South Korean director Joon-ho Bong is still a fairly young guy at 40 and who has only four features under his belt: Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), a twisted comedy of manners about life in a barren apartment complex and the improprieties of eating your neighbors' dogs; Memories of Murder (2003), a brutal-yet-weirdly-funny look at cops hunting a serial killer featuring South Korea's mega-star Kang-ho Song; The Host (2006), a viciously satiric monster movie also starring Kang-ho Song that in tone gene-splices Godzilla with Dr. Strangelove; and Mother (2009), a twisted farce and murder mystery starring the incredible Hye-ja Kim as a loving middle-aged mom trying to protect her mentally challenged son from a homicide rap. Even with what seems at first such scant credits, the Harvard Film Archive recently honored Joon-ho Bong with a retrospective that coincided with the upcoming North American release of Mother. SG sat down to talk to Joon-ho Bong in Harvard Square about his career so far and Mother.
Michael Marano: I've read that you studied sociology in college. Since in order to study societies, you have to observe them from the outside, with detachment, was this useful for you to make social satire?
Joon-ho Bong: Although I majored in sociology while I was in college, I didn't take many courses. Because I was much more interested in and [more] heavily involved with various cinema clubs and organizations. So, I wouldn't say that I know sociology as an academic discipline. But, due to the social conditions of the time and because many of my friends were involved with various student protests at the time [in the 1980s], I had somewhat of an experience in that sense.
MM: I'd like to talk about how you would have been a very young man during the prodemocracy demonstrations of the 1980s you mention that took place under President Roh Tae Woo. This was right after Chun Doo Hwan stepped down, and a while after the Gwangju Democratization Movement and Military Intervention. Did the contrast of this upheaval with the 1988 Olympic Games taking place in Seoul give you any insight that you've since used as a filmmaker?
JHB: The Olympics is a world event. It's a happy event, a festival. But while this was going on, there were also political suspects who were getting tortured by the police. And there were these serial killers killing women in the countryside, and the government could not quite find the murderer. So, there was almost an irony or paradox in the way in which the South Korean government and society experienced the 1970s and 1980s. And [my] movie Memories of Murder [which depicts both the police tortures and the murders] is situated just before the 1988 Olympics, between 1986 and 1987.
MM: I'd like to ask about your selection of characters for what I assume is their point of view. Because The Host, Mother and Memories of Murder have characters who are mentally challenged. Do you think telling stories about people who aren't fully integrated into a culture is the best way to comment on a culture?
JHB: I don't intend to always work with these mentally disabled or alienated characters in my movies. But when I construct dramas or a storyline, I always end up getting drawn to these characters who are helpless and weak, and who can't get help from the society or the people around them. And it's that desperate situation that I get most emotionally involved with. And I believe that when I work with these mentally disabled or weak characters, that helps me to talk about or portray the systems, whether they be governmental or social, [in terms of] their limitations or downside[s]. Because these systems actually work very conveniently for the ones who have, and the powerful ones, but they always end up in the alienation the weak and the helpless.
MM: In terms of how these systems don't help those who are weak, in Barking Dogs Never Bite, The Host, Memories of Murder and Mother there seems to be no boundary between the ways that the system fails to help people in their personal lives, and in society as a whole. Is there no difference between these two aspects of life? Because both "culture" and "home" don't seem to work. The system doesn't seem to help either one.
JHB: I think that is especially the case in South Korea, because unlike in many other countries, there really isn't a clear boundary between an individual and society or an individual and [the] nation. The relationship is much more ambiguous. Although comparatively, South Korea has gotten more individualistic [than it had been] in the past. But compared to the US or to Europe, South Korean individuals have a lot more ambiguous ties to society and with the nation. It's very common to see, in South Korea, when something happens to an individual, or within a family, rather than go through [the system] or a governmental institution, they'd rather go through friends who may be in the system or lawyers who might be their relatives. So, rather than use the system, they go through individual ties and relationships to resolve an issue.
MM: Your films jump from very funny to very sad, sometimes in the same scene [as in The Host when a heart-breaking memorial service degenerates into a family brawl]. Is there really much difference between farce and tragedy?
JHB: Even in my daily life, as I live my life day to day, I find that farce and tragedy are very hard to divide. They often always go together. And I think the way I look at life is very relevant to the way I make films. And although I deal with the same character or the same situation, depending on the distance of the camera--whether it is very close to them or far away from them, or my perspective distance from the characters or the situation--I think that's what makes the difference. The distance. What is most important to me as a director is that distance between myself, or my camera, and the character or the situation that I want to portray in my films. So, whether I want to get myself into the situation, or depict it as a fire that's burning across the river [gesturing through the window in the direction of the Charles River] that is very distant from myself, I think it is that distance that is always a very important part of my filmmaking. And also a very difficult [part]. And it's the decision of how far and how close I want to keep myself with the character or the situation that makes the audience either laugh or cry.
