Korean director Park Chan-wook has, per NY Times, become one of the most recognizable directors to come out of the peninsula country in the past few decades. His films have been adored not only by the critics and cinephiles at Cannes Film Festival, but also by fans globally. He first came to prominence in his home country with the release of his 2000 film Joint Security Area, which featured many of the actors he would later work with in The Vengeance Trilogy. Nowadays, his widespread acclaim came with 2016’s The Handmaiden, a lesbian romance set in colonial Korea, and his newest movie, Decision to Leave. Per Variety, Decision to Leave made waves recently at Cannes Film Festival, where Park brought home the award for Best Director.
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The Vengeance Trilogy — which consisted of his movies Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance — was what put him on the international map as a filmmaker to watch. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance shocked audiences when it first came out due to what many may have thought as excessive violence; when Oldboy was released, it instantly became a cult classic. The heart of this trilogy is the notion of revenge, and no matter how bloody it may get during that process, Park’s characters are willing to do whatever it takes in the name of what they consider to be justice. At the end of the day, they are simply trying to cope with the life they have been given.
Violence as a Tool of Grief
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Each of Park’s protagonists in The Vengeance Trilogy and his 2009 movie Thirst relies on violence to achieve something they want. All of his protagonists start as innocent people, victims of the circumstances they were born into. Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun), the main character of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, is deaf, mute, and the sole provider for his sister, who needs a kidney transplant. When he is fired from the factory he works for, his anarchist girlfriend (Bae Doona) convinces him to kidnap the factory owner’s daughter, leading to a series of tragic circumstances.
Ryu is not inherently quote-on-quote a villain in this story — he simply was a victim of society. When the factory owner (Song Kang-ho) starts hunting Ryu down, he, too, is a victim, although he previously reaped the benefits of being a part of a wealthy elite. In Oldboy, Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) also fits this formula. He was a working-class man before being kidnapped, and when he was finally released from captivity, his story arc is driven by an insatiable rage calling for justice. Lady Vengeance’s Lee Geum-ja was a high school student exploited by someone in a higher position of power: her high school teacher.
There are no winners in Park’s world, and this is a reoccurring theme emerging in Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, and Thirst. Those who wield the tools of violence must reap the benefits and drawbacks of using such a tool to get what they want, thus trapping them in an endless cycle of guilt, regret, and a thirst for revenge. What drives these characters is grief at the loss of what the world could have been, whether from losing the special people in their life, or a moral compass pushed to the extremes. Many his villains start as ordinary people transformed under the circumstances of accidental cruelty.
Who is the Antagonist?
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What humanizes Park’s characters especially is that the antagonists too often have legitimate reasons for why they are doing what they do. Both Oldboy’s and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance’s antagonists are driven mad by the loss of a loved one, and, if the story is reversed, the original protagonist would be an antagonist to the villain. Lady Vengeance breaks this mold, as its antagonist does not have a legitimate reason why he made the decision to kill children.
While The Handmaiden marks a departure from this narrative arc while retaining some elements, 2009’s Thirst continues these themes with its protagonist, Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho), being both the antagonist and protagonist. A Catholic priest turned into a vampire, his struggle is defined by the sin now dictating his life and how he lives it, as well as how he wants to protect people. His stubborn faith is what keeps him from completely delving into the dark side of being a vampire, which is something his companion (Kim Ok-bin) lacks, thus leading her to go on a rampage.
This gray area in the majority of his films shows the viewer how human all of these characters are. Everyone makes bad decisions at one point in their life, but when a series of these occur, it creates a ripple effect. When pushed to the extreme, to someone’s breaking point, it may seem like violence is the only answer. Park’s movies warn us about the implications of descending into such a cycle, as it starts to get out of hand and widens to other people, thus continuing the brutality in a new chain of events.
Park’s films were initially loved and criticized for their depictions of violence, and while it may seem unnecessary at times, it makes a distinct statement about the world and what it could be. Park grew up during an era of dictatorship in Korean history, and in the 1980s, the Gwangju Massacre and everyday injustices were committed against ordinary civilians. Perhaps Park was driving home the Korean concept of han in his films: this deep grief that emerged with the country’s colonization and subsequent division during the Korean War. Regardless, his characters show the audience that even when the worst happens, they are still human.
