South Korean director Kim Ki-duk has passed away.
According to reports, he died in Latvia after complications of COVID-19.
Last week, when I first heard the news, I was suspicious.
Because the source of the news is basically from Latvia, Estonia and other Eastern European media.
The South Korean side did not move at all.
Everyone hoped that this was just fake news, and at the same time surprised:
Why did Kim Ki-duk run to Latvia?
It turned out that he was planning to buy a house in the local area and settle down for a long time.
Before that, it was strongly resisted by the public because it was involved in a series of scandals in the METOO movement in South Korea.
In South Korea, it is basically equivalent to "social death".
This director, who has made many films in more than 20 years that can enter the history of Korean cinema, is also the only Korean director who has won awards at all three major film festivals in the world.
In the end, in such a way of being criticized and wandering away from home, he passed away for a long time.
Like his films, lonely, silent, absurd, distant.
In an instant, those alternative and amazing images all poured into Uncle Yu's mind.
Today, I will miss this director who is full of contradictions and difficult to evaluate.
Kim Ki-duk
Ki-duk Kim
The first half of Kim's bumpy life has nothing to do with movies.
Kim Ki-duk was born on December 20, 1960, in a small mountain village in Bonghwa-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea.
His father was the village chief for 20 years, and his mother was an ordinary housewife.
In the family, the father is the absolute authority.
He says in Wild Kim Kidd:
"He is like a stubborn monarch who can only give orders in a deafening voice."
At the age of 9, in order to give Kim Ki-duk's eldest brother a better education, the family immigrated to Seoul (i.e. Seoul).
But the father was disappointed by the performance of the eldest son, and became angry, so he did not want Kim Ki-duk to continue learning.
At the time, Kim Ki-duk, who was still studying at an agricultural technical school (equivalent to a junior high school degree), dropped out of school.
At the age of 15, he was pulled into a factory to work.
Life before the age of 20 is full of suffering and depression.
If he had imagined the future at that time, it might have been only bleak.
In 1980, at the age of 20, Kim Ki-duk voluntarily signed up for the Navy.
At the end of his 5-year military career, he found an errand at a church school.
During this time, he also worked part-time in a disabled shelter for 5 years.
There, for the first time in his life, he found something he liked.
a picture
In 1990, Kim Ki-duk went to Paris to study fine arts in the name of studying abroad, and made a living selling paintings on the streets of Paris.
Kim Ki-duk's paintings
Two films he watched in a French cinema deeply influenced the trajectory of his life.
One is the French film "Lovers of the New Bridge" and the other is the American film "The Silence of the Lambs".
"Lovers of Shimbashi"
The Silence of the Lambs
Kim Ki-duk had the idea of making a movie.
In this way, a street painter who had never received professional studies decided to become a director.
After spending two years in France, he returned to South Korea and immediately enrolled in two writing classes to learn to write scripts.
The bumpy experiences of his early years brought him a lot of material.
From 1992 to 1995, he won three Korean Film Association Best Screenplay Awards.
In 1996, after several rounds of investment of 100 million won, he finally made his debut film "Crocodile Hidden Corpse Diary".
Since then, without formal film education and no experience in film work, he has stepped into the door of the film world.
He attributes his boldness to a "wild purity."
And this debut film "Crocodile Hidden Corpse Diary" is also very weird, very wild.
It tells the story of a tramp who first saves a young girl who commits suicide for love, and then forcibly takes her for himself.
Obviously, the "wild" Kim Ki-duk is not welcomed by the mainstream domestic film circle.
But he didn't care, but continued to devote himself to the creation of one work after another.
In 1997, he used his French experience to create a semi-autobiographical version of The Beast.
In 1998, "The Young Prostitute" was filmed with a prostitute and a female college student as the protagonist.
Although the film's box office and word-of-mouth are still unsatisfactory, The has been invited by many foreign film festivals.
Kim Ki-duk's name began to attract more and more attention internationally.
In 2000, "Drifting Room" was shortlisted for the competition section of the Venice Film Festival.
In 2002, "Bad Boy" was shortlisted for the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2003, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring was shortlisted for the Locarno Film Festival and won the Audience Choice Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
At that time, it was the era of the proliferation of pirated discs in our country.
Works such as Kim Ki-duk's "Drifting Desire Room" have become the best-selling disc representatives because of their taboo themes, large-scale pictures, and unprecedented experimental techniques.
It has also inadvertently become the enlightenment of many people for "art films".
Domestic cold, overseas blossoms.
Kim Ki-duk was greatly encouraged by this situation, and it also gave him a certain degree of heat in South Korea.
In 2002, he invited Zhang Dongjian, who was just popular, to star in his film "Coastline".
In 2004, Kim won his first international blockbuster.
"Samaritan Girl", which is based on a girlish theme, won the Silver Bear Award for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival.
In September of the same year, he continued to work hard.
For "Empty Room", he won the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival.
In 2005, he filmed Bow.
It was also shortlisted for a kind of attention section at the Cannes Film Festival.
People use the term "hungry spirit" to describe Kim Ki-duk's way of making movies.
In the shortest possible time, with the lowest budget, to make a shocking movie.
"The Samaria Girl" took 11 days, "The Empty Room" took 16 days, and most of the rest of the works were completed in ten days.
In the 12 years from 1996 to 2008, he maintained almost one output per year.
