At the age of 12, he dreamed of becoming a film director.
His first film was watched by only 457 people who paid for tickets.
Now 53 years old, he holds the Oscars and Palme d'Or trophies in his arms.
As we all know, there is no shortage of directors in South Korea.
Park Chan-wook's films have dark desires for beauty;
Li Cangdong is a tragedy and redemption;
Hong Shangxiu is romantic.
……
If you ask me which Korean director I admire the most now, I will definitely answer that it is Bong Joon-ho!
Because as long as you have watched his "Memories of Killing", as well as "Mother" and "Parasite", I believe you will definitely be in awe of him.
He is not as obsessed with violence and love as Kim Ki-duk, or park Chan-wook's themes of hatred and anger.
He is characterized by his precise video style and the extended architecture of making good use of historical culture and social environment, as well as the fascinating storytelling skills and black humor revealed.
At the 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, Bong Joon-ho took turns raising the little golden man in his hand in a piece of magnesium light and looking at the camera with a smile.
After winning the grand prize and rewriting the history of film, Bong Joon-ho's name suddenly resounded overseas.
"Combining different genres and tones to bring an unexpected viewing experience, but also to expose the global problems without criticism, brilliantly and neatly show the essence of the film."
This is the evaluation given by the Oscar judges.
But what is surprising is that Bong Joon-ho, who has been creating for more than 20 years, has accumulated only 9 film works in the past.
Among them, more are to excavate the social reality that ordinary people cannot bear to see from a sharp and realistic perspective.
But this is really curious, what kind of growth background would make a native Korean boy decide to spend 20 years to record the stories of people from all walks of life, to shoot unpleasant and heavy subjects?
Apparently, the answer is still to be found in his films.
"Accurate social observer" is a footnote given to the big director by many film peers.
Bong Joon-ho was born in South Korea in 1969 to a middle-class scholarly family.
In high school, the family moved to seoul, the capital.
At a time when anti-authoritarian trends were surging around the world in the 1980s, Seoul, where Bong Joon-ho's new home is located, is naturally an important place of resistance as the capital of South Korea.
He not only witnessed a series of clashes and repressions of the student movement, but also entered the Department of Sociology at Yonsei University at Tongma University a few months after the death of South Korean university student Lee Han-yeol.
"At that time, South Korea was still under the rule of the junta, and not only myself, but many students participated in the protests. It's almost a part of our daily lives. We went to class for three hours and protested for two hours. We would go to dinner, go back to protest, and then go back to study. ”
Bong Joon-ho said this in an interview with the Lincoln Center Film Association.
As a young man, he was a member of the street crowd and was arrested for throwing petrol bombs in his blood.
In 1999, he also participated in street protests in order to defend the quota of local Korean films.
The social atmosphere at that time, Bong Joon-ho's own personal experience, coupled with his father's antipathy and complaints about the military government, made Bong Joon-ho, who had just entered the university, quickly transform into an active new blood of The Korean social movement.
"Committed to describing the lives of all classes" is Bong Joon-ho's guideline for entering the film and television industry.
His outspoken personality has made him listed on the "Blacklist of Korean Art and Literature Circles" by the government of former President Park Geun-hye.
Bong Joon-ho has said on many occasions that he is a student who does not like to attend classes, does not like to participate in book clubs, and even slips away from the demonstration site in order to go to the movies.
He participated in the film society during his college years, often talking about movies with like-minded friends and delving into film history masterpieces.
After graduation, he entered the Korea Academy of Film Arts and refined his film shooting skills.
This school, which has perfected the one-stop system and cultivated countless famous instructors, has continued to hone his will for 4 years.
Without rejecting the experience of trying a hundred and one positions in film production, from small things to big, he began his shocking and direct film path.
He said: It is better to study and make movies while studying in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences than to study film majors.
That life, which lasted for several years, in parallel with the status of a student and a protester, deeply influenced his filmmaking style.
As Bong Joon-ho said when he won the Best Director Award at the Oscars:
"When I was in school, I studied Martin Scorsese's films; I also absorbed the essence of Martin Scorsese's famous quote 'the most personal, the most creative.'"
The source of Bong Junhao's creation is inseparable from his growth background and living environment.
Bong Joon-ho's films are not classified as the only ones of the audiences.
People who love excitement love the tension.
The Wenqing faction pays more attention to its details.
His films superficially have the tight rhythm of commercial films and sometimes conform to the narrative structure of genre films, but in their bones there is no lack of connotations of chiaroscuro.
His unique style has also made his works a guarantee for the local box office in South Korea, and artistry has continued to ferment within the box office.
No one can make the movie he wants to see for Bong Joon-ho, who loves movies, so he himself is that person.
Bong Joon-ho, who has produced only 9 works in the 20 years since his debut, is a director with a very low output.
But each of his films can be described as slow work.
