By the Stream (Suyoocheon)

 

Writer/director Hong Sang-soo

Kim Min-hee with the director

The director shooting on location

BY THE STREAM (Suyoocheon)     B                                                                                     South Korea  (111 mi)  2024  d: Hong Sang-soo

Are you a commie?                                                                                                                       —Professor Jeong (Cho Yun-hee)

Proving that he’s something of a one-man band, Hong Sang-soo writes, directs, films, edits, produces, and composes the few frames of music for this film, all but confirming that perhaps as much as he is a filmmaker, Hong Sang-soo is also a prolific playwright, creating a cinema that constantly relies on the power of conversation, like variations on similar themes, often linked to each other in near subliminal fashion, becoming theatrical compositions of his own internal expression.  An astonishingly prolific filmmaker, with forty film credits since the late 90’s, his films are largely inaccessible, with no screening or streaming options available to most persons, seemingly existing in their own universe, yet he’s an extremely conscientious artist, working with such regularity, churning out a variety of small-scale chamber dramas that are immediately recognizable, yet despite the similarities, somehow each new film is a revelation, like new chapters of an infinite novel, as he’s exploring territory that no one else working anywhere in the world today is making films about.  Told in a barebones, naturalistic style, ignored by the commercial masses, where you wouldn’t think any of this would matter to an ever-changing world that spits out such grandiose mega-hits designed for the Cineplex, apparently to take our minds off of the cruel realities that exist all around us, yet somehow Hong Sang-soo finds a way to articulate the small details that continue to matter, like opening up cracks in our existence.  For the last four years, Hong has presented two films each year at major film festivals, registering somewhere between comedy and tragedy, exploring themes of infidelity, artistic aspirations, and communication breakdowns, this latest film reunites Hong with actress Kim Min-hee for their fifteenth film together, while this is the eleventh film working with actor Kwon Hae-hyo.  These familiar faces provide a level of comfort in Hong films, like a reunion of old friends, as if we know what to expect, where they provide a sense of reassurance to viewers with their intelligence, curiosity, and emotional restraint.  Hong typically avoids heavy planning and pre-production, scouting locations just a week or so ahead of time, preferring to withhold handing his actors a full script, instead writing the dialogue for each day’s shoot in the morning, allowing his actors only an hour or so before shooting begins, freeing up his actors to make more spontaneous choices in the moment, using an editing process that rarely takes more than a day, where Hong’s directional style relies upon authenticity and observation, accentuated by his use of long single takes, where this film, notable for its autumnal color, may have the shortest end-credits in memory. 

Like all of Hong’s works, the film is stripped of all artifice and is largely character-driven, where the performances are always elevated, as the director is never afraid to examine the small, often overlooked details of daily living, like hidden detours along the way, where he finds a way to delve into the complexities of life through loneliness, isolation, and fleeting connections.  Finding inspiration in nature, the reclusive Jeon-im (Kim Min-hee), an arts professor at Duksung University, a small private women’s college in Seoul, spends her free time on the banks of a local stream of the Han River sketching the changing patterns in her notebook, as she captures the changing colors of a pastoral autumn landscape of a stream running toward a bridge, and then weaves those patterns into tapestries on her loom later, creating larger works of art.  When she’s not creating her own textile art, she’s teaching a small group of performance art students, where the sleepy rhythms of this university campus are rocked by the startling revelations of a budding sex scandal, as a male student director from another university has been accused of an abuse of power by sleeping with three of the seven actors (who all dropped out simultaneously) just ten days before a play is scheduled to be performed at the university’s annual skit contest, leaving them in emergency mode trying to find a replacement director.  Desperate to find a solution, Jeon-im turns to her Uncle Chu Si-eon (Kwon Hae-hyo) to step in, a bookstore owner leading a quiet yet comfortable life by the sea, a man she hasn’t spoken to in ten years, but he was also a widely celebrated stage actor and theater director, hoping he can write a new script and finish directing the project.  Much to her surprise, he accepts the challenge, bringing him into the fold, where he arrives with ideas already in mind, hoping to provide the last-minute saving grace.  Jeon-im’s boss, Professor Jeong (Cho Yun-hee), has been extremely supportive and is largely responsible for securing her position at the university, yet she’s also intrigued by the presence of Chu, as she followed his career on television and in the theater, and has always wondered what happened to him, as he simply disappeared from having any public presence.  As it turns out, Chu’s bookstore is largely an excuse for him to appear busy when, in reality, there are very few customers who frequent the store, so the idea of resuscitating his creative juices is like a needed jolt of adrenaline.  The academic setting is a return to the director’s early films, where he was such a subtle and distinctly original force in the industry, making quiet, low-budget cinema, often featuring the inappropriate actions of brooding, self-absorbed men who tend to drown their sorrows in alcohol, social awkwardness, and meaningless sex, shining a light on human fallibility and the everyday idiosyncrasies of personal relationships.      

