I Want Revenge: Challenge your limits

Director: Park Chan-wook

Writers: Park Chan-wook / Lee Moo-young

Starring: Song Kang-ho / Shin Ha-kyun / Bae Doona / Han Baobei / Lin Ji-eun

Genre: Drama / Thriller / Crime

Country/Region of Production: South Korea

Language: Korean Sign Language / Korean

Release: 2002-03-29

Runtime: 129 min / Japan: 117 min / UK: 121 min

Also known as: Revenge of the Avengers / Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

IMDb link: tt0310775

I believe that people who have seen this film have a kind of depression in their hearts that is difficult to describe. For Park Chan-wook's film, I can hardly compare it with the later famous "Good Boy" and "Kind Gold", although it is the same as these two works as the revenge trilogy series, but this work is more direct, more bloody, and more uncomfortable. At the same time, I do not want to juxtapose with those two films, but to mention that this work obviously has greater ambitions, and the subject matter is far beyond the individuality of those two films, which is a terrible thing, when revenge becomes a social problem, revenge itself becomes just, or even a fashionable social source of motivation, which means that a change, far more intense than personal hatred, is far more than a person's so-called human nature distortion and normality, but how is this normal not a distortion of the world?

The storyline does not want to say more, but we can roughly divide it into two parts, the first part is the perspective of the deaf-mute Lu, a poor man with a disability, he faces the world, poor, trivial, lifeless, and the second part Since the accidental death of the little girl, the boss's perspective has almost replaced Lu, in his eyes, it is still poor, still helpless, but these are all covered by the hatred he has, so his poverty, although profound, is not what he personally feels.

In fact, in this way, although the film adopts a two-point of view continuation in the narrative, it expresses a theme in essence, that is, poverty, and what is the root cause of poverty? This involves another character, Lu's girlfriend, Wing Mi.

The rescue of Lu by the character of Wing Mi is not only a matter of love, but also of social significance, and the director has a status symbol for him, that is, the fanatical leftists, although they seem to have achieved nothing, but the hatred of the difference between rich and poor is far more theoretical than Lu's personal feelings, although his behavior may not be what a real revolutionary wants to do, but its existence raises the film to a new height, and also greatly demonstrates the director's ambition.

Yong Mi pretends to be a deaf person and meets Lu, who is also in the deaf school. It is undeniable that whether it is film and television works or real life, some people with disabilities often represent the vulnerable groups in society, that is, deaf and dumb, and for modern society, the real disadvantage is poverty, there is no doubt about it. As a result, Yongmi's seemingly very funny plot arrangement of mixing into the deaf and dumb school has the director's inner complex, that is, Yongmi has stood on the basis of social weakness from the beginning, coupled with Yongmi's help to Lu later, there can be no doubt that Yongmi represents the weak and is the spokesman of the poor.

Yongmi smuggled himself into North Korea unsuccessfully, and later established a left-wing organization of his own and promoted his ideas in the streets. In this regard, Yongmi is helpless and has no support, in other words, she is a lone hero, and she can only rely on her own consciousness to see and deal with the injustice she sees in society. This is actually the state of many aspiring revolutionaries living on the verge of subsistence, but the director obviously does not want this helpless existence, so he arranges the scene of the so-called terrorist organization to avenge Yongmi at the end. There is no foreshadowing in the foregoing, and even Yongmi's words before her death are most likely to be used as a joke by the audience, so the four people who play with the knife stand in front of the boss and appear extremely abrupt, but it is this abruptness that just shows the power of inner poverty, hidden, timely outbreak, although only on a small scale, but indicating the unstable factors of society.

Wing Mi sees Lu's difficulties and suggests that Lu kidnap the boss's children in exchange for money to treat her sister's illness. It does not kill the rich to help the poor, but only allows the poor to see the sick and live better, which actually has no impact on the rich. Obviously, Yongmi is not a terrorist or a gangster for personal gain, she is just a demand on society, the image of a revolutionary. Although this suggestion to Lu is objectively intended to help his plight, subjectively it is a small realization of a political proposition in his heart.

