Ask anybody who and they’ll tell you: Park Chan-wook is one of the most controversial and celebrated filmmakers of the 21st century, directing pointed, damning and brutal dramas about the dark recesses of the human soul. With films such as Oldboy, Thirst and Stoker he has invited his audiences into morally challenging situations the likes of which many of us have never experienced. So it was with some surprise that his new film, The Handmaiden, looks an awful lot like an old-fashioned romantic costume drama.
The Handmaiden stars Kim Tae-ri as Sook-Hee, a pickpocket enlisted in a confidence scheme by Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo), who plans to manipulate the wealthy Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee) into marrying him. Then, of course, he would steal her fortune. But there’s one small hitch: Sook-Hee and Lady Hideko are the ones who really fall in love.
Also: TIFF 2016 Review | ‘The Handmaiden’ is Exquisite Costume Trauma
It sounds like a Merchant-Ivory film from the 1990s but The Handmaiden, based on the Welsh novel Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, has many more secrets to reveal. And when I spoke to Park Chan-wook at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year he revealed them, and spoke so candidly about the film’s twists and final scene that it seemed unreasonable to release this interview until the movie finally arrived in theaters.
Fortunately, today is that day. The Handmaiden has been released in America, and it’s one of the best films of the year. Smart, sensual, subversive, unpredictable, it’s a powerfully feminist thriller that demands a wide audience and close attention. I sat down with Park Chan-wook last month and picked apart its approach to both female oppression and pornography, and if you don’t want to know any more than that you should stop reading right now. HUGE SPOILERS lie ahead.
But if you have seen The Handmaiden and need to know more about its characters and its ending, read on. Park Chan-wook speaks in detail – through his translator, Wonjo Jeong – about his approach to the film and how his history as a film critic does or does not affect his work behind the camera.
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Crave: I’d like to start here… What was it about The Handmaiden – or more accurately, Fingersmith – that made you not only want to adapt it, but also think that it was right to move it to a Korean setting?
Park Chan-wook: Well to be honest I didn’t start out thinking this is right to be staged as a story that happens in Korea. But it’s true that when I found out there was already the BBC mini-series, to actually make another adaptation which takes place in the same period and with the same setting, I thought it might not be as interesting. I felt it would feel repetitive.
In the original novel, while I was reading, I noticed that when I was reading the scene when they are in the same bed together and Maud, the mistress, is asking Sue “What do men want? What is it men want?” and Sue is suggesting the Count, or in the original novel’s case the gentleman, “If you do this the gentleman will love it.” So taking that scene, it’s kind of like these two women who actually secretly are in love with each other, one is teaching the other how men might like something that she does for him. In a way it feels kind of like a stage play, or they are doing a role play. Although they are secretly harboring romantic feelings for each other, at the same time it felt quite sad and it felt also quite lovely, quite sweet.
There is an element of repression in the film, perhaps obviously. What I felt was interesting was that both women feel the need to be free from male rule, but only by participating in the manipulations of men. Do you feel there is something you are trying to articulate with that, or is that more of a machination of the plot?
By participating specifically in, say, the Count’s plans…?
Yeah, it would be his plan that frees them. There is an irony in that.
That’s right, but I’m not really making some sort of general statement that in order for a female to attain their freedom it has to happen by way of participating in male rule or male manipulation, and thereby gaining their freedom. I’m not saying that. I’m not making a generalization at all. But specific to this story we have these two women who, right now, at the beginning, they don’t have the power – if you like – but by combining their strengths they are able to gain their freedom.
The way they do that is by breaking the deceit against each other and by becoming honest with each other and becoming on the same side, [they are] able to stand up against the two men, Kouzuki and the Count, who seemed very all-powerful. They are able to not only stand up against them but they are able to use the plans that these men have set up, and they are able to use the tools of the men and use it to their advantage, and use it become free from their oppression and go on a journey to gain their own happiness and pleasure.
So when you take, for instance, at the end of the movie they are using the silver bells. That’s exactly a good example of this. Kouzuki is forcing Hideko to take part in these reading sessions and the bell is featured in one of these very erotic, pornographic novels. That very bell features in the end as a tool for pleasure, and it symbolizes how now they have attained their freedom, and this kind of idea of two women using men and using what men have to punish them… taking their plans and turning them on its head to give them their comeuppances… this idea of subversion was certainly something that I thought would be interesting.
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I was particularly fascinated by the film’s portrayal of pornography, since the film itself is certainly erotic. But it considers pornography from the male perspective, and then those silver bells come into play, and it is something something the female protagonists are able to enjoy. Do you have a particular perspective on pornography, as a storytelling tool or a genre?
As pornography or not, as a work of literature, what’s really important is through whose perspective are you looking at this, when you’re dealing with these subjects of pleasures? And who is being exploitative to whom could be the more interesting method here. When you look at pornography at the beginning of this film, certainly we see Hideko forced into a situation where she is reading pornography, and here literally there are the male audience listening to this “dirty novel,” as it were. It’s not so important how detailed these sexual acts depicted in that [are], but it’s more important, [not] the notion that she is engaged, she is forced into this situation where she is reading for these men, but how she turns it on its head and she ends up using it for her own sexual desires.