He said: "I always try to create something different, I want to make a film that has never been seen in the world, and that includes my work." I'm always ambitious and try to create something new. ”
And such slow work has also become a quality assurance.
All film works by Bong Joon-ho are the box office guarantee of Korean movies.
In 2000 he made his first feature-length debut, Kidnapping the Dog at the Door.
Played by popular actress Pei Doona, although it is much cheaper than today's production, it is also rough.
But he used ordinary "dogs" and "people" to construct a complete story line.
At that time, he was still an unknown small director, and his unique black humor skills have emerged.
The combination of everyday pet dogs and ordinary apartments is the absurdity.
The unemployed college teacher, who was despised by his wife at home and disturbed by the barking of the neighbor's dog, decided to kidnap the dog and even abuse it.
When he was about to drop the dog off the building, he was witnessed and his wife brought home a new dog.
The absurd continuation of the plot vaguely revolves around the psychological aspects of cowardice, longing, and inexplicable unwillingness.
The film attracts the attention of the audience with its interesting style and abrupt plot.
The development of a novel and critical perspective from the small events around him is what makes Bong Joon-ho special.
And Bong Joon-ho also gradually began to portray the dark side of modern human nature.
However, this film still has unfamiliar techniques and loose structural shortcomings, but fortunately, the next work, that really makes him famous.
And it also shows another feature of Bong Joon-ho's films – it is closely related to social issues.
In 2003, he directed the famous "Memories of Killing".
The film is based on a true story in South Korea, about the 80s in South Korea, in a seemingly simple small village, a series of rape and murder incidents specifically on rainy days, when 10 women were killed in the middle of the night, and only 1 person accidentally survived.
At the time, the police searched about 20,000 suspects, but found nothing, and the investigation was terminated on April 2, 2006, because the legal prosecution period had passed.
This korean-feared and painful memory was later adapted into several TV series, including "Signal" and "Tunnel".
The opening scene of "Memories of Killing" is set against the backdrop of a beautiful golden wheat field, and the composition of the whole film is exquisite.
For example, when the police were handling the case, they said that the victims were dressed in red clothes, and a scarecrow with red clothes stood next to them.
Bong Joon-ho uses the sparks of two police officers with very different personalities to create the basis of the drama.
Through the inhumane way of handling cases at that time (beating into confession), satirizing the attitude and system of the South Korean police, as well as the interludes brought to the demonstration movement at that time, Bong Joon-ho skillfully practiced accurate imaging skills, and gradually matured with a film that embraces diverse themes.
This demonstration method was also moved to "Snow Country Train" by him.
The great thing about "Memories of Killing" is that Bong Joon-ho uses many clues to let the audience find the murderer together.
For example, radio songs, rainy days, red clothes, through the suspense of the old cloth doubts, in fact, deliberately confuse the audience's judgment.
So when the murderer at the end of the film is about to come out, and everyone thinks that the suppressed emotions are about to be cathartic, then there is a big reversal, which makes people dumbfounded.
And this is just the atmosphere created by this film, making the audience desperately want to know who the murderer really is.
After watching the movie, fans are guessing who the murderer is, and the head of the Tieba forum is countless articles analyzing the real murderer.
I was afraid that I would miss any detail, and I was still confused at the end of the movie.
But in fact, Bong Joon-ho's answer stopped at the last scene, Song Kanghao stared at the camera, looking at all the audience, every clue was a foot behind the door, and everyone could be the murderer.
"Memories of Killing" not only explains the long-standing problem of police violence in South Korea.
The film also symbolically points out in the final scene that the untraceable prisoners are very likely to hide among you and me, revealing the mistakes and loopholes in the Korean judicial system.
Bong Joon-ho said in this regard:
"I believe that real criminals will also go to the cinema to watch 'Memories of Killing', and the composition of the last scene is to make the prisoners watching the movie look at the criminal police in the play."
According to incomplete statistics, "Memories of Killing" caused a feat of 5.4 million movie viewers in South Korea at that time.
But in fact, if you savor it, you will find that it is not only the conflict between the police.
The crisis of trust between them and the people and the media is a crisis that highlights the tense atmosphere and some ulterior motives of a particular era.
The next "Monster of the Han River" is the third work directed by Bong Joon-ho, and the male protagonist is still Song Kang-ho of "Memories of Killing".
2006's "Monster of the Han River" was the 7th highest grossing film in Korean film history.
The film grossed $89.4 million and set a record of 13.01 million viewers, becoming the highest-grossing film in Korean film history at the time, a record that was not surpassed by Avatar until 2009.
The work tells the story of the Han River in South Korea, which is contaminated with discarded chemicals from the United States, and a giant mutant monster appears, and suddenly, the creature quickly climbs up to the shore and attacks the onlookers, and the bank of the Han River suddenly becomes a purgatory on earth.
