Memories of murder movie movie#
Memories of murder movie serial#

The elaborate schemes concocted by FantГґmas may seem totally unrealistic or at least too ambitious for a real life, ordinary crook to embark upon. Episode after episode, Juve and Fandor chase after FantГґmas but unfortunately he slips right through their fingers at the last minute the narrative structures of the individual episodes are all variations on this simple set-up. Juve works closely with the local reporter Fandor, who proves to be quite the sleuth, too. The grandpappy of all procedurals (and a masterpiece), FantГґmas closely follows the actions of the eponymous criminal mastermind and, in equal measure, the attempts by inspector Juve to arrest him.

Memories of murder movie serial#

In order to arrive at an adequate description of the problem of genre and realism in Memories of Murder, it seems appropriate to take a closer look at the tradition of the procedural throughout film history.ДЄ solid starting point for the genre description would be Louis FeuilladeвЂ™s silent serial FantГґmas (FR, 1913-14). As such, Memories of Murder ought to be considered as part of a cinematic tradition of police procedurals, which takes the investigation and its social backdrop at least as seriously as it does matters of character and story.

Memories of murder movie movie#

For Bong the facts, the follow-ups and the frustrations as a result of working the case form the realist impulse which propels the movie forward вЂ“ just like they would an actual police investigation вЂ“ and not necessarily the personal relationships between individual characters. Such a set-up would seem to indicate the beginning of an enjoyable buddy cop movie somewhere along the lines of Richard DonnerвЂ™s Lethal Weapon (US, 1987) or Walter HillвЂ™s Red Heat (US, 1988). For example, early on in the investigation, local detective Park is joined by Seo Tae-yoon, a smart city cop from Seoul who strongly disagrees with the local investigation tactics. Bong, who spent six month doing research on the actual case вЂ“ just about the same amount of time it took to actually write the screenplay вЂ“ is very strict in his adherence to the facts. Although the film meanders along a very fine line between any kind of realism and comical hyperbole, Memories of Murder very rarely deviates from its police procedural plot and uses all the steps in the investigative process as dramaturgical tools. However, one should not take these jokes merely as ironic comments on the film itself and suppose that Memories of Murder is unrealistic and that Bong is trying to make excuses for it by appealing to the audienceвЂ™s sense of humour. Bong then cuts to a sequence of shots of the policeman staking out the public baths.

After he gets a good scolding from his boss for coming up with such a preposterous idea, he decides to follow up on this lead by himself.

His theory is that the killer never leaves any traces of pubic hairs after molesting the victims and must therefore be totally clean-shaven. A particularly extreme case of BongвЂ™s wizardry with tone occurs when Park Doo-man refuses to follow hot leads and focuses on his intuition instead. It seems logical that this is the kind of response Bong was aiming for when including it in the film, as he has a knack for balancing heavy story material and dramatic scenes with a comical tone that never seems out of place, no matter how outrageous the joke is.

The immediate reaction to this line would be to acknowledge the twofold irony of that phrase: to laugh at the situation of a man being told by the police to spontaneously incriminate himself and to laugh at the absurd notion that movies are anything like real life. The line is featured in a scene in which the rural Korean police are heavy-handedly interrogating a suspect and forcing him to confess to a crime he did not commit. вЂњBe realistic, like in a movie,вЂќ says detective Park Doo-man to a wrongfully accused man in Bong Joon-hoвЂ™s serial killer thriller Memories of Murder (KR, 2003).