And when you’re looking at those two reading sessions, Hideko is not just a mere reading machine or reading doll who is subjected to this male gaze. She doesn’t stop at functioning as an object of erotic imagination in these men’s heads. And in that scene, in the first reading, where she’s wearing the white kimono, she’s very well aware of what she is doing and where she is. When you watch her, she’s looking at each and every one of those men and you can tell through the way she moves her hand and the way she looks at those men that she’s thinking, “I know exactly what is going through your head, you men.” It’s almost as if she is looking directly into their brain and is able to see what is going on in their head, and by doing that she is able to deal with the situation where she is oppressed and she is able to get through those reading sessions. And she is in turn imagining herself holding that whip, and is whipping those men.
So when you’re looking at her strangling herself, and acting the part of somebody who is dying, when you look at that she’s really not some sort of weak slave who has to bear the violence of the male gaze all the time. She comes across as somebody who has a commanding presence on stage and she’s able to manipulate the audience with charisma. She’s almost a diva, like a Maria Callas kind of figure, or a really amazing actress who is performing a melodrama on stage. She comes across as a star with that kind of overwhelming presence.
And in the second reading, when she is wearing the green kimono, rather than going into or looking directly into these men’s head, she goes into her own head. She goes into her own self while she’s reading this erotica, and now this erotica has to do with sex between two women, but for her she’s not reading it for these men. She’s not reading it for these gentlemen but she’s reading it for herself, imagining and she and Sook-Hee as these characters that she’s reading about. And even though there’s a blackout she already has memorized the whole thing. It’s intended to show how she’s into the story and how she places herself in the position of the characters in that book, and it just kind of is her own way, certainly a different way, but her own way of dealing with a situation where she has to take part of those readings. Her own way of fighting against the male gaze.
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When you’re filming your own scenes of erotica between two women, does the idea of the male gaze enter your head, and do you consider whether or not your own perspective is the correct way to tell the story? Or are you trying to imagine filmmaking from a woman’s perspective, given the nature of the material?
I don’t force myself to try to take the female point of view on this, but at the same time I’m not of the position where I’m just carefree, where I’m saying I don’t care about that at all. I am always trying to be aware of the potential criticism, that this could be a “male gaze.” I try to expand all the efforts to deal with it, take care that it doesn’t come across that way, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that I feel that I have to take a female perspective on this. As long as I’m doing a good job at accurately and efficiently depicting the emotions and thoughts and go on behind these female protagonists then that is the more important thing. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to make a movie for a specific audience.
Does your background as a film critic affect the way you consider these sorts of themes? Do you feel that it makes you a different sort of filmmaker than your contemporaries or peers?
Well, I’m not sure because any male filmmaker who is making a film that features Korean women as protagonists, any male filmmaker who finds himself in that position, I’m sure that they would also take as much care in trying to make sure that he doesn’t get criticized for having a male gaze, or [that] he’s not making the female – for the Korean woman audience – uncomfortable by the way that the sexuality of these protagonists are depicted in the picture. I’m sure that all those responsible filmmakers would be aware and take care, and also try and criticize themselves and make sure that what they are doing themselves in order to give enough consideration to that aspect. Not just because I have that film critic background.
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But do you feel that your film critic background in some respects affects your filmmaking in a regular or frequent way?
I don’t think it really has an effect because back when I was working as a film critic I was really doing it to basically put bread on the table. My work as a film critic actually came after I debuted as a film director, and back then in order to make a living it was something that I felt I had no choice but to do and I consider it quite a painful period in my life, that I had to work as a film critic. But it’s not to say that I look down on the work of a film critic at all. It’s just because it was for me a painful period, because what I wanted to do was work as a film director, not as a film critic, and it was only because of that I’m saying that it was a painful period for me.
But in any case I was hoping that the time I spent as a film critic and the experience of a film critic, I was hoping it would somehow, someday be useful when I returned to work as a film director. And harboring that kind of hope, I was able to work as a film critic and continue to put bread on the table for my family. But when I did end up working as a film director again, I realized that that experience of working as a film critic didn’t really help my work as a film director. I realized those two are quite different sorts of work, working as a film director and working as a film critic. Those are all certainly part of the filmmaking industry and community but the work that is done is quite different, and perhaps that’s why I am able to still respect film critics for their work.
For instance, I don’t respond emotionally to bad criticism of my work because I respect that that is the work of a film critic. In order to work professionally as a film critic, a film critic may be writing in his own voice, and he’s writing to distinguish himself from other film critics as well. So I respect the work of a film critic and I respect that film critics have to have their own point of view, and I respect the fact that they are independent writers, and not a part of a film. In a way I am able to go on doing my job and able to respect the film critics in their own area of work, and that is probably why, I think, compared with maybe some other filmmakers, I am less prone to get emotional when I see a bad review. And that is exactly because of my experience of having worked as a film critic.
Top Photo: Magnolia
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