As his fame grew, Kim Ki-duk gradually gained the opportunity to work with more star actors.
In 2006, he cooperated with Ha Zhengyu in "Time", in 2007 with Zhang Zhen in "Breathing", and in 2008 with Oda Chejang in "Sad Dream".
Controversy over the film has always accompanied Kim Ki-duk.
But the awards at mainstream film festivals are undoubtedly a recognition of their talents.
But late in his directing career, criticism of himself poured in.
In 2008, when filming "Sad Dream", there was a scene where the heroine Li Naiying hanged herself.
In order to achieve a realistic effect, Kim Ki-duk was slow to shout "Ka", so that Lee Nai-young suffocated and fell unconscious on the spot, causing a tragedy.
After this matter was exposed, Kim Ki-duk was attacked by South Korean public opinion.
Coupled with the departure of his own students, he felt lost and depressed and chose to retire for 3 years.
In 2011, he filmed the documentary Arirang with himself as the protagonist.
The daily life and self-reflection of the past three years in isolation are all displayed.
He made a comeback and won the Grand Prix in the Attention Section of the Cannes Film Festival.
In 2012, his 18th film, The Holy Death, won the Golden Lion, the venice film festival's highest honor.
So far, Kim Ki-duk has become the only Korean director to win three major film festival awards.
"The Holy Death" tells the story of a mother who avenges her son and carries out a plan of revenge by pretending to be a mother.
Let the other party think that they have gained the family affection that they have lost and regained, and then take it away at a critical time.
The real "murderous heart".
In the film, there are still a lot of violent and heavy taste scenes, which bring people a double impact on physiology and psychology.
By 2013's Mobius, Kim Ki-duk told an even more extreme and brutal story:
In order to punish the wife of the cheating husband, he wrongly castrated the son; in order to make up for the mistake, the husband chose to go to the palace.
Such a bizarre story that challenges the bottom line of human morality brings the "wildness" in Kim Ki-duk's body to the extreme.
No name, no dialogue, no soundtrack, no lights.
Unexpectedly, the film became one of his rare works that achieved good commercial results.
Kim Ki-duk once described the characters in his films:
Although the protagonist of my film is inevitably a little strange and acting in terms of popular moral standards, if the topic of "what is a person" is placed at the center of the film reading, and thinking about it, I believe that the understanding of the image will be different.
Crazy, grotesque, cruel, extreme.
Such a tone is destined to keep Kim Ki-duk outside the mainstream aesthetic and maintain his maverick behavior.
Although always controversial.
But after Mobius, Kim Seems to be starting to get a little overwhelmed.
His work is becoming more and more difficult to attract widespread attention, and even in the hearts of critics and fans, word of mouth is much worse than before.
Until 2017, the METOO movement emerged in South Korea.
Kim Ki-duk's scandal has been constantly exposed.
Three actresses appeared to complain about the violence and sexual harassment he inflicted on them on set.
Kim Ki-duk himself denied the allegations and responded to the media:
"My life is not like that, I have never done the acts on TV." 」
In 2019, the court finally ruled that Kim Ki-duk slapped the actress and fined him about 30,000 yuan.
However, due to the lack of valid evidence of sexual harassment, her sexual harassment allegations were not identified.
But in this whirlpool of public opinion, Kim Ki-duk has long been a loser.
Many people who dislike his films generally form a consensus:
"Only a person with a dark heart can shoot such a disgusting thing."
"Human, Space, Time and People" became Kim Ki-duk's last film to be released.
The film "Godless", which was created earlier and claimed to have "traveled through the three countries of China, Japan and South Korea in ten years", has no afterword.
Soon, Kim Ki-duk was abandoned by his wife and children and had to go away alone.
According to media reports, he had planned to buy a property in Latvia to obtain permanent residency, but did not show up on the day of signing the contract.
When his friends found him, they found that he had been infected with new crown pneumonia and was admitted to the local hospital.
Two days later, he died of complications.
Kim Ki-duk once said of himself in his autobiography:
"Kim Is swelling.
Kim Ki-duk is actually very fragile.
Kim Ki-duk had nothing.
I felt the same self-pity as above, and at the same time I thought the following:
Are you confident that you will never watch a Kim Ki-duk movie?
While it's a bit embarrassing to say this, I'm sure:
Even if I die now, I'll be re-judged right away."
Uncle Yu is not a god, nor has he ever had contact with the director himself, so he cannot judge Kim Ki-duk personally.
For his films, it can be said.
I have always believed that Kim Ki-duk is not a very good master.
At least compared to Korean directors such as Lee Cang-dong, Park Chan-wook, and Bong Joon-ho, it is not so delicate and not so profound.
But on the other hand, I really can't forget the shock I felt when I watched Kim Ki-duk's movie years ago.
This kind of shock can definitely last for a long time in the heart of a movie fan.
I've been wondering, what a lonely and painful person who can make this kind of movie?
It is possible to perceive human nature in such a humble and arrogant posture, in such a pitiful and frightening way.
Let us, in the midst of such extreme cruelty and grace, question, doubt, and seek peace.
Finally, it must be said that the deceased is gone.
I hope that the Golden Guide will rest in peace.
He was guilty.
He regards film as his only salvation.
And now, so is death.
But please don't be a director in the next life.
Be a merely happy mortal.