While there’s plenty of eating and drinking, always the centerpiece of Hong’s dramas, as these interactions drive the central questions of the film, where pauses for smoking cigarettes overlooking a picturesque stream offer Zen moments of melancholic reflection, perhaps the biggest surprise is Jeong’s infatuation and sudden interest in Chu, which is a startling development, especially as it leads to a romantic affair, with Jeon-im utterly dismayed at watching it blossom before her eyes, discovering her uncle is not the man she believed him to be.  Autobiographical elements are interspersed throughout, with Chu, a stand-in for the director, acknowledging at one point that he’s no longer with his wife of many years, that she finally agreed to a divorce after a decade of separation (Hong’s own wife refuses to divorce him so that he could marry Kim, where the scandalous public revelation of their affair all but killed Kim’s career outside of Hong’s work), and that he hasn’t spoken to his own sister (Jeon-im’s mother) since she accused him of being a “commie,” so this new romance is like a fresh start in life, but it leaves Jeon-im more than a little perplexed at finding herself in such a precarious position, relying upon her uncle not to spoil the good thing she has going at this university.  Making matters worse, she runs into the guy she fired (Ha Seong-guk), only to learn he hasn’t left the university grounds and shows no remorse for his actions, believing he did nothing wrong, but his presence alone is like a stalker in their midst, adding a creepy element that lies under the surface at an otherwise safe haven.  Where it all leads is to an understated dramatic skit that includes the women eating the last of their dwindling ramen supply, vowing to conserve their goods in a nod to socialism, overshadowed by a blaring industrial roar, which is poorly received while also creating some controversy, where this snippet of a live performance is not like anything in Hong’s films that we’ve seen before.  Celebrating with his cast afterwards in a restaurant, apparently fascinated by this youth generation, Chu asks “What kind of person do you want to be?,” turning into a somewhat improvised poetry session performed by the students speaking their inner thoughts, voicing their hopes and fears about the future, which are tinged in sadness, as they’re not particularly optimistic, while remaining very ambiguous about what the skit is actually about, yet the four women (Kang So-yi, Park Han-bit-na-ra, Oh Yoon-soo, and Park Mi-so) are like a Greek chorus standing in unison against an established male patriarchy, as the disgraced director’s actions mirror an incident in Chu’s youth where his shameful treatment of a female student at this same school still haunts him to this day.  We also learn that Chu made some rude comments about a famous actor he worked with that got him blacklisted from the business, and that 40 years ago he staged a radical theater piece at this same university that caused a scandal, perhaps an allusion to Kwon’s offscreen leftist activism ([Feature] An actor turned activist, later in life).  The unspoken theme is that art requires taking risks, potentially alienating one’s audience, as Hong is an artist who has faced his own public condemnation for his extramarital affair with Kim, and is viewed as a fiercely independent, minimalist artist standing outside traditional avenues, where the haiku-like simplicity of his work is something many critics just don’t get.         

Striding Into the Wind (Ye Ma Fen Zong)

 

Director Wei Shujun

 

STRIDING INTO THE WIND (Ye Ma Fen Zong)              D                                                China  (130 mi)  2020 d:  Wei Shujun     original length 156 mi  

Film, especially auteur cinema, requires strong independent thought.                                   —Wei Shujun

One might think this is a stab at portraying the hopeless dreams of misguided youth, yet simply put, it’s a rambling, incoherent mess, a sardonic slacker satire suggesting the Farrelly Brothers’ DUMB AND DUMBER (1994) has finally made its way to China, featuring a couple of imbecile Beijing college students, our hero Kun (Zhou You) and his chubby incoherent sidekick Tong (Tong Lin Kai), both film students who are attempting to master the art of holding the sound boom, as it’s the easiest job they could find on a film set.  With few redeeming features, it would not be unfair to describe this as one long, exaggerated experiment gone wrong, where its inclusion on the festival circuit is puzzling.  Maker of the 15-minute short film ON THE BORDER (2018), which was awarded a Special Jury Distinction prize in the short film competition at Cannes, this is not really a comedy, not really a feature, and it’s certainly outside the norms of traditional Chinese filmmaking, or any other nation, for that matter, where this may stand out by being decidedly different, reflecting a rebellious outsider streak, but what’s sad is how the mocking attempt at satire only makes clear just how dysfunctional things are both on the movie set, yet it’s an equally painful expression of a hollow society at large, offering little hope for the future.  Part of the difficulty of the film is trying to make any sense out of it, as any attempt at narrative just seems missing, feeling instead like a collection of random occurrences, where these two screw-ups just don’t fit in anywhere, selling stolen test exams on the side, and are largely rejected by society as a whole, offering no real reason why anyone would want to pay attention to them, much less feature them in a movie.  This is the kind of film where, as a viewer, you’re fighting the urge to simply walk out or shut it off, because honestly, this is one prolonged headache that is mind-numbingly dull, feeling like a complete waste of time.  Having stuck through it, there is really nothing to be gained, as those are simply two hours of your life that you’ll never get back.  The film is as aimless as the featured character himself, likely a self-portrait, where even the coherence of these briefly written paragraphs are in stark contrast with the nebulous style of the movie.  

