A lonely man makes quite a catch in Park Chan-kyong and Park Chan-wook’s NIGHT FISHING
N.E.P.A.L. NEVER ENDING PEACE AND LOVE (Park Chan-wook, 2003) / CUT (Park Chan-wook, 2004) / NIGHT FISHING (PARANMANJANG) (UPS AND DOWNS) (Park Chan-wook & Park Chan-kyong, 2011)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, March 2, free with museum admission, 3:00
Series runs February 28 – March 3
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Korean auteur Park Chan-wook has made some of the most suspenseful, violent films of the last twenty years, creating compelling characters caught in untenable situations. Most well known for his Vengeance Trilogy — Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance — he has also written and directed such features as the military thriller Joint Security Area, the horror film Thirst, and the futuristic romantic comedy I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK. As part of a retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image, being held in conjunction with the theatrical release of his first English-language film, Stoker, the Astoria institution will be screening a trio of Park’s intriguing shorts. N.E.P.A.L. Never Ending Peace and Love is based on the true story of Chandra Gurung, a Nepali woman who went to Korea to find employment, only to wind up in a mental institution when no one could understand her language and instead thought she was an unstable woman speaking gibberish. Chandra appears at the beginning and end of the film, most of which is shot in black-and-white from her vantage point, as if the viewer is experiencing exactly what Chandra went through. It’s a fascinating film made for the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. In Cut, part of the 2004 Asian Scream Team omnibus Three . . . Extremes, which also includes short works by Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan (Dumplings) and Japan’s Takashi Miike (Box), Park turns up the gore level with the tale of a film director (Lee Byung-hun) and his wife (Kang Hye-jeong) who are kidnapped by a crazed extra (Lim Won-hee) who threatens to slice off her fingers one at a time unless the director kills a small child in the room. There’s plenty of bloody violence here, but the overall execution is lacking. Several years later, Park teamed up with codirector Park Chan-kyong — and took the dual name PARKing CHANce — for 2011’s thirty-three-minute Night Fishing, which was shot using multiple iPhone 4s (before adding special effects in postproduction). Alone by a river, fisherman Gi-suk (Oh Kwang-rok) makes a very unusual catch — a beautiful young woman (Lee Jeong-hyeon) who seems to have mysterious powers. The film, winner of the Golden Bear, opens very strangely, with a music video by the UhUhBoo Project, before turning into a meditation on love and loss, highlighted by a bizarre, mystical twist that adds to the surreal nature of the story. Seen together, the three shorts lend yet more perspective on a filmmaker always willing to take risks while understanding the essential nature of narrative.
Claiming to be inspired by actual events, Phantom is an often baffling submarine thriller that somehow manages to right itself just enough to make it a worthwhile voyage, but only barely. At the height of cold war paranoia, aging ship captain Demi (a strong Ed Harris) is given one last command before he retires, ordered by the oxygen-tank-breathing Markov (Lance Henriksen) to helm the final run of an old, outdated boat that was the scene of a horrific event that still haunts Demi from earlier in his career. His devoted team includes right-hand-man Alex (William Fichtner), ship’s doctor Semak (Jason Beghe), and political overseer Pavlov (Johnathon Schaech), but also boarding the boat are a couple of technicians led by Bruni (a miscast, baby-faced David Duchovny) who deliver special orders to Demi that involve top-secret technology that could very well lead to World War III. Soon there’s a heated battle over control of the ship, as well as the codes that will launch a nuclear missile. Based on the mysterious story of the Soviet K-129 submarine that was explored in such controversial books as Kenneth Sewell and Clint Richmond’s Red Star Rogue, writer-director Todd Robinson, whose previous film was the underrated 2006 police procedural Lonely Hearts, has created an appropriately claustrophobic atmosphere for Phantom. In order to make the characters more likable and the intrigue more accessible, the actors do not speak in Russian accents; American audiences would most likely not quickly take to men in thick Eastern European accents chugging vodka (and rum) who consider the U.S. the enemy. But Robinson’s script is full of so many holes, containing a multitude of unexplained details that come and go and are never heard from again, that it nearly sinks the drama. But Harris and Fichtner go above and beyond the call of duty to steady the ship in this confusing yet still gripping thriller, even if it’s hard to believe much of this supposedly based-on-fact tale.
Park Chan-wook’s awesome revenge trilogy (following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy) comes to a stirring conclusion with the thrilling tale of Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae), a beautiful thirty-one-year-old woman who has just been released from prison after serving thirteen years for the kidnapping and murder of a five-year-old boy (Nam Song-woo). While behind bars, Geum-ja plotted out a detailed, complex plan to gain revenge on her co-conspirator (Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik as Mr. Baek), who harbors a dark secret. As Geum-ja, known as both “Angel” and “Witch,” visits each former prisoner participating in the elaborate set-up, Park flashes back to reveal the woman’s original crime and her relationship to Geum-ja — who is also being followed by a wacky preacher with a great hairdo (Kim Byeong-ok). Now working in a bakery, Geum-ja has become a magical pastry chef as part of her scheme to feed Mr. Baek his just desserts, but, as Park shows rather gruesomely, vengeance — and repentance — comes with a heavy price. As with the first two parts of this masterful series, Lady Vengeance serves up a cunning concoction of bizarre characters, stunning surprises, existential exegesis, and plenty of psychological terror. You need not have seen the first two to love this one; in fact, all three films are stand-alones as well as stand-outs. Lady Vengeance is screening on March 3 at 6:00 as part of a Museum of the Moving Image/Korea Society tribute to Park in conjunction with the release of his first English-language film, 
Park Chan-wook kicked off his revenge trilogy with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (even though the second film, Oldboy, was the first one released in the States), a creepy, quirky tale that lays low for quite a while before busting loose with a massive splattering of the old ultra-violence. After deaf-mute Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun) fails miserably in a desperate, ridiculous attempt to get his dying sister (Lim Ji-eun) a kidney, the recently laid-off Ryu is convinced by his anarchist girlfriend, Youngmin (Bae Doo-na), to kidnap the four-year-old daughter (Han Bo-bae) of Park (Song Kang-ho), the man who owned the factory that kicked him out. But when the plan goes awry, both Ryu and Park become obsessed with avenging their torn-apart lives. Although the first half of the film is too slow and heads off in too many directions, the second half brings everything together, chock full of the kind of violence promised by the title. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is screening on March 3 at 3:00 as part of a Museum of the Moving Image/Korea Society tribute to Park in conjunction with the release of his first English-language film,