The Host

Joon-ho Bong, 2006, 119 mins

This has been stamped with a minor SPOILER warning.

Joon-ho Bong's The Host with an upbeat musical score by Byeong Woo Lee is a wonderful mixture of family drama, comedy and scares, broke a number of South Korean box office records when initially released.

.

On a military base within Seoul, an American Scientist orders his reluctant Korean assistant to pour bottles of excess formaldehyde down the drain, leading into the Han River. Years later, in broad daylight, a mutated amphibian-fish creature emerges from the river to menace the locals. The Korean government quarantines the locals under the pretense that the creature is host to a lethal virus.

Most monster-movies are content with a slow reveal of their creature, expanding the myth and tension while also reducing costs, but The Host, at no disadvantage, deals the cards face-up with a reveal 10 minutes in. On a parkland at the side of Han River, passersby hurl beer cans and rubbish, feeding the beast swimming beneath the surface of the river. The creature emerges from the river in search for better quality food, the passersby themselves. It is lumbering and clumsy yet still threatening, which sets the tone of the film. There won't be any Stockholm-like Syndrome here as it callously attacks those trapped within a trailer or spews out the human bones of the eaten.

.

LEFT: Run, boy, run

RIGHT: Just another hurdle in life

The film focuses on the charmingly dysfunctional powerless Park family as they clumsily attempt to rescue Gang-du's schoolgirl-aged daughter Hyun-seo trapped in the creature's lair. Gang-du, though bumbling and somewhat inept, is an adoring father who persistently searches for his daughter. His sister Nam-joo, an indecisive professional archer, brother Nam-il, a drunk unemployed college grad and their tired father, Hee-bong, make up the rest of the family. There is an early scene in a shelter as the family mourns the presumed death of Hyun-seo that becomes comical as they writhe and squirm on the floor trying to out-mourn each other with the media swooping in.

The film is somewhat critical of the United States, of its hostile foreign policies, but more so of authority in general. The Korean government is portrayed as submissive, reckless, unwilling to listen and unable to help. As a government representative in a bio-hazard suit enters, he pratfalls and unsuccessfully endeavors to regain composure. Unable to provide answers he then attempts to find them on the TV. Its satirical look at politics extends also to the media and youth protesters who are portrayed as naively courageous as "Agent Yellow", a reference to Agent Orange, envelops them. Furthermore, Nam-il, a former student activist, bemoans his past fighting for democracy to witness the government turn antagonistic to his family.

RATING

Highly Recommended

Night And Fog

Alain Resnais, 1955, 32 mins

It's a documentary about the Holocaust, but I'll issue a SPOILER warning anyway.

Resnais' 1955 film written by Jean Cayrol, a concentration camp survivor, documents the life of the Nazi concentration camps using both black and white archival footage and colour footage filmed by Resnais in Auschwitz and Maïdanek. The colour footage takes us on a tour of the compound while intercutting to the archival footage beginning with the construction of the camps, following through to the torturous day-to-day living, building up to disturbing and harrowing footage of the extermination. Mountains of human hair and personal possessions are collected while their lifeless owners are thrown as rag-dolls into human pits. It's imagery and narration are direct and to the point, set to Hanns Eisler's somewhat lyrical yet still haunting score. Although loaded with strong imagery, the narrator frequently explains the viewer's inability to comprehend the unthinkable reality.

The documentary asks us who is responsible. The officers denounce their responsibility, shifting the blame. The gas chambers and crematoriums now lay run-down and decaying. It ends with a warning of the inevitable.

Francois Truffaut has been quoted as saying: "The effective war film is often the one in which the action begins after the war, when there is nothing but ruins and desolation everywhere .... Alain Resnais' Nuit et brouillard [Night and Fog], the greatest film ever made."

RATING

Highly Recommended

Warning: Video contains some graphic imagery

Stalker

Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979, 163 mins

A SPOILER warning has been issued.

Loosely based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic, Tarkovsky's 1979 film depicts the journey of three men, unnamed but referred to as the Stalker, the Writer and the Professor, through a mysterious wilderness named The Zone, travelling towards The Room which is said to fulfill the deepest wishes of anyone who enters.

The lush green wilderness of The Zone is scattered with decaying buildings, remnant broken-down tanks, rusted firearms, and religious iconography. Outside The Zone is filmed, mostly, in a grim black and white within an industrial and somewhat post-apocalyptic setting. Tarkovsky fills the movie with slow, lengthy tracking shots and frames each shot in deliberate, meticulously choreographed compositions of each actor's movements, standing and faces. The laborious, troublesome journey is supplemented with a haunting score by Eduard Artemyev.

LEFT: Can't figure out the metaphor

RIGHT: Needs a little dusting

Each of the three men have their own motivations for travelling into The Zone, the Professor: for knowledge, the Writer: for inspiration and the Stalker: as a duty. By the time they arrive at The Room deeper motivations are exposed. The story of a previous Stalker is revealed, a mentor named Porcupine, who became rich from entering The Room. Porcupine's brother died while within The Zone and everytime Porcupine asks for his brother's life back, he instead receives more riches. He hung himself soon after.

Tarkovsky's Stalker is generally concerned with the nature of faith. The journey towards The Room, the Stalker, representing a holy clergyman, applies seemingly arbitrary rules to follow which end up being constantly broken. He eventually confesses that his Stalker role provides himself a sense of purpose in an otherwise mundane life. It is telling that as they arrive to the edge of The Room no one is willing or able to step inside and avoid confronting their beliefs. Would the power of The Zone exist without their belief? The final moments reveal that the Stalker's daughter, born disfigured from his constant trips within The Zone, possesses supernatural ability.

RATING

Highly Recommended