In fact, just by looking at the plot, you will definitely think that this is another "Tesla", but Bong Joon-ho transforms South Korea's "love-hate love-hate" for the United States into a "monster" surreal design, which is a high trick.
So this is ostensibly a disaster film, but the subtle "anti-American" sentiment gives this film a great topicality - looking up to the big countries and blinding the eyes.
In recent years, in "Snow Country Train" and "Yuzi", Bong Joon-ho has further explored issues such as class disparity, climate and environment, and animal rights.
The stories these films want to tell have been repeatedly echoed by many filmmakers for Bong Joon-ho's "accurate social observers" footnotes.
Bong Joon-ho still retains a wealth of commercial elements when dealing with this film.
For example, excellent visual effects, meticulous storyboard editing, monster hunting and killing and the panic and escape of the people, the high tension pulled out, almost does not make people have room for breathing.
Especially when the monster appeared, the original ignorant people threw him with garbage, and suddenly it disappeared, but it came ashore from the front and approached step by step in the direction of the screen, and the panic caused by the successful scheduling of the scene made a bunch of monster disaster movies seem childish.
At the same time, "Han River Monster" is also full of grassroots characteristics and black humor of small characters like "Memories of Killing".
He said: "I want it to have a double meaning. On the one hand, it has biological implications; on the other hand, it also has socio-political reference value.
Bong Joon-ho uses allegorical techniques to directly address social problems and affirm the importance of family values, and the ironic and sharp style remains unchanged, but there are more moving emotional portrayals.
But on the portrayal of feelings, there is absolutely no regret in the following latest work.
As Bong Joon-ho's fourth work, 2009's "Mother" returns to the rural killings such as "Memories of Killings" and echoes them, but the perspective changes from the police to the victim and the perpetrator.
The heroine of the play relies on selling herbs and acupuncture to raise a slightly mentally retarded son, one day the son accidentally became a suspect in the murder of the young girl, she did not believe in her son or did such a thing, so she ran around alone to investigate, hoping to find out the truth, but the truth is far beyond her imagination.
In "Mother", we see Bong Joon-ho using various techniques more vigorously.
Designing a human tragedy with a peak and a loop, the two protagonists Kim Hye-ko, Yuan Bin bitter but not sad, poor and not poor mother and son life, is still the director's favorite small character protagonist, the pain of the mother and son pulling each other, is the basis for the creation of the whole film, and Bong Joon-ho with a low-key sentimental tone, touching the various problems of the social family, the film also retains Bong Joon-ho's consistent criticism of the judiciary and the distrust of the police.
The director deliberately selected Yuan Bin, letting him interpret the role of his son with a handsome appearance but mentally retarded, and contrastingly presented that behind many beautiful appearances, there are actually more unbearable interiors.
The film is interlaced with surreal scenes (for example, when the Ferris wheel is abandoned, the dead victims are playing the conversation at that time), and the realistic lifestyle style, especially the delicate plot twists of this film, the truth revealed in the later section is as amazing as the leopard's tail.
The audience will definitely remember the scene at the end of the film where Yuan Bin returns her mother's acupuncture box to her, and all the despair and sorrow are vented.
When my mother got on the tour bus, the passengers who were happy to forget herself seemed to be a person of two worlds, and she had to pick up the acupuncture needle and go to the acupuncture channel that could forget all the memories, so that she could also sing and dance with everyone.
Here, the director shoots the silhouette of the tour bus with a poetic backlit long shot, with a charming soundtrack, and all the mixed emotions are fermented at a time until the screen is completely dark.
Bong Joon-ho once again ends with a negative ending, showing the setbacks and resilience that people face in the face of fate.
If the film can score 90 points, then 40 of them are given by Keiko Kim, who plays her mother, although the middle of the movie is a little loose, but the actor's performance makes these almost imperceptible.
From the opening scene of the movie, Kim Keiko inexplicably dances on the hillside, to the anxiety that has been protecting her son later, Aiko asks her if she ever screamed uncontrollably when she was a child who wanted to take him to death, or learned that another mentally handicapped child similar to his son became the next collapse convulsion of the police for the dead ghost.
Kim Keiko shows the precious value of a veteran actress, she has done every level of transformation of the role, and the whole play ends in her wonderful performance.
Bong Joon-ho has said that many people will use his films as a subject of class, make relevant social comments, or see his films as related to political issues, but as a filmmaker, he thinks about how to lead the audience to enjoy the film by depicting the characters, and the more he explores the personalities of the characters, the more he will naturally depict the social situation surrounding his characters.
"I like to use extreme conditions as a backdrop, in which case humanity is brought to the extreme."
Perhaps it is this kind of creative thinking that gives Bong Joon-ho's film an extra layer of significance worth reflecting on.
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References -----------------------------
[1] Nandu Weekly: Bong Joon-ho: Freak, control freak
[2] Douban Movie: Bong Joon-ho: From Sociologist to Palme d'Or