빈집 3-Iron (a k a Bin-Jip) (2004)

 

 

 

 

 

3-Iron

a k a Bin-Jip

 

A Man Breaks Into Houses To Fill Them Up With Life

By A. O. SCOTT
Published: April 29, 2005, Friday

 

Kim Ki-duk's ''3-Iron'' ends with a reminder, printed on the screen (and awkwardly translated from the Korean), the gist of which is that we can't always distinguish reality from dreams. While the general truth of this idea may be open to question, it undoubtedly applies to movies like this one, which unfold in a finely detailed and familiar world even as they are governed by a sometimes enchanted, sometimes sinister dream logic. The movie camera is able to make the impossible look natural and the ordinary seem strange, not so much through elaborate special effects as through tricks of composition, perspective and editing.

 

Mr. Kim is a master of such estrangement, and ''3-Iron'' is a teasing, self-conscious and curiously heartfelt demonstration of his mischievous formal ingenuity.

 

Like his last film, the Korean Buddhist pastoral ''Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring,'' which enjoyed a successful American run last year, this one is an accessible pop parable, pleasingly mysterious without being too difficult and a little gimmicky but not annoyingly so. The director, whose breakout film, ''The Isle,'' was a grisly, sexy exercise in art-house exploitation, uses some of the techniques of horror -- sudden jolts, suspenseful set-pieces, enigmatic point-of-view shots -- to relate a touching and improbable love story.

He has also used sophisticated modern sound design to make an almost silent movie -- a movie with a normal soundtrack in which the two main characters, who are lovers, never speak, to each other or to anyone else. Their silence is intermittently noted by other characters, who do talk, and whose speech more often than not shows them to be cruder and less soulful than the wordless central couple. There is something unabashedly sentimental about this conceit -- as if Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard were transported into a drab modern city of car alarms, cell phones and endless domestic bickering -- and also something undeniably charming.

A better analogy than Chaplin might be Buster Keaton, as Mr. Kim's male lead, Jae Hee, has a wide, handsome face with a limited range of ｅxpression and a decidedly melancholy cast. So, for that matter, does his female counterpart, Lee Seung-yeon. She plays Sun-hwa, the unhappy wife of an abusive businessman, who is rescued from her marital prison when Tae-suk (Mr. Jae), who roams the city distributing takeout menus, happens by on his motorcycle.

Apparently homeless, Tae-suk is a kind of urban hermit crab, occupying the temporarily abandoned homes of people who are away on trips. He helps himself to the food in their refrigerators, snaps photographs of himself amid their keepsakes, and pays for his incursions by fixing broken appliances and doing the laundry by hand. Mistakenly believing Sun-hwa's house is empty after her husband has left on a business trip, Tae-suk finds her, her faced bruised from a beating, and takes her away, along with one of her husband's prized golf clubs.

The two of them drift like a somber Bonnie and Clyde through a city that seems to reflect their own loneliness. Or rather, their mute, tender companionship throws the unhappiness of the city around them into relief. Each house they occupy as they meander through different parts of Seoul -- from quiet old cottages with courtyard fish ponds to sterile apartment blocks to crumbling tenements -- seems haunted by the melancholy of absent inhabitants.

There is one exception, a harmonious couple in whose home Tae-suk and Sun-hwa drink tea and to which each one returns when fate (in the form of Sun-hwa's husband and the police) has separated them.

It is at this point that Mr. Kim's fantastical ambitions become most apparent, as ''3-Iron'' changes shape, mutating from a minor-key study of urban wistfulness into a modern fable. Not content to remain silent, Tae-suk trains himself to become invisible as well. one of his jailers calls him a ghost, but it would be more accurate to say that he becomes a phantom of cinema, hiding on the edge of the frame and taking advantage of the literal-minded folk who haven't fully grasped the potential of the medium. Mr. Kim, for his part, engages in a similarly tricky sleight of hand that nonetheless feels like magic.

'3-Iron'
Opens today in New York and Los Angeles.

Written (in Korean, with English subtitles), produced, directed and edited by Kim Ki-duk; director of photography, Jang Seung-beck; music by Slvian; art director, Joo Jin-mo; released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 87 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Lee Seung-yeon (Sun-hwa), Jae Hee (Tae-suk), Kwon Hyuk-ho (Min-kyu), Joo Jin-mo (Detective Cho), Choi Jeong-ho (Jailer) and Lee Joo-suk (Son of Old Man).

 

 

 

Average Reader Rating      (4.31 stars, 35 votes)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   4 clever ideas adding up to a prank, May 4, 2005

 

Reviewer: harry_tk_yung

I have watched and liked director Kim Ki-duk's "Samaria" but not his highly acclaimed "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring", and I'm not too impresed with Bin-jip.

It looks as though director Kim, while doodling absentmindedly, came across a few pretty clever ideas, and decided to put them all together in a movie.

First, a person can save accommodation cost (buying or renting) by simply entering homes where people have gone on a trip and live there until the owner returns. Pretty clever, that one.

Secondly, a person can be "invisible", not literally, but by deft movement, always escape being seen as "the vision is only 180 degrees" as someone in the movie says. This is not really an original idea, but borrowed from the ninja.

Using a golf ball as a vehicle of violence, as the title of the movie vaguely suggests, must have been use somewhere else too. Finally, why not reinvent the silent movie, but the trick and challenge here is that the hero and heroin's silence is by choice.

Putting all these four ideas in a movie is quite a challenge, and director Kim has succeeded in putting together an enjoyable prank. The movie is undoubtedly fun to watch but stops there. I will not go so far as to say that the love relationship is unconvincing, but it certainly does not move me in any particular way. I wouldn't compare it to other people's work, but the palpable emotion in Samaria simply cannot be found in 3-iron.

 

 

 

 

 

TRAILERS / MULTIMEDIA
3-Iron

 

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=315138