Film: Memories of Murder (2003)


Memories of Murder


Yeah that’s right, I’ve jumped on the bandwagon far too late. Now he’s won an Oscar, i’m journeying back through Bong Joon-ho’s filmography and the first thing I started with was Memories of Murder. Much like Parasite (2019) the tonal shifts here are unexpected and superbly achieved, especially for a 35-year-old director on his second feature. The film is, as the pre-title describes, ‘based on the true story of an unsolved criminal investigation, set under a military dictatorship’, and is also a brilliant character study of the two key  detectives Park Doo-man (Kang-ho Song) and Seo Tae-yoon (Sang-kyung Kim).
In the films opening section, it follows the conventional detective film route of the viewing of a female victims dead body by detective Park Doo-man. Joon-ho distributes his first tonal contrast by interspersing the gruesome nature of the body in close-ups with lighthearted humour as a young boy from the rural town mirrors Doo-man’s words and actions, poking fun at him. This happens in a truly luscious countryside setting of beautiful reed fields and a clear blue sky, kind of reminiscent of the ending of Se7en but in reverse, as the horror of the murders infects the weather to be more or less rain for the majority of the film.
The boy poking fun at Doo-man turns out to be a clever precursor to how laughable his work is as a police officer. It’s quite obviously dangerous too, and I think the inclusion of the military dictatorship in the opening credit is Joon-ho saying that a corrupt government breeds a corrupt police force. Doo-man and his violent sidekick Detective Cho Yong-koo (Roe-ha Kim) torture their suspects which are often constructed on a whim to be the killer, but this ignorance and naivety also leads to comedic scenes. Doo-man looks around mens changing rooms for hairless men and visits shamans for his killer, which are laugh-out-loud moments that Joon-ho weaves masterfully to give us a more complete and sympathetic character as his arc develops into a sort of competent officer.
Seo Tae-yoon on the other hand is a respectable detective from the city and follows leads that are informed, whilst keeping a largely non-violent approach to suspects. It’s another common trope of a detective film for a city big shot to come and work a case with inept rural officers and it works firstly as Tae-yoon being the antithesis to Doo-man (shown clearly in the karaoke bar scene with them both face-to-face discussing ‘brainy’, americanised city detective work Vs folk knowledge), but secondly to create a dialect between them. Tae-yoon goes from following the proper course of police work to becoming hot-headed in interrogation and the climax when he has his preferred suspect, whilst Doo-man goes from complete incompetence to restraining Tae-yoon and following his example to do better and informed - though still imperfect - work. They are both inextricably linked in the films narrative and their juxtaposition is an important source of our feelings as a viewer and the tonal shifts Joon-ho creates.
The film stays true to the real murders its dramatising and thus the killer is never found, but Joon-ho uses a brilliant close up POV shot in the sequence by the train tunnel. Doo-man stares into the suspects eyes to see if he’s the killer and transports us into the very scene to judge the innocence as we look into the chasm of the suspects eyes which mirrors the tunnel behind them. Their leads have lost their illumination, and the suspect disappears into the darkness, leaving us in complete ambivalence. In the last scene, the equilibrium is served in the colour palate as the luscious colour of the reeds and sky is returned to before the murders, and Doo-man has resolve with a happy family life and a different line of work. But, although Doo-man looks intensely at us as a local girl describes the killer as having an average face, ambivalence prevails. Are we to assume that our main suspect was the killer, or could any ‘average’ Korean watching be the killer and it’s a breaking of the fourth wall? Either way, the characters in this film are masterfully played and constructed and the ambivalence is like a scab on your brain for hours after. Memories of Murder is a crime drama like no other, if with all the tonal shifts you could even call it that.

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