Park, and his partner, Cho −whom we find out from the beginning that there isn’t much to be hoped from− compel us to feel the absence of a responsible and trust-worthy detective because just like the characters of the movie, we also want justice to be served. Essentially, a philosophical despair can be felt in his works and thus, it is no surprise that he gives the green light to stories of this kind. One of the reasons that Bong Joon-ho is interested in such stories is their insolvability. Completely ordinary people that seem to have just kicked off their first case in their new job as officers of the law and now have enthusiasm for finding the truth, so they are constantly making mistakes and putting themselves in trouble and certainly such individuals will reach a dead end.
If we were to look at this work philosophically, we would find out that the characters of the movie can be any one of us.
(There exists a connection between the opening and ending scenes of the movie that I’ll be addressing at the end.) In the first scene, when we see a child is imitating Detective Park, Bong Joon-ho is putting our minds to rest … yes, even that child knows that it’s out of these people’s hands and is ridiculing them. Great directors tend to reveal important codes to their audience from the very beginning. Rather, it’s commonly about “how the event in question is supposed to happen” and this ingenious director has managed to refine this important concept.Īlways pay attention to the opening scenes of a movie. But those of you friends who have studied the concept of Suspense in cinema would know that suspense is not always about “what would happen”. When we are informed in the very beginning that the murderer has not been found in reality, we can predict that the movie is not supposed to end with the finding of the murderer. Song Kang-ho and Kim Sang-kyung portray the roles of two of the detectives trying to solve these crimes, Detective Park and Detective Seo, respectively.īong Joon-ho proves that he has learned the correct definition of Suspense in cinema.
The plot is based on the real events of the first case of serial murders in South Korea’s contemporary history which occurred between 19 in Hwaseong in the province of Gyeonggi-do. Let’s look at the movie ‘Memories of Murder’. I will postpone my breakdown of what I mean exactly by this to a separate post where I intend to compare the movies ‘Parasite’ and ‘Memories of Murder’ together. You ask why? Because it is the most honest movie that this director has ever made. The movie ‘Memories of Murder’ is directed by the ingenious South Korean filmmaker, Bong Joon-ho and I believe it to be his best work yet.