Director Park Chan-wook says “people usually laugh at me” when he insists he’s a romantic filmmaker

Through his astounding revenge trilogy—Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance—as well as the lush erotic thriller The Handmaiden, South Korean master Park Chan-wook might be most associated with intricately labyrinthine stories that revolve around violence and sex. But at the core of his big-screen cinematic outings is a romantic spirit. Speaking to The A.V. Club during the New York Film Festival run for his latest film Decision To Leave, he explains how nice it would be if other people also thought of him as a romantic, when I call him one. “When I say I’m a romantic filmmaker who makes romantic films, people usually laugh at me,” he reminisces. “I think it’s for two reasons. The first being that violence and sex sometimes override any other elements of my films. And another one is, my films are very strong genre films. Crime thrillers or horror. So sometimes people forget that essentially I’m telling stories about love.”

Even for those who may have previously missed director Park’s emotional undercurrents, there’s no mistaking the exquisite Decision To Leave for anything other than a beautifully constructed and mysterious love story; one that follows a kindly detective (Park Hae-il) as he tries to investigate a murder that the beautiful Seo-rae (Tang Wei) might have been involved in.

In this conversation about Decision To Leave, director Park discusses his body of work, and his reflections on a more international Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

Park Chan-wook: I don’t know where this thought exactly started, but for this project, I wanted to make a very classical film. Classical, not old-fashioned. I wanted to make a film that you don’t get tired of even after watching it multiple times. One that doesn’t grow old in time. In order to do that, I had to start from a more common setting, so that I don’t have to waste time introducing the world to the audience. Instead, we can spend that time going through the journey: starting off from this common place, seeing where it would lead to. There’s nothing more common than a detective who falls in love with his suspect.

The audience can sit through and observe the journey of the love between the two characters, a detective and a suspect, who don’t reveal their emotions very much. They’re concealing their true emotions. So in order to get a peek at what they’re actually feeling, you need to observe the delicate changes in their facial expressions. And I thought that adding more explicit elements like violence or nudity might take the audience away from that.

AVC: I want to talk about that, you wanting to make a classical film. I kept thinking of Old Hollywood references like Alfred Hitchcock, particularly Vertigo. Did you have any such references in your mind, ones you wanted to bring your own language to?

PCW: The answer to that question is both a yes and a no, believe it or not. I never thought about Vertigo or Hitchcock when I was making the film. Not just for this film, but generally in my creative process, I don’t do that. I’m never thinking about a particular film or filmmaker. I think it’s related to the fact that I have bad memory. I don’t clearly remember the films that I’ve watched, so it’s difficult to pull out of those.

The many films that I have watched throughout my life are all jumbled up in my subconscious. And I think that’s what resurfaces when I’m making my movies. It works the same way for pieces of literature as well. I take inspiration from all of those things. To expand even further, the inspiration also comes from people I’ve met, or the news footages I could have watched. So from Vertigo all the way to casual conversations with my daughter. All of these are equally important sources of my inspiration.

AVC: In taking us through Detective Hae-jun’s investigative process, most filmmakers would have shown flashbacks when he imagines a crime scene in his mind. But you show us in parallel exactly what he sees in the moment.

PCW: If this was just about the investigation process, this film would’ve turned out differently. But it is both an investigation process and a romance film. Those two processes are a unified process, which is why I made those choices. Love is the most immediate and important emotion that we can feel. You could tell the story through logical realizations of a flashback, but I thought it was more important to lean in on that momentary, step-by-step emotion.

The only exception would be the last scene when Hae-jun thinks, “I never said the words I love you.” And he finds the answer to that mystery through a flashback when he’s listening to the recorded voice. Solving a mystery is usually about other people, but in this case, he’s listening to his own voice and solving out his own mystery. And he comes to a late realization that he had so much pride in his occupation as a policeman. But after he finds out that Seo-rae is a murderer, he lets her get away and even tells her to get rid of the important piece of evidence. So by abandoning that pride in his occupation is a thousand times more powerful than I love you.

AVC: The beautiful song in the movie “The Mist” seems so integral to the plot. I thought you perhaps started building the story around that song.

PCW: Personally speaking, this is one of the most famous pop songs in Korea that I grew up listening to. As I grew older and the song no longer was popular with the younger generation, I did not listen to it as much. But if somebody were to ask me, “What are some of your favorite Korean pop songs?,” it would always be in the list. So while I was doing post-production for Little Drummer Girl in London, I became homesick and started listening to those songs again. And in that process, I found out that my favorite Korean male singer has covered it a while ago. So you can say that my favorite female singer and my favorite male singer both sang this one song.