But the incident was not as perfect as planned, Lu's sister could not bear the difficulties, the little girl also accidentally drowned and died, and things became extremely bad. The death of his sister makes Lu a true proletarian who has nothing, and at this time, Yongmi accepts him physically. In general, various artists have a fascination with sex, and have found various reasons for sex, as well as various deep social roots and symbolic meanings. This film is no exception, Yongmi's sexual love is the salvation of Lu, the real ownerless, that is, the revolutionary's acceptance of the poor, although the film can say that from the moment the eyes look at each other, the process of sex is doomed, which seems to be love at first sight, but in essence, it means that the roots of the revolutionaries are in these vulnerable groups, that is, the two people are originally a class, which cannot be changed, which is also the premise of mutual tolerance or acceptance.

But the little girl's death is terrible, and although Yongmi's plan is well-wished, the drowning accident is reasonable. The little girl is very naïve, but she is the daughter of the boss, the doomed rich class, the destined successor of the rich, so her death is actually a kind of destruction of the future of the rich, that is, a kind of destruction of whether the rich can last for a long time, although unintentional, but as long as the proletarian has this desire for revolution, there will certainly be this conflict. So when we see the boss looking at the photo of Yongmi and Lu and the little girl making love, we all think that the boss will let Yongmi go, but the director ruthlessly let Yongmi die, no matter what, this contradiction between rich and poor is irreconcilable, although it can exist temporarily, but it is impossible to compromise with each other.

After the little girl dies, the film's perspective begins to turn to the boss, when there is a detail that the police ask the boss about his history. The boss was originally a motor engineer, which is very important, not only to provide a guarantee for the future plot setting, but also to expose the boss's sociality, and finally become a rich man after receiving higher education. His status as a rich man was not born, but was also formed through his own efforts, and even suffered from his wife's blank eyes, so from another point of view, on the one hand, he understood the suffering of the poor, on the other hand, he also hated poverty. A proletarian becomes one of the most normal psychological opportunities after becoming a rich man, so there is what he says at the moment when he kills Lu at the end of the film, knowing that you are a good person, but you must be killed. Of course, this state of mind also indicates that he has the possibility of acting as the father of the child who died of poison.

The plot of the little girl's cremation is extremely terrifying, the camera reaches the coffin, the rag doll's head falls off, which is more in line with the overall style of the film, but then the little girl's apparition is somewhat difficult to understand, and the little girl who is drenched in water asks her father why he did not teach himself to swim?

The boss's nostalgia for his daughter is visible, but more importantly, the boss already knows that his daughter's death was indeed an accident, but he still can't let go of Lu and Yongmi, because the accident is the challenge of these rich people to the rich, and an image of maintaining the rich class is immediately established. Similarly, in the process of finding clues, the boss saw the dilemma of the vulnerable people, and the most direct stimulus was the family who was forced to take poison because of his indifference, and the boss was called by conscience, so he saved the little boy who did not die for a while, and acted as his father.

What Wing Mi did at this time was to help Lu get revenge on the people who had lost their conscience and bought and sold organs. These organ-buying and selling people are obstacles to both the rich and the wealthless, but in fact, they can survive precisely because they rely on the rich class to parasitize, so in essence, although they do not represent the rich class, the harm to the proletarian is equivalent. When Wing Mi puts her political views into the hands of these people, it is actually a mockery, without the slightest sense of conscience.

At the same time as Lu's revenge, the boss also found Yongmi, killing Yongmi with electrical appliances, which represented absolute modernization, and later when Lu was captured, the boss also used this electrical appliance, for the proletarians, perhaps modernization itself is the biggest or most fatal injury, and the main industrial reason why the rich have money is that there is an energy power such as electricity.

The little boy who took the poison finally died, and the boss who basically completed the revenge no longer recognized himself as the father of the little child, and the completion of the revenge meant that he had to return to his rich class, and his conscience had been lost in the killing, although he knew that the poor might not be bad people, but if the poor destroyed the lives of the rich, it was only eliminated, which was something that the rich had to maintain.

Lu's death was reasonable, and his death was completely released in the water, squeezed dry, and drained.

When we feel empty for the excessive amount of bloody violence in the film, and willingly accept this masochistic plot and camera challenge, we often ignore the director's social desire conveyed by the film (I would prefer this to be a social desire rather than a political desire, because the difference between rich and poor is what we can feel the most). For this film, the clue is definitely revenge, just a transformation in the perspective of the character, from Lu to the boss, but the clue of its spiritual connotation is Yongmi. In my opinion, to understand this person is to understand the whole film.

As for the language of those shots and the bloody plot setting, its exaggeration of cruelty only plays an auxiliary role, of course, it is not suitable for children!