The Korean Wave 2006 - Korean Cultural Service

The New York Times, sunday, may 28, 2006
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Horrors!
He Likes Ideas and
Metaphors
BY MARK RUSSELl
SEOUL
The South Korean director Bong Joon-ho has monsters
on the brain: ready to snack on your loved
ones, provoke screams and provide the kind of
cinematic fun you might expect from a Hollywood picture.
But in a very studied way, as with all of Mr. Bong’s
movies, which are laden with metaphors and ideas.
“There are a whole lot of prejudices about creature movies,
that they are just childish or just sci-fi,” Mr. Bong
said, speaking of his film “The Host,” which was screened
on May 21 at the Cannes Film Festival. “Those prejudices
poked me and intrigued me. I took it as a challenge.”
Mr. Bong has never been interested in the “Asian extreme”
label that is so popular these days. Unlike peers, he has
avoided hammer sprees, fishhook fun and demented sex.
His previous film, “Memories of Murder” – a dark comedy
about police in a country town on the trail of a serial
killer – was one of South Korea’s biggest critical and commercial
successes, winning awards from San Sebastián,
Spain, to Tokyo. “Barking Dogs Never Bite” – the story
of a university lecturer tormented by the barking of a
neighbor’s dog – similarly won acclaim all over the world
for its wry observations on modern life. The “extreme”
label, he said, speaking in a production office here, has
been useful as a marketing tool; but “before long that
tendency will die out.”
“The Host,” easily Mr. Bong’s most ambitious work, is
the story of a monster that emerges from the Han River
in Seoul to wreak havoc and eat a few people, and of an
ordinary man who gets pulled into the fray.
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