Bong Joon-ho’s killer instinct

So much of Bong Joon-ho’s cin­e­ma comes back to an idea that we can all relate to: that we live our life try­ing des­per­ate­ly – albeit polite­ly – to resist the urge to kill some­one. It could be a vile cor­po­rate over­lord, a giant riv­er-dwelling tad­pole, a snot­ty social supe­ri­or or maybe just a dog that yaps too loud­ly in your apart­ment block, but the truth of the mat­ter is, peace of mind can only be achieved when that par­tic­u­lar, sup­pu­rat­ing boil has been well and tru­ly lanced.

Since scoop­ing the Best Pic­ture Oscar for his film Par­a­site, Bong’s for­ma­tive work has once more been placed under the micro­scope and inspect­ed with keen dili­gence. Bong is no stranger to pop­u­lar suc­cess, even if some of his films have been unfair­ly muf­fled due to busi­ness-tier med­dling, but the ques­tion of where he came from and how he man­aged to scale one of the most treach­er­ous and daz­zling peaks on the cin­e­mat­ic land­scape still remains on everyone’s tongue.

In order to help shed some light on the answer, Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma have re-released Bong’s first and sec­ond fea­tures as direc­tor: 2000’s Bark­ing Dogs Nev­er Bite and 2003’s Mem­o­ries of Mur­der. Both of these films – per­haps the director’s most lit­tle seen, but wor­thy and fas­ci­nat­ing entries into his esteemed per­son­al canon – adopt the idea of mur­der as their start­ing point, but each runs in a very dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and at a dif­fer­ent speed.

In his daz­zling­ly direct­ed debut, Bark­ing Dogs Nev­er Bite, we focus on a dis­grun­tled, preen­ing aca­d­e­m­ic who choos­es to blame all of his earth­ly woes on the lit­tle, hand­bag-sized dogs that make a con­stant din on his run-down hous­ing estate. In the more oper­at­ic and expan­sive Mem­o­ries of Mur­der, we have a rab­ble of small-town cops whose (un)professional dri­ve to arrest a local rapist/​serial killer comes with its own per­fume of mur­der­ous out­rage. Song Kang-ho, the lead actor from Par­a­site, is mes­meris­ing in the film as a scruffy, not-quite-bright-enough detec­tive who just can’t resist giv­ing his var­i­ous sus­pects a taste of what he thinks is their own medicine.

On ini­tial inspec­tion, it appears that these films couldn’t be more dif­fer­ent. The for­mer is a work of knock­about whim­sy about a pro­tag­o­nist whose los­er-ish ten­den­cies make watch­ing him suf­fer (and the prospect of him being caught for his var­i­ous abus­es against petkind) all the more entic­ing. He is a mis­fit in his own way, but one whose des­per­a­tion to ascend the class lad­der has left him at a moral remove from polite soci­ety, which includes his wife who under­stand­ably belit­tles him to com­pound his frustrations.

In Mem­o­ries of Mur­der, the title alludes to the fact that igno­rance, stu­pid­i­ty and a rejec­tion of progress can make us mur­der­ers by proxy. The film dan­gles a juicy dra­mat­ic car­rot in front of our face, which rep­re­sents the prospect of solv­ing what appears to be the per­fect mur­der. But the hard­er we stare, the soon­er we notice that the car­rot is riv­en with mag­gots – the cops in this film are so dis­con­nect­ed from real­i­ty (and moral­i­ty) that their actions may have cost more lives than was necessary.

Many com­men­ta­tors have com­pared Bong’s Mem­o­ries of Mur­der to David Fincher’s Zodi­ac, itself about the efforts of an indus­tri­ous, tough-head­ed team of crime­fight­ers and jour­nal­ists attempt­ing to uncov­er the iden­ti­ty of the self-styled Zodi­ac killer. There’s cer­tain­ly a resem­blance in the foren­sic intri­ca­cy of the screen­plays and the notion of ​“truth” always remain­ing at a tan­ta­lis­ing remove from our des­per­ate heroes, but tak­ing the longview, they’re about very dif­fer­ent things. Fincher’s film is one of high philo­soph­i­cal seri­ous­ness, about the myth of cer­tain­ty in life, where­as Bong’s film takes a macabre and dis­mal sub­ject and spins it out in a vari­ety of absurd ways, invit­ing us to laugh at the very human foibles of his vio­lent characters.

If any­thing, the way Mem­o­ries of Mur­der deals with death is per­haps more akin to Se7en, in which Brad Pitt and Mor­gan Free­man track a Machi­avel­lian mur­der­er who is always one mad­den­ing step ahead of their scrupu­lous police work. Unlike Mem­o­ries, in Se7en we see who the killer is – we know his iden­ti­ty and can see he is there for the tak­ing, pri­or to him admin­is­ter­ing a shock­ing, cli­mac­tic coup de grâce. In Mem­o­ries, Bong tricks us into think­ing that we may be close to answer­ing this rid­dle and cuff­ing our man, but as with so much in the film, he pulls the rug from beneath us and we, and the char­ac­ters, tum­ble to the floor.

There’s a shot in Mem­o­ries of Mur­der where Bong hard cuts from grue­some scenes of an autop­sy to a group of men fry­ing top­side steak on a gas burn­er, which more than hints at the play­ful, off­hand tone the film runs with. The film’s great­ness derives from the fact that it some­how man­ages to fuse knock­about com­e­dy and visu­al silli­ness with a very real tragedy which, as it unfolds, just becomes dark­er and dark­er. Cer­tain­ly catch­ing up with this and Bark­ing Dogs Nev­er Bite are essen­tial frag­ments in the sprawl­ing, mag­nif­i­cent puz­zle that is Bong Joon-ho.

Mem­o­ries of Mur­der is in cin­e­mas now and avail­able on Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma. Bark­ing Dogs Nev­er Bite is released exclu­sive­ly on Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma Fri­day on 18 September.