I don’t think it’s that heavy on spoilers but also, if you think this is bad: go back and read Pauline Kael’s essays on Bonnie and Clyde or Seven Samurai. It’s hard to have an actual discussion about a piece of art without discussing the piece of art!
Hard to use Kael as an example, no? That's like pointing out Shakespeare used double negatives.
Thanks for the response. Honestly, I'm not trying to be disagreeable. Just adding a different view. And thank you for inspiring me to reread Kael's 15-page Bonnie and Clyde essay!
Really good review. It’s also interesting that Yoo’s justification is that he is acting to preserve his family. He talks of the family being at “war”, so ends justify means (and I know that I would do anything to get my dogs back!). And the family are given life - Mi-ri is just great and in some ways the emotional centre of the film. And I like that the victims were sympathetic, complicating any identification with Yoo’s actions.
Yeah, the sequence where the wife who is an actress and is talking about his refusal to consider anything else followed by his soliloquy about the glories of paper, I was just like "this is very Tim Robinson," haha.
Vellum originally came from the highly processed skins of sheep and calves, on writings thought so valuable they were chained to their shelves. The degradation of writing thought sacred started centuries ago.
I respectfully suggest reading Vonnegut’s Player Piano (published in 1952) which addresses the replacement of human workers and the consequences of that dislocation.
Great book. Underrated, probably because Vonnegut had not then fully established his signature prose style. The ending is amazing in the philosophical question the protagonist lands on, and how we answer it for ourselves.
I quite liked it. Park Chan-wook's been giving us great-looking films for a long time.
This is heavy on spoilers!
I don’t think it’s that heavy on spoilers but also, if you think this is bad: go back and read Pauline Kael’s essays on Bonnie and Clyde or Seven Samurai. It’s hard to have an actual discussion about a piece of art without discussing the piece of art!
(Fear of spoilers is ruining the ability to discuss anything beyond a generic and boring thumbs up/thumbs down scale.)
Sight & Sound does it well.
Hard to use Kael as an example, no? That's like pointing out Shakespeare used double negatives.
Thanks for the response. Honestly, I'm not trying to be disagreeable. Just adding a different view. And thank you for inspiring me to reread Kael's 15-page Bonnie and Clyde essay!
Really good review. It’s also interesting that Yoo’s justification is that he is acting to preserve his family. He talks of the family being at “war”, so ends justify means (and I know that I would do anything to get my dogs back!). And the family are given life - Mi-ri is just great and in some ways the emotional centre of the film. And I like that the victims were sympathetic, complicating any identification with Yoo’s actions.
The poor shoe salesman!
That death really stings, because he died because he committed an act of kindness which made him vulnerable.
Thanks, Sonny! I would never have thought of the similarity to The Chair Company, but you are so right!
Yeah, the sequence where the wife who is an actress and is talking about his refusal to consider anything else followed by his soliloquy about the glories of paper, I was just like "this is very Tim Robinson," haha.
Vellum originally came from the highly processed skins of sheep and calves, on writings thought so valuable they were chained to their shelves. The degradation of writing thought sacred started centuries ago.
I respectfully suggest reading Vonnegut’s Player Piano (published in 1952) which addresses the replacement of human workers and the consequences of that dislocation.
Great book. Underrated, probably because Vonnegut had not then fully established his signature prose style. The ending is amazing in the philosophical question the protagonist lands on, and how we answer it for ourselves.