Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Why this post?
Some one recently accused me of being a fan of slasher movies.
NOT TRUE!!!!!!!!!

As it turns out, I am a fan of 'scary by implication', as in I prefer Hannibal over, say, Friday the 13th. Intelligent and stylish direction intrigues me far more than copious amounts of ketchup being split. The only exception to that might be the Kill Bill movies, which are special for totally different reasons.

Ok, back to where we were. So there is this Korean director called Chan-wook Park. I have so far seen only one film by him: 'Oldboy', a visceral revenge thriller that starts on an astounding premise and then hammers away at every sensibility for some 90 minutes before ending in a way you might expect, but when you see it, you will nevertheless be taken aback. These are a few of his quotations, taken from the IMDB page.

"In our lives, we have good things and bad things, happiness and pain. Life is full of pain and happiness and that's what I wanted to show."

"Living without hate for people is almost impossible. There is nothing wrong with fantasizing about revenge. You can have that feeling. You just shouldn't act on it."

"I have principles and rules. I deal very carefully with acts of violence and make sure that audiences understand how much suffering these acts cause."

"In my films, I focus on pain and fear. The fear just before an act of violence and the pain after. This applies to the perpetrators as well as the victims."

Numerous times I lie in bed at night and imagine the cruellest torture. I imagine the most miserable ruining of that person's life. After that, I can fall asleep with a smile on my face. As long as it stays in the realm of imagination, the crueller the better - that's healthy. I'd like to recommend it to you all as well. I hope my films can help in any small way to help your imagination become at least a little bit crueller.

When a hero decides to take revenge, their hitherto tedious life is ended and they are born again as a completely different person. With the completion of revenge in sight, the hero has to face the fact that their pleasure up until that point must come to an end.

I've always tried not to fall for the lies that say things like 'you can do anything if you have the will' or that 'you're the only one who can carve out your own life.' According to the audience member's beliefs, you could call it the will of God or social systems, or fate; but in the end, what I'm trying to say is the same. And that is, 'Life doesn't go your own way."