살인의 추억 [Memories of Murder]

After watching Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (which I found too farcical and demonstrative a social satire), I was recommended to take a look at his 2003 Memories of Murder. Which is indeed most impressive in his depiction of a serial murderer of young women in a small industrial town in South Korea in the late 1980’s. Most actors in the film are fantastic, bringing complexity to characters that are not particularly congenial. Besides the detective work, which hits one dead end after another, the rendering of the crooked and brutal police force, hitting at suspect until they confess, of the political setting of a military regime violently repressing demonstrations, of the threat of North Korea leading to evacuation exercises and mandatory blackouts, of the massive impact of the industrialisation. The story is bleak, very bleak, obviously [the poster being a pun!] and the photography contributes to it, always filmed under grey skies or at night, in brown fields or drak woods, with the only touch of colour being the red clothes worn by the victims. But what makes the film so captivating is the helplessness and desperation of the detectives, which gradually acknowledge their incapacity to solve the murders and convince the serial killer. (The actual killer on whose murders the film is based got arrested and convinced, based on DNA data, after the film came out.)