Sealing The Deal: One of Kyung-chul’s victims, and (below) the killer and his tools of the trade. Rue Morgue got a chance to interview Kim –


best known in North America for his 2005 super- natural horror film A Tale of Two Sisters and the bizarre 2008 western-action-comedy The Good, The Bad, The Weird – about I Saw the Devil during his appearance in Toronto for the festival. Speak- ing through a translator, the reserved but playful filmmaker explains that he was clearly amused that his film was playing unedited to a festival audience of various ages. “I was thinking how funny it would be to compare how Korean adults must be taking in the movie compared to the Canadian teenagers I saw at the screen- ing,” he jokes, adding that he was actually blindsided by the trouble from Korea’s censors. “It was never a problem with the pro-


ducers or anyone making the film. That only came up with the


Korean Media Rating Board and their de- cision to censor me. I tried to look for and cite precedents of violent films that came before mine, but that’s never constant. They’re never consistent about what they will allow, so the most difficult part was just trying to find out what I was allowed to do and why. They were never clear about that.”


Because he’s one of the country’s


most renowned filmmakers, Kim’s battle with the censors drew a great deal of atten- tion, both at home and in- ternationally. But he insists that he was simply doing what he always does: exploring what- ever genre


RM26


grabs his interest at a particular time. “I always choose the genre of my movie first


and then decide on everything else,” he explains. “I knew [I Saw the Devil] would be a serial killer story, so I watched a lot of films from that genre to prepare.” Kim points out that he also wanted to delve just


a little farther into the dark themes and graphic content inherent in the serial killer genre, and it’s safe to say that he succeeded. I Saw the Devil is a film full of very ugly, often sexual, violence to- wards both women and girls; the beatings and torture are raw and bloody; and the killings are nothing short of a gore show – there’s one show- piece scene in which a prolonged, spurting knife fight breaks out in a moving taxi cab. I Saw the Devil is both an exhilarating and draining experi- ence, one that draws the best out of its stylish di- rector and leads. Kim selected Lee to play the special agent as


part of their ongoing creative collaboration (the actor has starred or co-starred in most of the di- rector’s projects). “He has a very great sense of delicate character construction, which makes him ideal to work with,” says Kim, going on to de- scribe their working relationship as “like broth- ers.” Finding performers capable of this layered and


detailed character work was key in order for the film to succeed, as each actor must play both predator and prey with varying degrees of despi- cability and sympathy in a story that explores the grey area between good and evil. Of course, that’s also where Choi comes in. Kim


wanted his audience to have an uneasy relation- ship with the antagonist, and the choice for the heavy was obvious. “I knew he would be perfect because although he plays evil, he’s still a man,” says Kim. “It would be easy for his character to be a simple monster and not very interesting, but I knew that Min-sik Choi would make him a per- son. You never like him, but sometimes you un- derstand him. That’s not easy to do.” While the violence caused much furor, it is the


way in which the filmmaker deals with the themes of I Saw the Devil that gives the movie added potency. At face value it might seem like Kim was primarily influenced by the current wave of shocking American horror films such as the Sawfranchise, or French extreme cin- Cont’d on p. 28


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72