I'm writing this mostly to put thoughts into order on the idea of a film manipulating the audience. It comes up on film forums now and then and I can agree in principle because I recognize it from personal experience, that some films enable the viewer to experience a feeling while other films demand it of him, but watching KJW's film made it more clear for me. The formula of the revenge film is put in full practice here as a plot, in the first half we get the cruel injustice, in the second half the furious vengeance, yet KJW believes he's making more than a revenge film. The trouble here is that stock characters are put through the motions of living stock feelings and the bodyguard ordered to watch his boss's girlfriend falls in love because the film demands it of him. The film opens with a shot of trees blowing in the wind and a quote of the most banal philosophy (-"is it the branches moving or the wind?" -"it's your heart and mind"). This is trying to resemble a Wong Kar Wai film with the crucial difference that the sadness and longing feel artificial, not the result of personal conviction but rather that these ideas would look good on the film. That may be because KJW relishes the bloodshed. No other part of the film receives the care and attention of the scenes of violence.
Yet by the end of it, KJW isn't satisfied with a crime flick where blood gushes out of bullet holes (of which it's a good one), he wants emotion to pour out of the finale. For all this to work for me, for me to be able to acquiesce to the experience as something worth opening myself to, I need to hear the film play itself. Like a music instrument, a film that plays itself is music to my ears, good or bad at least it's an effort. I want to be able to see the film absorbed by its music like it doesn't even matter I'm there. KJW's film wants to play me, to use me as the music instrument to create emotion. A melancholy piano tunes in the right moment, we get a shot of the protagonist shedding a tear, this fabricated emotion is then cut by the loud bang of a pistol. To get back to what I wrote above, some films let me determine whether I will be sad or angry, A Bittersweet Life anxiously expects it of me, it's like the film is studying my reactions to see will I shed a tear. To the degree that all films are artifice, it could have something to do with different levels of transparency to that artifice.
I don't know if KJW's problem is that he doesn't have obsessions as a filmmaker. This is the third of his films I've actively disliked and all three of them are vastly different to each other. He's good with technique but, like Tarantino, he seems he doesn't have anything personal to share. In place of nothing to exorcize, he seems to pick every time a different genre to stave off boredom. As though anxious to prevent that same boredom in his audience, he fills his movies with passing thrills. At the same time he aspires to more than passing thrills, yet when the time comes for his film to express a conviction that the world is a certain way we get banalities.
Yet by the end of it, KJW isn't satisfied with a crime flick where blood gushes out of bullet holes (of which it's a good one), he wants emotion to pour out of the finale. For all this to work for me, for me to be able to acquiesce to the experience as something worth opening myself to, I need to hear the film play itself. Like a music instrument, a film that plays itself is music to my ears, good or bad at least it's an effort. I want to be able to see the film absorbed by its music like it doesn't even matter I'm there. KJW's film wants to play me, to use me as the music instrument to create emotion. A melancholy piano tunes in the right moment, we get a shot of the protagonist shedding a tear, this fabricated emotion is then cut by the loud bang of a pistol. To get back to what I wrote above, some films let me determine whether I will be sad or angry, A Bittersweet Life anxiously expects it of me, it's like the film is studying my reactions to see will I shed a tear. To the degree that all films are artifice, it could have something to do with different levels of transparency to that artifice.
I don't know if KJW's problem is that he doesn't have obsessions as a filmmaker. This is the third of his films I've actively disliked and all three of them are vastly different to each other. He's good with technique but, like Tarantino, he seems he doesn't have anything personal to share. In place of nothing to exorcize, he seems to pick every time a different genre to stave off boredom. As though anxious to prevent that same boredom in his audience, he fills his movies with passing thrills. At the same time he aspires to more than passing thrills, yet when the time comes for his film to express a conviction that the world is a certain way we get banalities.