Bong Joon Ho Directs Memories of Murder

Song Kang Ho Plays a Detective Investigating a Real Serial Killer

Aug 21, 2009

Korean murder thriller is based on true 1980s Hwaseong killings of women by the 'Rainy Day Killer'. Film stars Kim Sang-Kyung & Kim Roe-Ha as ineffective Korean cops.

Bong Joon-Ho’s Memories of Murder brings the tensions of a real-life serial killer case to screen. As a director, Bong’s success lies in bringing his political statement across – how the Korean police system in 1980s cannot solve the serial murders, thanks to inefficiencies bordering on criminal behaviour. Director Bong cleverly masks this statement by channeling audience’s attention towards the serial killer, who till this day, has not been apprehended.

The ingenuity of Korean filmmaking lies in its details. Ditching a predictable structure, the thematic statement in Bong’s film permeates constantly through actor choreography, camera work and cinematography. Memories of Murder opens with vast fields, a detective looking under a slab and a boy copying his every word. The audience is quickly made aware of the relentless presence hiding among and terrorising this windy landscape. The film may carry on a bit, but it keeps driving the fact into the audience’s psyche that the killer is still out there. Incessant reminders of poverty, grotesqueness and sexual deviance give Memories of Murder a gritty tone.

One of the best scenes takes place in the lonely fields on a rainy night, when a woman goes to meet her husband with an umbrella. As she walks along getting the heebie-jeebies, she hears whistling behind her. She sees nothing, turns, but the viewer can spot a head rising from the distant grass. This teasing and whistling continues until she is taken. And so the landscape, even the whistling, becomes accomplices of these grisly murders, in director Bong Joon-Ho’s vision.

Song Kang Ho & Kim Sang-Kyung as Cops

Song Kang-Ho does black humour through idiocy particularly well in Memories of Murder. His Detective Park and flying kicks partner Cho (Kim Roe-Ha) create comedy in the midst of trauma. Surprisingly, this heightens tension. The police are conspicuously ineffective. When Detective Park arrives at the crime scene and walks round in circles, the camera follows him uncertainly, as if lost. More detectives stumble down grass hills. On top of that, local police torture innocent suspects until protestors arrive. Kim Sang-Kyung plays Park’s nemesis Detective Seo, a phlegmatic-tempered investigator from Seoul who finds patterns in these killings, but gets too emotionally embroiled in the end to solve the case.

The turning point comes when Detective Seo (Kim Sang-Kyung) finds he is also on the wrong track. Up till then, the cops maintain comedy with silly theories and infighting. Detective Park thinks the rapist is a ‘baldie’ and goes to a sauna to inspect men. Park and Seo fly at each others’ throats in a funny drunken scene, with inebriated Sergeant Shin (Song Jae-Ho). Kim Roe-Ha (in The Host and A Bittersweet Life) excels at comedy here. When his character’s aggression gets out of hand, causing him to lose his leg, the film moves into its darkest phase.

Korean Serial Killer at Large

Director Boon Joon-Ho uses subconscious elements to increase the shadow cast by the killer, such as the outhouse legend and repeated radio song Sad Letter. All three suspects are superbly cast, though none fit the killer’s profile. Pathos arises for retarded child Kwang Ho (Park No-Shik), who dies under the train.

Years later, Park returns to the crime scene and finds a young girl who may have chanced upon the murderer. In the powerful last shot, Park looks into the camera, as if communicating to the killer still at large today. Memories of Murder may be loose with no plot ending, but these director choices make it a truly haunting and terrifying watch.

The copyright of the article Bong Joon Ho Directs Memories of Murder in Asian Films is owned by Lynette S.K. Webster. Permission to republish Bong Joon Ho Directs Memories of Murder in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.