Your hair, hands and shoulders are your crimes, because you can’t be on such a beautiful light. Because you can't, because you can't.
Because you can't be beautiful like that.
Kim Ki-duk’s movies are like a drug, it’s very hard to get away with them, you know what will happen: Scary. It hurts. Terrible. In some places, nausea will roll to the throat from the disgust of what is happening on the screen, or you will want to howl from despair and loneliness, imbued with the suffering of the heroes. Sometimes the soul will turn inside out, and the heart will be covered with fiery heat, simultaneously clutching it with an ice mitten. In some places you can feel how these films wake up animal instincts, the darkest and most incredible thoughts, so long and cozy dormant in the deepest outskirts of consciousness. But still, once you know their power, it is impossible to refuse to view his works. Even if you don’t like it; it’s not clear; not as you would like, they pull a magnet, immersing the viewer into themselves as a dark, attracting pool. And the viewer will know that waiting for a miracle is completely useless. The "miracle" isn't here, it's not behind this door. If the viewer is looking for long monologues about suffering, about inner experiences, you can not wait, you need to reach everything yourself, understand, feel, get to the bottom. Ki-Duk was once asked in an interview, “Why is your movie so silent?” Key-Duk replied wisely and wisely, as a great director should have said: In life, people talk incessantly, but in movies I want to show how heroes act, not talk. Let them do this only when absolutely necessary. After all, cinema gives many other means to reveal the plot and show emotions: it is music, color, light, acting.
"Beautiful." This film is the best fit the words of the Director; “A picture cannot contain a film, but a film can contain many pictures.” From the very first minutes, it seems that each frame is a separate picture, praising the beauty of women. A graceful curve of the neck, strands of hair permeated with sunlight, shining eyes - and we have a finished picture. Seductive half-open soft lips, half-tilted head, lowered eyes - a new picture. Or the back-sitting naked woman, whose incredibly harmonious lines of tender body attract admiring glances, sliding smoothly behind these seductive curves, moving from a slender back to the gentle rounds of high thighs, soaking up their marble whiteness. Looking at these shots, involuntarily recall the immortal creations of Raphael, Titian, Renoir, Caravaggio. Skillfully selected paintings in the interior complete this atmosphere of beauty and eroticism. It is not by chance that Ki Duc studied painting in Paris for several years, he, like no other, managed to convey the beauty, naturalness of the pose, ease of naked nature, purity and purity of nakedness characteristic of the brush of famous artists. Admiration for female beauty, awe and admiration saturated the first minutes of the film. This is not just admiration for plump lips, beautiful eyes and long legs. Nope. It is the admiration of woman as the crown of God’s creation, the best and most beautiful thing in this world.
And then? 'Cause I'm all about the woman, and the beautiful. When will all that was said at the very beginning of the review begin, where are the horrors and abominations so characteristic of the master?
Don't relax. Very soon. Someone said, "God makes a beautiful woman so that a man can spoil her." That's what we're going to talk about next. And the best prologue to the subsequent narrative will serve as the words of the song of the group “White Eagle”, which passed the leitmotif throughout the film. No, no familiar melody, nor these words in the film you will not hear, but they will always appear in your memory.
Because you can't be beautiful like that.
The film will raise a number of unresolved and painful issues for society, forcing the audience to stand on the side of the main character, then condemn her, despising her actions, and trying to psychologically isolate themselves from such a situation. To denounce the male part of the population for their lust, shown by the director in all its unsightly disgust, and at the same time to revel in the very heart of the secret thought, what power we women have over men's hearts.
And for some reason recalls the acclaimed novel “Perfume”, the last pages, as spirits, created from the bodies of virgins deprived of the mind of hundreds of people, and here, the attractiveness of the virgin deprived the mind of all the representatives of the stronger sex who saw her without exception. A cold woman looking at men from the height of her pure, virgin, untouched rough male hand of beauty. Excited by her superiority and her ability to drive men crazy. Pride for his appearance, which turns into pride, is the eighth mortal sin. If sin is committed, then the punishment will be punished. And it will be terrible, and it will make you hate this most damned beauty. It destroys both the soul and the body.
But no matter how hard the heroine tried, the beauty of the body did not go away, why did she cease to be so attractive? What was the secret? What happened to the soul torn into rags?
And what about the rapist, the one who turned this terrible flywheel, powering the wheel of fate, he can not be stopped, who else will fall under his dispassionate cycle? How many victims will it take this time to stop him?
Who's to blame? Victim? Rapist? Beauty?
Who is to blame for everything that happened?
Or is it the inevitable course of life, because it was supposed to happen? Just like that and not like that?
The director, as always, does not give answers, inviting the audience to find them themselves.
Evaluate actions, analyze causes and effects, draw conclusions.
Do we, the audience, have the right to judge someone?
And it is impossible to watch or not to watch the films of this director, especially to say or advise anything, everyone decides for himself. Only as practice shows, they are more suitable for viewers “for...” or with a certain life experience behind them, otherwise it will be; it is unclear, boring, the characters will seem strange and concerned.
And as I finished the review, I wondered, were the characters "concerned" or had any sexual disabilities? But the whole truth of life is that NO, they are all normal, healthy, absolutely average men (about morgue workers, though not quite clear). They lost their heads simply from her beauty, losing, allowing the primitive instincts of a male attracted by the best female to escape, simply and banally, and that’s all.