next visit is with a married couple, Won-ju (Lee Hye-young) and Hae-soon (Kwon Hae-hyo), where Won-ju is a bossy wife who takes a particular fascination with how unusual the teaching style is, especially when learning Iris has no teaching experience whatsoever, but simply came up with this idea out of necessity, as she has no other means of support.  The quick back and forth suggests she’s suspicious, to say the least, but she quickly takes greater pleasure playing a short tune on the guitar, while Iris wanders up to the roof to smoke.  Eventually she reveals her love of drinking makgeolli, so they share a few rounds, with Iris getting quite flirtatious with her husband, almost like a little school girl, where you simply wonder what in the hell is going on.  They also walk outside into the park and discover a Buddhist shrine overlooking a small waterfall, with fish in the lower pond, but it’s the discovery of another rock memorial that stands out, as it’s a tribute to poet Yun Dong-ju who died at a young age in a Japanese prison when the nation was under occupation and is still one of the most beloved poets in Korea.  Serving as a quiet and contemplative moment, a poem etched into the rock features the memorable lines, “To be without a speck of shame until the day I die,” and “I shall love all things that are dying,” while another one of his poems appears on the wall of a library, “My path is always a new path,” learning that the poet lived during a time when the wartime Japanese Empire was erasing Korean culture and forcing assimilation, when Korean language was banned in schools, businesses, and even in homes, and later in media, journalism, and literature, so the subversive act of writing poems in Korean drew the ire of Japanese authorities.

In the final section she appears to return home, apparently sharing the apartment with a roommate, the young poet In-guk (Ha Seong-guk), happily and surprisingly sharing what she earned that day to pay her share of the rent.  He also sits down and plays a short piece on the harmonium, where they are interrupted by the doorbell, only to discover it’s his mother (Cho Yun-hee), who simply takes over his life from the moment she enters.  Feeling uncomfortable about how to introduce Iris, she solves the problem by pretending to be his French teacher before going out for a walk, leaving them some time together.  Like the exaggerated hysteria from In Our Day (Uriui haru) (2023), the hovering, overprotective Asian mother goes over-the-top in melodramatic overreach when learning of her son’s relationship to an older 71-year old woman, who is old enough to be his mother, or even grandmother, claiming she’s not who he imagines her to be, but she doesn’t really get it, reading more into it than is really there, where it may simply be a case that young people today are more open to having older people as friends, or companions, something that would be unthinkable in his mother’s generation.  This mirrors Hong’s longstanding personal relationship with actress Kim Min-hee, who is 22 years younger, a fact that has been much criticized in his country for the age difference.  Iris, considered eccentric by Asian standards, certainly stands out with what might be described as a shameless attitude, as she has a habit of kissing the Koreans she meets, men and women alike, on both cheeks in the French way, which clearly surprises them.  Nonetheless, his mother’s regressive reaction is jolting and impactive, embracing the entrenched values of modesty and responsibility that Eastern families feel, reflective of her over-controlling ways, something her son is most likely trying to escape, so it’s all the more remarkable when he passionately defends Iris as living a sincere life, not blinded by what’s fake, claiming “She lives each day never forgetting that one day she must die.”  Her mother is not convinced, and seems untrusting by nature, but quickly regains her composure by offering him food, regaining the motherly balance in their relationship, concluding with a half-real and half-imagined sequence about how In-guk and Iris first met, with Iris seen playing a recorder (badly, according to In-guk) on a park bench, leaving viewers at an impasse as to what really happened, which is the real beauty of the film, as it’s not definitive, but more suggestive, allowing viewers to decide what they think, with the filmmaker adding his own pensive piano music over the final sequence.  In a series of awkwardly comical and melancholic scenes, the humanist cinema of Hong Sang-soo deftly balances two different artistic impulses, one that veers towards playful modernist formalism that makes us aware not just of the film medium itself, but of the filmmaking process and of the mechanics of narrative, while the other moves towards sheer realism, an approximation of the sprawling, disorderly nature of life itself, in each case expressed with a complete lack of artifice.  Many detractors of Hong’s films like to say he makes the same movie over and over again, but with each new work the filmmaker employs subtle variations in his artistic aesthetic and style that are simply less obvious than other directors, ingeniously subverting the way we think about a cinematic work, which is something most directors do NOT do.  Underlying the complexity of Hong’s work is a profound sense of humor and a fondness for deeply flawed protagonists, characters who muddle through despite their hapless attempts at romantic intimacy.  Hong has been compared to such French New Wave directors as Éric Rohmer or the DIY late works of Jean-Luc Godard, but he stands alone as a true original.