What kind of detective sleeps well?
In his second feature film, visionary Korean aueteur Bong Joon Ho takes on the police procedural and South Korea’s very first serial murder case from the 1980s and crafts a compelling work of genre fiction that both elevates the serial killer mystery genre and transcends it. It’s the police procedural as only Bong could make it, filled with strange asides, personality quirks and his own quirky sense of humor, though the film grows more somber and less funny as it progresses, which is, I suppose, fitting as the killings continue. The set-up is pretty standard; a rural area of South Korea reels as a series of women are brutally raped and murdered. The local cop is the hot tempered Detective Park, a guy who follows his instincts, reads the guilt in his suspect’s eyes, isn’t above beating a confession out of somebody every once in a while; the hotshot detective from the city is Detective Seo and he’s younger, cooler, both aesthetically and emotionally, than his rural counterpart and he relies on data, documents and his own upstanding morality. They clash, but reluctantly work together as their harried boss gets an ulcer and urges them to hurry before panic breaks out. We’ve seen these basic characters go through this basic plot before, but, genuinely, rarely have either been executed at anything near this level of perfection.
Bong’s direction is, if you’ve seen some of his later movies, pretty restrained, but he has such a good eye for framing that it’s kind of hard to believe this is just his second feature. And the characters are well-written; they’re full of life and deeply driven by emotion. In particular the two main detectives have great character arcs and their final scene together is absolutely perfect. The ensemble is pitch perfect. Frequent collaborator Kang-ho Song is a marvel as Park; he’s incredibly subtle in a couple of scenes, but unafraid to play to the rafters when the moment calls for it. Sang-kyung Kim is intense, brooding and magnetic as Seo. Jae-ho Song is nothing short of brilliant as the harried sergeant leading the investigation. Hae-il Park steals every scene he’s in and makes a huge impact with a relatively small role as one of the suspects in the case. But really everyone is excellent, Bong doing what he seems preternaturally able to do time and again which is assemble an ensemble that’s just perfect down to the ground. You know, Chris Evans in Snowpiercer notwithstanding.
Ultimately, I found this movie to be deeply emotional and deeply sad in a way that these kinds of movies often aren’t. There’s a layer of tragedy often found in serial killer movies, but as this film progresses I just found myself being oppressed by something that was perhaps less transcendent than tragedy, but was instead just a deep, suffocating sorrow. And the final scene of the film is one of the best final scenes I’ve seen in a very, very long time. I’d recommend you go into this film knowing as little about the real case as possible for maximum impact. Really those final two scenes add up to about ten to fifteen minutes that’s nothing short of cinematic perfection. There are two shots in those scenes that really just kind of sum up the movie for me and are really gorgeous. One of them is the final shot of the movie which I think I can safely say is the best final shot of a movie I’ve seen in . . . years. I’m trying to remember the last one that dropped my jaw the way this one did and I’m kind of having trouble. Anyway, no details from me, but just see this movie. I was incredibly lucky to get to see this in a nearly empty movie theater and I actually set through the entire credits, just kind of blown away by what I’d just experienced. For genre afficionados who haven’t seen this one, you are in for a treat, a serial killer film that’s genuinely one of the best of the entire genre and I’m aware of just how deep this genre goes when it comes to classics. For filmlovers in general, though, Memories of Murder is just as much of a treat, if something as ultimately bitter can be called a treat. But I think it can; because it has a story to tell and it achieves something like perfection doing it. 4 stars.
tl;dr – dark, deeply emotional, magnificently performed, directed & written, Memories of Murder is among the best of its genre & also a film that transcends its genre; close to perfect. 4 stars.