Berlinale 2013, day 3 (the value of violence)

Kashi-ggot (Fatal, ???)
South Korea 2012, Lee Don-ku, 103′

Sung-gong and his high school “friends” (read: bullies) rape a girl and get away with it. Ten years later he leads a modest life working I a small factory in Seoul. Still hung up on what happened he starts to attend a local evangelical church where he meets the victim who is seemingly happy but struggles with life. As she does not recognise him, they slowly getting closer and his desire for penance leads to an explosion of violence.

TL;DR Kim Ki-Duk meets Park Chan-Wook on a budget.

While ultimately a piece on sin and revenge/repentance it was, although supposedly not deliberately, a good, sometimes funny and always very human of a simple boy who made a horrible and about the effects it had on the life of another person. Most of the time it is easy to feel sympathetic towards him and their subtly evolving relationship but we’re always reminded of what he did and what scars he caused so there is a healthy balance which makes him all the more human, just not a prime example of the species. Stylistically it is mostly unremarkable, often hand-held typical Asian art cinema. The Q&A was quite… interesting. Basically the young director said that if you commit a crime such as rape and do not repent you deserve to die. Starting from this concept the whole story was written: Sung-Gong is such a simple man, so he can become the perfect tool and to become that he must come into contact with a religion, one which highly values repentance and both concepts of revenge and sin, so there you have Evangelical Christianity. He even stated that it is not so much about the sex crime but about the necessity of punishing sins. Not a very charming fellow, people tried more or less subtly to get an answer out of him that was less black-and-white but every answer really boiled down to his extreme view of the matter. It would be interesting to know how he arrived at such a place. As I referred to in the TL;DR he also thanked the two Korean directors for sin and revenge in his credits as they have been both and influence and actually helped him get the movie funded and promoted. Even though I have rather negative feelings about the director and his vision I think his movie was time not wasted and if you like those themes and have run out of films by the directors mentioned above, you might want to look at it.