Lee Chang-dong, cinema's great poet of despair and disappointment. His work is super depressing as can be, but nevertheless possesses an inexhaustible faith in the human spirit. He tells dark stories of class structures, of innocence lost, of characters traumatized by being outcasts. He roots everything in realism only for audiences to recognize the irony that nothing is real, that everything is a matter of perception, psychology, and infinite mystery. Like Kiarostami, his films strategically elide information, an absence that invites the audience to fill in the blanks with their own meaning and conclusions.
He criticizes the social mores of contemporary South Korean society, ranging from poor education and class differences, to the dehumanization of the country's brutal military past,…
Lee Chang-dong, cinema's great poet of despair and disappointment. His work is super depressing as can be, but nevertheless possesses an inexhaustible faith in the human spirit. He tells dark stories of class structures, of innocence lost, of characters traumatized by being outcasts. He roots everything in realism only for audiences to recognize the irony that nothing is real, that everything is a matter of perception, psychology, and infinite mystery. Like Kiarostami, his films strategically elide information, an absence that invites the audience to fill in the blanks with their own meaning and conclusions.
He criticizes the social mores of contemporary South Korean society, ranging from poor education and class differences, to the dehumanization of the country's brutal military past, to the hypocrisy of religion, to the treatment of how society deals with misfits and disabled people. His work is often angry and passionate, but always held with deep conviction and an overwhelming flow of compassion. He loves his marginalized, unwanted characters, and I'm in love with his miserable, profoundly humanistic style.