MM: So, let me continue with what you're saying about perspective and distance and boundaries. In your films, you jump from: farce to tragedy; personal to social and from home to cultural. You blur many, many boundaries. And yet, South Korean culture is defined by a boundary, the DMZ. Does that play in your jumping of boundaries at all?
JHB: [Laughs] You know, personally, I've never been to the DMZ in my 40 years in South Korea. I've only seen it through films such as JSA [aka Joint Security Area, Chan-wook Park's amazing thriller]. But I would say that even without the DMZ that there are a lot of stereotypes in South Korea that often induce stress or pressure. It's that prejudice that's very common in South Korea. So, for example, men's age--there's a lot of prejudice or stereotypes about men's age. It's very common when you meet a person for the first time, they always ask you how old you are, or for you to show them your ID [Laughs]. Even linguistically, it really sets a lot of boundaries to human relationships, because there is a polite way of speaking and a very casual way of speaking that creates this vertical relationship among people. So depending on their age, you either have to call the person as an older brother or an older sister. There's a lot of categorization that is created by the language or by age. And because there are so many prejudices or boundaries in South Korea, they make very interesting subjects or topics for my films. And there is also that much more [of an] opportunity to create humor or farce because of these prejudices and boundaries. One of the particular traits of South Koreans is that they tend to accept and adjust to something that you would think is very irrational. They're very quick to get themselves very accustomed to very unpredictable situations. Even among the very young generations. It's really very funny.
MM: What sort of irrational things are we talking about?
JHB: It varies from an individual case to a social case. But let me think about a good example, from one of my movies. In Barking Dogs Never Bite, we have the main protagonist named. He is a professor. He is an educated man, who ends up bribing [his way into a] professorship. It can be seen as something that is corrupt. But he accepts it so naturally, as if it just becomes part of his life. And just gets very naturally soaked into that social circumstance where one is expected to give money or to buy into these various positions.
MM: You are 40 years old. You are of the first generation of filmmakers who grew up with the VHS technology that allowed them to have the opportunities to see a broad array of films that previously people could only see if they went to film school. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, what films did you look at through this technology that made you interested in film and that made you want to pursue the study of film?
JHB: Actually, I first got a VHS machine in 1988, the year of the Olympics. And that was when many video stores were opened and we had this very huge boom of video players in South Korea. I was a freshman in college then. But before the age of video players, I often encountered movies by watching them on TV. So, when I was in middle school or high school, I watched various films--South Korean films, American films, and European movies--on TV, rather than going to the theaters. And it was always a habit of mine to try to select the best five or ten movies of the year. When I was 14, 15, 16 years old, I was fascinated by Sam Peckinpah movies. But those movies were broadcast, so there was a lot of censorship, a lot of taking out of violent shots. But I could feel [what was cut out]. Often very violent scenes or sex scenes were taken out, between one shot and another shot. And I could always tell by watching them that something was amiss, and it was during those moments when my imagination would run wild, and I would try to imagine what was taken out and what was replaced. And since I was young, if the movies were thrillers or horror films, I liked movies that made me feel very intensely. Almost to the point of suffocating me. One of the examples is the European director Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear [Clouzot's thriller about guys driving truckloads of nitro-glycerin], one of the best movies when I was a kid. I was so anxious and so nervous watching that film, I remember almost not being ale to breathe and sweating. And every summer, South Korean TV stations would show Hitchcock's films, which I always enjoyed, because it brought this very fear, but also a very comical sense to me. For example, of course, Psycho and Frenzy were my favorites. And also many American 1970s movies, for example Marathon Man by John Schlesinger, I was fascinated by that movie.
MM: Did Psycho in terms of the mother/son relationship and murder, influence Mother?
JHB: I wasn't really thinking about the movie Psycho when I was writing the script for Mother. But during pre-production, I was somehow drawn to watch Psycho again twice. It was a very unconscious choice of mine. And in the movie Psycho we have the portrayal of the mother/son relationship, even though the mother has already passed away. And somehow, by watching that movie, I was inspired. And I wondered [what] if the mother hadn't died in Psycho? I wondered if the mother and son relationship in my movie were somehow similar to the mother/son relationship in Psycho. And also like in my film, Psycho was also based on a true story. And also after I made the film I wanted to read about Ed Gein [the 1950s necrophile who was the basis of Psycho's Norman Bates], and what his relationship with his mother was like. So I saw a lot of similarities between Psycho and my movie.