While this may be an attempt at hipsterism, like a couple of numbskulls appearing in a Kaurismäki movie, but it lacks the wit and dry humor that endears one to that director, where one continually questions the thought behind this project, as it may simply be one long, rambling autobiographical vanity project, like checking off the boxes of things that might have happened in his life, as if adhering to notes scribbled in a diary, but he utterly fails to string them together in any coherent fashion that would provide sense or meaning for others.  Kun, strangely enough, is the son of a policeman, yet he’s something of a misfit that defies authority, seen early on failing his driving test in his quest for a driver’s license, making a scene, exiting hopping mad even before the test is over, seen running away, leaving no doubt as to the results.  Nonetheless, the first thing he does afterwards is go shopping for a car, the cheapest option possible, which turns out to be a broken-down ’97 Jeep Cherokee that offers possibilities, with the salesman recognizing a free spirit, promising a purchase would not only guarantee access to the open road, but “You’ll have a fabulous life too.”  Dreaming of driving to Inner Mongolia (just under 800 miles from Beijing), this is just what the doctor ordered, so long as they don’t get stopped by the police, which of course, plagues him for as long as he owns the vehicle.  In his final year of studying sound recording with his goofy boom operator buddy Tong, they get called out in class for ignoring the professor and conducting their own nonstop conversation throughout his lecture, mostly spent tipping nude cam girls on their phones, forcing them to have to repeat the course with the same professor next term, yet both have also signed on to work on a student graduation film by the arrogant and overly pretentious Ming (Wang Xiaomu), invoking the names of Wong Kar-wai, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Hong Sang-soo in every self-congratulatory shot, using that as an excuse not to write a script, evoking empty expressions, like ”The film will become alive on its own, once the camera rolls,” proclaiming it’s all about the “spirit of the grasslands,” featuring a Mongolian actress in a rambling work supposedly set in the Mongolian grasslands, shot entirely in Beijing, of course, but Kun dreams of making that long and arduous trek in his Jeep.   

Initially Kun is seen having a girlfriend, Zhi (Zheng Yingchen), a cute but fiery hostess working hospitality events, but she quickly loses patience with his colossally poor judgment, tired of hearing his broken promises, realizing his irresponsibility will never amount to anything, dumping him on the spot even before viewers understand their connection in the first place.  Perhaps most inexplicable, they meet a construction boss with dreams of becoming a rapper, calling himself High$eas, developing concept albums with galactic implications, where these two fools can’t even give away the promotional CD’s to students and end up using them for target practice along an isolated stretch of train tracks.  These guys just refuse to embrace the idea of work, and avoid it as much as possible, yet spend all their time trying to devise ways to make money, but are inevitably stymied by an overly restrictive society implementing authoritarian rules.  Living on the fringe, outside all laws, his only options are black market scam operations, like obtaining a fake driver’s license and then driving that Jeep just about everywhere, where he’s practically living in it, but it’s always breaking down, subject to endless repairs that continually drain them of money, taking Kun’s dreams along with it, while Tong’s startling revelation is paying all that money for four years at college just to learn how to press two buttons.  The exotic celebratory banquet after the film shoot is garishly opulent and excessive, spending money they don’t have, all meant to represent some grandiose success story that doesn’t exist.  Kun’s irreverence takes him off the beaten path but leads him nowhere, as his car breaks down, he gets arrested, and sent to a detention center where his father has to make things right.  He even has to sell his beloved Jeep for next to nothing, evaporating his elusive dreams of freedom on the road.  On the cab ride back, the radio plays the latest sensation, none other than High$eas, which feels ironically fitting, with all his dreams now up in smoke, where we’re left somewhere lost in his imagination, with final images of wild horses running free on the vast emptiness of the Mongolian plains, a symbol of infinite freedom, but blink and there’s nothing there.  Inexplicably, this film ends on a sublime grace note, with the same Bach piano chorale played at the end of Pawlikowski’s 2014 Top Ten List #2 Ida, though it’s not Alfred Brendel playing, BWV639 'Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ' Brendel 1976 (3:39), feeling utterly out of place with the chaos that preceded it.