Gokseong, The Wailing
GokSeong, The Wailing is a Korean Horror Thriller movie in 2016, directly by Na Hong-Jin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUWAgbXSJ4Y
In my understanding, good movies make audiences stay until the ending credit, and better movies make audiences expand its story or even create a new story after the ending credit. By far, Gokseong is the masterpiece. GokSeong’s running time is 156 minutes. Despite the fact that the film is in a longer breath than usual films, it successfully contrives to let the audience follow the plot, looking for hints planted by the director. Director Na Hong-Jin said that he intended audience to look for their own answers to the interpretation of the film, and he has been following up with every reviews and comments.
The audience’s opinion on the interpretation of the film is extremely diverse and surprisingly every different opinion seems to be all rational, supported by strong logical reasoning.
If I were to compare this film with the film, ‘Usual Suspects’, the main question that arises to the audience while watching the film would be, “Who is the Keyser Soze?”. The answer to this question in this film would be the one that caused Hyojin, the daughter of Jonggu and later on, the entire village to suffer from a severe disease.
The mysterious Japanese old man who is new to the village is first assumed to be the cause of this disaster. Why does the film specifically mention the nationality of the man? The director smartly uses Korean culture to convince and therefore confuse the audience. Due to the Korean history, Korean views Japanese with hatred, and it is the same way how Nazis are viewed. Following the film’s plot, the Japanese old man is assumed to be dead and reborn as the Evil. To save his daughter, Hyojin, Jong-gu hires a shaman to perform an exorcism to defeat the Evil, the Japanese old man. Everyone believes that the mysterious Japanese old man is the bad Evil, and the shaman will save the village.
However in the middle of the plot, after the shaman confesses that the Japanese man is not a demon, but just a human, the story line completely changes. It turned out that the mysterious Japanese old man and the shaman turned out to be on the same side, and they’ve known each other before this disaster occurred. As the conflict between the Japanese man and the shaman priest collapses, the identity of every character in the film becomes blurred and confuses the audience with ‘Good and Evil’. The audience begins to question who the good man is and who the bad man is. More importantly, the borderline of life and death becomes blurred. The dreary cave where the Japanese old man lives reminds the audience of hell, while many incidents that cannot be explained occur in the village, which is considered to be in reality.
From this unexplained unknown confusion, Jonggu has to make a decision to save her daughter and his appearance is portrayed as lethargic and sorrowful main characters of four great tragedies of William Shakespeare. Just like the Shakespeare’s stories, his decision moves towards tragedy.
The film begins with an excerpt from the Bible. Luke 24:38, “‘Why are you troubled,’ Jesus asked, ‘and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see — for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.’”
From many metaphors in the film, the Japanese old man can be portrayed as Jesus and the village as Jerusalem. At the end, Jesus died on the Cross, and the plot of the film shows what might have happened in Jerusalem when Jesus exists. Interestingly, from the film, the audience has both opposite opinions. Few argue that the interpretation of the film involves anti- Christianity and others argue that it has nothing to do with Anti-Christianity.
The main question that arises is the existence of God, and the film is heavily involved with the Korean’s two most popular religions, Christianity and Buddhism to find the answer.
The film leaves it as an open ending answer for the audience to decide as no human being on earth would be able to or even has the right to give a clear conclusion that God exists or does not exist.
Director Na Hong-Jin talked about a recent crime occurred in Korea. He said, “Why did victims have to be involved in crime? Simply meeting a murderer on the street cannot be the reason. I wanted to find out the cause, the reason why the victim had to die from meeting a completely stranger on the street. Therefore I could not set the range of the film to be practical. Shouldn’t there be a valid reason for the peaceful village, innocent young girl, and ordinary policeman to suffer? As the reason cannot be found realistically, why can’t it be surrealistic Devil’s mischief?”
It is true. In our world, fairy tale stories do not occur. Punishment does not always happen for being bad, and being good sometimes returns with bad consequence. Many unexplained situations occur in our world, and whenever we face those situations, we question, “Why does it happen to me? Why did it have to be me?” As we constantly question the existence of God due to these situations, we begin to trust the existence of Devil. The existence of God does not give a remarkable reason to why bad situations occur, and in fact if God exists, these situations should not have happened. Therefore we need another existence, the Devil to explain or maybe to convince ourselves the reason for why we have to face what we face today.
Works Cited
Abrams, Simon. “The Wailing Movie Review & Film Summary (2016) | Roger Ebert.” All Content. N.p., 03 June 2016. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.
Http://www.indiewire.com/author/cfg/. “Cannes Review: ‘The Wailing’ Is An Epic Korean Horror Movie Too Crazy For Its Own Good.” IndieWire. N.p., 23 May 2016. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.
Piecesofwork. “The Wailing (Explained) (곡성) (2016) — Spoiler Discussion.” YouTube. YouTube, 12 July 2016. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.
@ThePlaylist. “Interview: ‘The Wailing’ Director Na Hong-jin On Death, Genre, Religion & Comedy.” The Playlist. N.p., 28 June 2016. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.
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