← Part of the Issue: Hong Sang-soo

Looking for Reality ‘Between the Cracks’

VERTAALD DOOR TRANSLATED BY TRADUIT PAR Sis Matthé

Daijiga umule pajinnal [The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well] (Hong Sang-soo, 1996)

He says he has found his way as a filmmaker while looking at Cézanne paintings in a museum in Chicago. “I looked, and I thought: that’s it.” Before, it was a time when the youth of his country, South Korea, faced the military dictatorship in the street. Not him. “I did stupid things. I was close to suicide. But the violent and idealistic atmosphere of that time left an indelible impression. The disappearance of this difficult but extremely vital time left my generation with a bitter aftertaste.” Sitting in the back of a bar, willing to discuss a thousand things, he ponders this past, which he confirms doesn’t occupy him at all, from an amused distance.

His first three films, three thirds of his oeuvre at present, are finally released in France. “I enjoy it, but I don’t think about what I’ve done in the past. I’m not interested in becoming an expert on my own films.” And it doesn’t bother him that it took seven years for the public to finally meet the oeuvre of an artist whose film debut, The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996), immediately got him recognized as a first-rate filmmaker. “It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that the films are finally shown. And the French release of these three first titles is going to help me produce the next one.”

At the beginning of the 1980s, circumstances had led the young man (born in 1961) from marginalization bordering on crime to the United States: “Strangely, it was there that, at 23, I started getting interested in art.” More specifically, in the art of cinema, for which he didn’t have any feeling whatsoever, even though he had studied film before at Chung-Ang University. He feels drawn to experimental cinema; a short stay in Paris, “the city of reference for those who love cinema”, made him discover Robert Bresson’s oeuvre. “Journal d’un curé de campagne made me realize that there was indeed a possibility to get out of the sterile choice between experimental and Hollywood films.” 

An Oeuvre of Details

For four years, he constantly carried with him a copy of Notes sur le cinématographe by the author of Pickpocket. Careful not to imitate, the filmmaker says he doesn’t try to find forms already invented by others, Cézanne or Bresson, but is guided by “their life, their courage, their way of addressing things”. Since the astonishing process the conception of The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well is based on – the film is the result of four scriptwriters working separately – he continued to map out his own route.

Hong Sang-soo feels like talking about Paris, about the films he loved and defended at the recent Busan International Film Festival, which discovered him in 1996 and where he was jury president at the end of 2002. He lets himself be led to his own films, starts the majority of his sentences with “I try to ...”. Not to repeat himself; to construct dramatic architectures that are pretty strong in order to reassure his producers and pretty open in order to proceed, while filming, with all the explorations the set has to offer; to film bed scenes as if they were table scenes, “without avoiding these situations, which are part of our lives”, but refusing any voyeurism.

Poetic by its precision, attentive to duration, to the uncertainty of the moment, to outlined movements and to what they betray or control: Hong Sang-soo’s cinema seems to consist only of details, of contingent moments that suddenly get out of hand or explode. “I never aim for generalization; there’s never a global view on society at the origin of a film or even a shot. It seems to me that reality can only appear between the cracks of discrete, hypothetic, uncertain elements. I am wary of clichés and big expressions. I do not believe, for example, that something we could call ‘the’ contemporary Korea exists. I never try to share a truth, but only approximations.”

In the heat of shooting the film, each morning writing the daily dialogues, maximally reducing – “I try to get rid of everything that is not indispensable” – and sometimes changing the whole scene while filming, Hong Sang-soo works with little-known actors: “Stars are too busy with their image to accept what I ask from my performers.”

Since his well-received first feature film, he has forged a solid bond with the production company Miracin. A well-placed trust: benefiting from constant critical support, The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996) has sold 50,000 tickets, The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) 70,000, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000) 120,000, and the magnificent On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (2002), still unreleased in France, has already drawn 180,000 spectators in his country of origin.

These constantly increasing “little numbers” encourage Hong Sang-soo to continue along the path he has chosen and for which he recently gave up the teaching position he has held at the university for ten years. But he doesn’t aim for any gigantism, considering frugality as his main quality. He even accepts the prospect of one day filming on light video if he were to encounter any financial difficulties. Nonetheless, the new tools don’t appeal to him at all: “I prefer typewriters to computers, propeller planes to jets. I feel closer to the previous epoch than to the contemporary shape of the world.” This phase difference, this distance, has become the basis of one of the most productive oeuvres of contemporary cinema.

Originally published as ‘Chercher la réalité « entre les interstices »’ in Le Monde, 26 February 2003.

ARTICLE
17.01.2018
FR EN
In Passage, Sabzian invites film critics, authors, filmmakers and spectators to send a text or fragment on cinema that left a lasting impression.
Pour Passage, Sabzian demande à des critiques de cinéma, auteurs, cinéastes et spectateurs un texte ou un fragment qui les a marqués.
In Passage vraagt Sabzian filmcritici, auteurs, filmmakers en toeschouwers naar een tekst of een fragment dat ooit een blijvende indruk op hen achterliet.
The Prisma section is a series of short reflections on cinema. A Prisma always has the same length – exactly 2000 characters – and is accompanied by one image. It is a short-distance exercise, a miniature text in which one detail or element is refracted into the spectrum of a larger idea or observation.
La rubrique Prisma est une série de courtes réflexions sur le cinéma. Tous les Prisma ont la même longueur – exactement 2000 caractères – et sont accompagnés d'une seule image. Exercices à courte distance, les Prisma consistent en un texte miniature dans lequel un détail ou élément se détache du spectre d'une penséée ou observation plus large.
De Prisma-rubriek is een reeks korte reflecties over cinema. Een Prisma heeft altijd dezelfde lengte – precies 2000 tekens – en wordt begeleid door één beeld. Een Prisma is een oefening op de korte afstand, een miniatuurtekst waarin één detail of element in het spectrum van een grotere gedachte of observatie breekt.
Jacques Tati once said, “I want the film to start the moment you leave the cinema.” A film fixes itself in your movements and your way of looking at things. After a Chaplin film, you catch yourself doing clumsy jumps, after a Rohmer it’s always summer, and the ghost of Akerman undeniably haunts the kitchen. In this feature, a Sabzian editor takes a film outside and discovers cross-connections between cinema and life.
Jacques Tati once said, “I want the film to start the moment you leave the cinema.” A film fixes itself in your movements and your way of looking at things. After a Chaplin film, you catch yourself doing clumsy jumps, after a Rohmer it’s always summer, and the ghost of Akerman undeniably haunts the kitchen. In this feature, a Sabzian editor takes a film outside and discovers cross-connections between cinema and life.
Jacques Tati zei ooit: “Ik wil dat de film begint op het moment dat je de cinemazaal verlaat.” Een film zet zich vast in je bewegingen en je manier van kijken. Na een film van Chaplin betrap je jezelf op klungelige sprongen, na een Rohmer is het altijd zomer en de geest van Chantal Akerman waart onomstotelijk rond in de keuken. In deze rubriek neemt een Sabzian-redactielid een film mee naar buiten en ontwaart kruisverbindingen tussen cinema en leven.