Oldboy

For those of you that couldn't get enough revenge fantasy from Tarantino, perhaps Oldboy will be worth a look:

Oldboy is not for the squeamish. It contains not one but two torture scenes in which teeth are menaced with a hammer; a sequence in which the hero eats a live octopus as its tentacles squirm across his face; and all manner of sexual taboos being violated. Some at Cannes were uneasy with this, feeling the film showed a sadistic kind of glee.

"Sadism means getting pleasure from the suffering of others," says Park. "I never got that kind of pleasure when making it. My intention is to show pain, and I want the audience to feel pain."

Why would a director want his audience to feel pain? "Violence should be portrayed as painful, not as beautiful," he explains.

"I'm often misunderstood as a director who enjoys violence, but really I want to show how violence makes the perpetrator and the victim destroy themselves. I think I give more moral lessons to the audience than Disney!"

The whole interview with Chan-Wook Park is worth a read. I keep hearing more and more about the Korean film scene. « via Twitch »