Of all the film-makers of what might loosely be called the new Asian wave of the 21st century, perhaps the most challenging and mysterious – and probably the most garlanded on the European festival circuit – was South Korean director Kim Ki-duk. He made movies which were shocking, scabrous and violent - yet also often hauntingly sad and plangently beautiful and sometimes just plain weird. But they were strangely hypnotic. In 2011, I was on the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury which gave the top prize to his opaque docufictional piece Arirang, and though I struggle a bit now to recapture the mood of certainty that led us to that decision, there is no doubt about that Kim’s work had a commanding effect.
In fact, Kim himself might be a more prominent figure himself were it not that he was involved in the #MeToo controversy – three actors accused him of sexual assault which resulted in a fine for the director and inconclusive recrimination in the civil courts.
For all that he was known for extreme brutality and arthouse exploitation his masterpiece – and one of the great works of modern Korean cinema is his Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter ... And Spring (2003) a potent and enigmatic parable which manages to be both serene and gripping at the same time. The seasons of a young monk’s life, under the care of a wise elder, are shown in an eternal cycle as he journeys towards a fraught enlightenment. It is that rarest of things - a genuinely spiritual film.
Spiritual isn’t exactly how you would describe the rest of Kim’s work, though there is a distinctly Greeneian dimension to his Pieta (2012) a film of warped Christian imagery which won the Golden Lion at Venice. A lowlife mobster brutally recovers debts by forcing his victims to stage crippling accidents so that they can collect insurance money which he will then pocket. But then a woman appears claiming to be this gangster’s long-lost mum, agonised with guilt at having abandoned him as a baby, and setting him on this evil path. It’s an excellent premise and while not quite a masterpiece, does show Kim’s real fascination with a state of grace.
As for the more violent movies like The Isle (2000), Bad Guy (2001) and 3-Iron (2004) they are stylishly made and earned Kim a cult following. Like his great Korean contemporary Park Chan-wook, he knew how to stage violence, and like Lee Chang-dong he was interested in Christianity and the life of the spirit. But Kim’s films had an unruly punk Buddhism that was all their own.