MM: Wait! Is Mother based on Ed Gein?
JHB: No! [Laughing]
MM: So Mother is based on which true story?
JHB: Mother is based loosely on a true story. Three or four years ago, in South Korea, a high school girl in the countryside. There was a high school girl who was notorious for relationships with various older men, and this incident was revealed by a Pastor there. And this became a huge social problem.
Michael Marano: I've read that you studied sociology in college. Since in order to study societies, you have to observe them from the outside, with detachment, was this useful for you to make social satire?
Joon-ho Bong: Although I majored in sociology while I was in college, I didn't take many courses. Because I was much more interested in and [more] heavily involved with various cinema clubs and organizations. So, I wouldn't say that I know sociology as an academic discipline. But, due to the social conditions of the time and because many of my friends were involved with various student protests at the time [in the 1980s], I had somewhat of an experience in that sense.
MM: I'd like to talk about how you would have been a very young man during the prodemocracy demonstrations of the 1980s you mention that took place under President Roh Tae Woo. This was right after Chun Doo Hwan stepped down, and a while after the Gwangju Democratization Movement and Military Intervention. Did the contrast of this upheaval with the 1988 Olympic Games taking place in Seoul give you any insight that you've since used as a filmmaker?
JHB: The Olympics is a world event. It's a happy event, a festival. But while this was going on, there were also political suspects who were getting tortured by the police. And there were these serial killers killing women in the countryside, and the government could not quite find the murderer. So, there was almost an irony or paradox in the way in which the South Korean government and society experienced the 1970s and 1980s. And [my] movie Memories of Murder [which depicts both the police tortures and the murders] is situated just before the 1988 Olympics, between 1986 and 1987.
MM: I'd like to ask about your selection of characters for what I assume is their point of view. Because The Host, Mother and Memories of Murder have characters who are mentally challenged. Do you think telling stories about people who aren't fully integrated into a culture is the best way to comment on a culture?
JHB: I don't intend to always work with these mentally disabled or alienated characters in my movies. But when I construct dramas or a storyline, I always end up getting drawn to these characters who are helpless and weak, and who can't get help from the society or the people around them. And it's that desperate situation that I get most emotionally involved with. And I believe that when I work with these mentally disabled or weak characters, that helps me to talk about or portray the systems, whether they be governmental or social, [in terms of] their limitations or downside[s]. Because these systems actually work very conveniently for the ones who have, and the powerful ones, but they always end up in the alienation the weak and the helpless.
MM: In terms of how these systems don't help those who are weak, in Barking Dogs Never Bite, The Host, Memories of Murder and Mother there seems to be no boundary between the ways that the system fails to help people in their personal lives, and in society as a whole. Is there no difference between these two aspects of life? Because both "culture" and "home" don't seem to work. The system doesn't seem to help either one.
JHB: I think that is especially the case in South Korea, because unlike in many other countries, there really isn't a clear boundary between an individual and society or an individual and [the] nation. The relationship is much more ambiguous. Although comparatively, South Korea has gotten more individualistic [than it had been] in the past. But compared to the US or to Europe, South Korean individuals have a lot more ambiguous ties to society and with the nation. It's very common to see, in South Korea, when something happens to an individual, or within a family, rather than go through [the system] or a governmental institution, they'd rather go through friends who may be in the system or lawyers who might be their relatives. So, rather than use the system, they go through individual ties and relationships to resolve an issue.
MM: Your films jump from very funny to very sad, sometimes in the same scene [as in The Host when a heart-breaking memorial service degenerates into a family brawl]. Is there really much difference between farce and tragedy?
JHB: Even in my daily life, as I live my life day to day, I find that farce and tragedy are very hard to divide. They often always go together. And I think the way I look at life is very relevant to the way I make films. And although I deal with the same character or the same situation, depending on the distance of the camera--whether it is very close to them or far away from them, or my perspective distance from the characters or the situation--I think that's what makes the difference. The distance. What is most important to me as a director is that distance between myself, or my camera, and the character or the situation that I want to portray in my films. So, whether I want to get myself into the situation, or depict it as a fire that's burning across the river [gesturing through the window in the direction of the Charles River] that is very distant from myself, I think it is that distance that is always a very important part of my filmmaking. And also a very difficult [part]. And it's the decision of how far and how close I want to keep myself with the character or the situation that makes the audience either laugh or cry.
MM: So, let me continue with what you're saying about perspective and distance and boundaries. In your films, you jump from: farce to tragedy; personal to social and from home to cultural. You blur many, many boundaries. And yet, South Korean culture is defined by a boundary, the DMZ. Does that play in your jumping of boundaries at all?