Pondering the lyrics, I had the thought to make a movie based on this song, a film where you hear the female version that you’re more familiar with throughout the movie. And by the end of the film you hear the male version: almost a surprise present. The interesting thing is, this song was actually made as part of a soundtrack for an older Korean film. And that film is based on a novel that all Korean people are familiar with. It’s all about what happens in a city filled with mist. So Decision To Leave is just a continuation of that long thread. And the reason I didn’t end on the male version of the song as I had originally planned was, I feared that the story would become too male-centric. Instead, I personally invited the two singers to a studio to record a duet version of the song. And I wanted it to come off as a conversation. You can almost say this is the Korean version of Diana Ross and Bob Dylan doing a duet.

AVC: Your films always have a sly sense of humor. Even when we’re watching something graphic or tragic, the humor is there. What’s your philosophy about using humor in general in your stories?

PCW: I don’t know if I should call this a philosophy per se. When I’m watching other films or just meeting people throughout my daily life, I always find something comical and humorous in that situation. I savor it, I find happiness in discovering the humor in them. This is the same for when I’m reading literature as well. Even in works that most people find very serious and dark, I somehow find the humor. It’s very easy to find humor [in] Kurt Vonnegut. But I also find humor in Dostoyevsky.

And it’s the same for when I’m meeting people. This is different from laughing at them. I just somehow find a humorous element in our conversations, regardless of whether it was intended. I think the same mechanism works when I’m making my films. This is a method to express the totality of life. With just feeling weak, sad, angry, horrified, or happy, something feels missing with those emotions. And if I’m merely expressing those emotions, I feel like I’m enforcing a particular emotion on the audience. That’s why you need a sense of distance, an objectivity, but you need the right amount or else you’ll get pushed out of that story. So there’s some form of attachment, but there’s also a little bit of distance.

What is the fine line between the distance and attachment? That’s something I care most about when I’m making my films. And it’s also one of the most difficult challenges. But if you have the right amount, you can have sympathy towards the characters while having objectivity. And then you can easily find comical moments within these characters. For instance, when the male character says to the female character, “I like you for your straight posture,” there’s something humorous about the serious attitude in which he says this. So you laugh when you have expected him to say something very elaborate and sweet, because instead he stoically says, “Oh, just the posture is what I like about you.” It’s funny, but also understandable. It makes sense that he finds an attractiveness through the posture. So you also find a bit of empathy in that.

AVC: From humor, I want to switch to melancholy. It’s a quality that I love most in a character. And yet it’s perhaps the toughest thing to properly capture on the screen, something you do so masterfully here.

PCW: There’s no special secret method to this. We simply just have a lot of conversations together until everything makes sense. I explain everything to my actors. We debate and make revisions on the script. But also, the actors I cast are always smart people. This is one of the most important qualities that I look for when I’m casting. Not to say that they’re smart in the sense that they attended a fancy college or have a PhD. But it means they’re observant and have a great sense of imagination. I think the actor being observant and imaginative is really important for me. Because then even when I write the most absurd situations, they can understand why this character would do this or that in that situation. And after these conversations, if the actor still doesn’t understand a certain situation or characteristic, then we get rid of that in the script. So what you’re seeing on screen is the result of what the actors have understood and approved.

The way in which I judge whether an actor is a good actor is how much they can embrace different facets of the human psyche. A writer or an actor who aren’t as good at their craft is pretty held up in the ray of emotions that can arise from a certain situation. For instance, if you are to imagine that somebody’s mom has died, a writer or an actor who aren’t as good will simply imagine the character to be crying or touching a picture… But somebody who can embrace more different facets of a human psyche can understand if the character wants to think about eating nice food the next day, or wants to kiss their lover the next day. They can imagine this and understand the psyche behind it.

AVC: I’m wondering if you can share some thoughts about the recent popular boom of South Korean cinema in the States. Your cinema is very much one of the catalysts of it. But do you also think the Academy and the Oscars becoming more global is a reason?

PCW: Korean people have gone through many difficulties in the earlier 20th century, but this was also paired with the rapid economic development that happened during that era. So they have really lived through a very dramatic history leading to a dramatic range of emotions that Korean people as a whole can feel.

And I think that has allowed the world to kind of feel this dynamic range of emotions that came out of that. So I guess this isn’t just a good thing; it also is a result of a painful history. But you can also say that they’ve transformed the pain into amazing results. And I very much think it’s amazing that the Academy has become more globalized in our recent years. This isn’t simply a good trend just for the international filmmakers, but it will be very helpful to the American audiences. Your culture will become more diverse and you’ll have a wider perspective of the world. And all that will be tremendously helpful for you.