February 28, 2007

SFBG. The Host.

Yes, you've already heard quite a lot about The Host. But the San Francisco Bay Guardian's package on the film, occasioned by director Bong Joon-ho's upcoming appearance in the city on Monday night, is definitely worth special mention. Johnny Ray Huston:

Artforum: The Host

To inspire "childlike rapture" in Gary Indiana, a wizened contender for the most truthfully caustic novelist and political commentator of our time, one must possess amazing powers as a filmmaker. Amazing powers - of imagination, societal observation, and colorful vérité-based pop symbolism - are exactly what Bong Joon-ho has, in measures that have grown in size and scope with each of his three features to date. Indiana's recent cover essay on Bong marks the first time in years (if not ever) that a commercial film has taken over the cover of Artforum - just one sign of its subject's imminent pop art impact. But while Indiana's excellent piece draws upon Nikolay Gogol, Antonio Gramsci, post-Confucian history, and enthusiasm for the rich pleasures of contemporary South Korean film, it ignores one major stylistic source of The Host's ability to induce kidlike joy. With his latest film, Bong announces himself as the heir apparent to Steven Spielberg - an heir who replaces Spielberg's reactionary tendencies with an acutely observant antiestablishment viewpoint.

Updated.

Cheryl Eddy considers how the film "reflects how an outside nation (in this case, South Korea) views the US obsession with controlling absolutely everything on the planet." And she interviews Bong as well.

"Bong's beast came to life in a part of San Francisco steeped in military history," notes Jonathan L Knapp. "ucked away in the Presidio, amid old army barracks, tree-lined drives, and cutting-edge nonprofit facilities is the Orphanage, an upstart special effects company aiming to shape the future of film."

Updates: Another rave from Jason Bogdaneris in the L Magazine: "That Spielberg guy is still just a very skilled genre director - in the early stages of his career Bong Joon-ho is so much more."

Bryant Frazer: "[I]t's full of heart and it has a brain — and it's a lot of fun."

Posted by dwhudson at February 28, 2007 8:39 AM

Comments

While I agree fully with the Spielberg/'Jaws' comparison for 'The Host', I feel he is also much more than just an asian alternative to a U.S. director. Viewing Bong's earlier films, 'Barking Dogs Don't Bite' and 'Memories of Murder', one could easily make comparisons to Zwigoff's 'Ghost World' and Fincher's 'Zodiac' respectively -- only Bong Joon-ho made his films years before their American counterparts. Not only is Bong interested in re-wiring your imagination to a time before you approached moviegoing with a seen-it-all mentality (ala Spielberg's earliest works), he's also presenting positive, complex images of the seemingly idle lower classes. He's dissecting the first steps of a democracy finally leaving its infancy and entering its toddler stage. And, what I find to be his strongest, most frequently tackled theme, he's analyzing the way humans live with the guilt we continually saddle ourselves with (and in Bong's films, there is no final redemptive act that washes away the character's guilt. There is only a distancing, usually brought about with the passing of time. A distancing that leaves the guilt less mentally oppressive, but fully intact; a haunting reminder of the character's most damning actions and/or their worst mistakes).
I love dude.

Posted by: Ju-osh at February 28, 2007 9:23 AM

This blog is very cool, i'm waiting for the film "The Host", the trailer looks amazing.

Posted by: Budokan at February 28, 2007 10:12 AM