JHB: [Laughs] You know, personally, I've never been to the DMZ in my 40 years in South Korea. I've only seen it through films such as JSA [aka Joint Security Area, Chan-wook Park's amazing thriller]. But I would say that even without the DMZ that there are a lot of stereotypes in South Korea that often induce stress or pressure. It's that prejudice that's very common in South Korea. So, for example, men's age--there's a lot of prejudice or stereotypes about men's age. It's very common when you meet a person for the first time, they always ask you how old you are, or for you to show them your ID [Laughs]. Even linguistically, it really sets a lot of boundaries to human relationships, because there is a polite way of speaking and a very casual way of speaking that creates this vertical relationship among people. So depending on their age, you either have to call the person as an older brother or an older sister. There's a lot of categorization that is created by the language or by age. And because there are so many prejudices or boundaries in South Korea, they make very interesting subjects or topics for my films. And there is also that much more [of an] opportunity to create humor or farce because of these prejudices and boundaries. One of the particular traits of South Koreans is that they tend to accept and adjust to something that you would think is very irrational. They're very quick to get themselves very accustomed to very unpredictable situations. Even among the very young generations. It's really very funny.
MM: What sort of irrational things are we talking about?
JHB: It varies from an individual case to a social case. But let me think about a good example, from one of my movies. In Barking Dogs Never Bite, we have the main protagonist named. He is a professor. He is an educated man, who ends up bribing [his way into a] professorship. It can be seen as something that is corrupt. But he accepts it so naturally, as if it just becomes part of his life. And just gets very naturally soaked into that social circumstance where one is expected to give money or to buy into these various positions.
MM: You are 40 years old. You are of the first generation of filmmakers who grew up with the VHS technology that allowed them to have the opportunities to see a broad array of films that previously people could only see if they went to film school. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, what films did you look at through this technology that made you interested in film and that made you want to pursue the study of film?
JHB: Actually, I first got a VHS machine in 1988, the year of the Olympics. And that was when many video stores were opened and we had this very huge boom of video players in South Korea. I was a freshman in college then. But before the age of video players, I often encountered movies by watching them on TV. So, when I was in middle school or high school, I watched various films--South Korean films, American films, and European movies--on TV, rather than going to the theaters. And it was always a habit of mine to try to select the best five or ten movies of the year. When I was 14, 15, 16 years old, I was fascinated by Sam Peckinpah movies. But those movies were broadcast, so there was a lot of censorship, a lot of taking out of violent shots. But I could feel [what was cut out]. Often very violent scenes or sex scenes were taken out, between one shot and another shot. And I could always tell by watching them that something was amiss, and it was during those moments when my imagination would run wild, and I would try to imagine what was taken out and what was replaced. And since I was young, if the movies were thrillers or horror films, I liked movies that made me feel very intensely. Almost to the point of suffocating me. One of the examples is the European director Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear [Clouzot's thriller about guys driving truckloads of nitro-glycerin], one of the best movies when I was a kid. I was so anxious and so nervous watching that film, I remember almost not being ale to breathe and sweating. And every summer, South Korean TV stations would show Hitchcock's films, which I always enjoyed, because it brought this very fear, but also a very comical sense to me. For example, of course, Psycho and Frenzy were my favorites. And also many American 1970s movies, for example Marathon Man by John Schlesinger, I was fascinated by that movie.
MM: Did Psycho in terms of the mother/son relationship and murder, influence Mother?
JHB: I wasn't really thinking about the movie Psycho when I was writing the script for Mother. But during pre-production, I was somehow drawn to watch Psycho again twice. It was a very unconscious choice of mine. And in the movie Psycho we have the portrayal of the mother/son relationship, even though the mother has already passed away. And somehow, by watching that movie, I was inspired. And I wondered [what] if the mother hadn't died in Psycho? I wondered if the mother and son relationship in my movie were somehow similar to the mother/son relationship in Psycho. And also like in my film, Psycho was also based on a true story. And also after I made the film I wanted to read about Ed Gein [the 1950s necrophile who was the basis of Psycho's Norman Bates], and what his relationship with his mother was like. So I saw a lot of similarities between Psycho and my movie.
MM: Wait! Is Mother based on Ed Gein?
JHB: No! [Laughing]
MM: So Mother is based on which true story?
JHB: Mother is based loosely on a true story. Three or four years ago, in South Korea, a high school girl in the countryside. There was a high school girl who was notorious for relationships with various older men, and this incident was revealed by a Pastor there. And this became a huge social problem.