Address Unknown (2001)

ADDRESS UNKNOWN is such a grubby and begrimed film. It features ugly characters in ugly situations and settings, and offers little or nothing in the way of artistic redemption. It is nearly impossible to believe that the same director, Ki-duk Kim, fashioned the elegant and haunting film, "3-Iron" which charted the despair and loneliness of a homeless couple who seek solace and sanctuary in the empty vacation homes of strangers. ADDRESS UNKNOWN skirts the line between pathos and bathos, and then plunges in without a backward glance. Thus, ADDRESS UNKNOWN becomes almost punch-drunk and silly instead of emotive or poignant.

Kim Ki-duk's film has been a while making its appearance, at least in the UK and after viewing it, in some ways one can see why. As unflinching and as memorable as the other works which have made him out as perhaps Korea's finest filmmaker - The Isle, Bad Guy (2001), 3-Iron (2004) included - Address Unknown (aka: Suchwiin bulmyeong) is as uncompromising in its view of humanity as any of them, and with many of the director's characteristically disturbing moments intact.Set in and around a US air force base in Korea 17 years after the end of the Korean conflict, and mainly focusing on the travails and tribulations of the residents of a nearby village Address Unknown was, the director says, a way to explore and represent the dehumanising effect of war. It's also, as others have noticed, about other things too: language, family relationships, the debasement of tradition, and violence amongst them. There is no real central point to the film, although arguably the relationship between the American flyer and Eun-OK (Min-jang Ban) gives it its main drama. Korean cinema frequently has at its heart the pain caused by the 1950s' war and the painful division of the country into two halves thereafter, Here the psychic trauma created is symbolised by the base, and the pain resulting is acted out in varying degrees by those who live and work in its shadow.In Kim's unnamed village the principal business appears to be the butchering of dogs for food - a particularly brutal affair, though the film does claim no animals were mistreated during the filming - by one Dog Eye (Jae-hyung Jo, also notable in Bad Guy and The Isle). Dog Eye despises teenaged Chang-Guk (Don-kun Yang) the son of an absent American soldier, for being of mixed descent. Letters to his missing father, sent from his mother, are being returned 'address unknown'. For his part, Chang-Guk makes his solitary friend in Ji-Hum (Young-min Kim, also in the same director's much more contemplative Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, 2003). He's a sensitive, withdrawn artist, bullied by his war veteran father. Meanwhile Ji-Hum has a crush on Eun-OK. With her eye damaged by a childhood accident, she in turn has a relationship with an unstable, drug dealing American flyer, (Mitch Malum), who promises her a corrective operation on the promises of becoming his girl...The bleakness of the film, one both of landscape and the heart, reminded this viewer of the Chinese film Blind Shaft (aka: Man Jing) made the same year. But the latter is more about the degradation wrought by political economics, whereas the malaise at the centre of Kim's work is more pathological. It is also more relentlessly grim and less cynical than that tale of couple of serial killers at work in Chinese coal mines to such an extent that the viewer at times wonders if anyone will be left alive by the end. This narrative ruthlessness, as critics have noticed, ultimately undermines some of the impact the film might otherwise have had.Another flaw is the performance of the main American actor; Malum's acting has been for some a distraction, although I found it weak, if passable. Korean directors sometimes make unfortunate casting decisions for their English speaking parts, one thinks of the problems which attend the otherwise excellent J.S.A. No doubt the home audience would not care about or notice such shortcomings, so it seems pointless to chide Kim too much over this weakness, especially as elsewhere the cast are generally excellent.Ultimately, what makes Address Unknown so striking is Kim's imagery and the choice of actions by his characters, so spiritually and emotionally rootless. Seen in this light, the writer-director's title is especially apt, both referring literally to the official stamp on front of envelopes returning to the mother, as well as to the anonymous village of his stories. Like Bad Guy and The Isle, the current film also contains individuals who exist on the edge of human relations, although here it is not just persecuted lovers. To a certain extent all of his characters have lost their way, either represented living rootlessly in an old army bus, being casually inhumane to animals or each other, or simply by valuing preferment - suggested by army medals, relics and pensions, even just good looks, over genuine human connection. And when times are so out of joint, some striking images are the result: the death of a major character head buried in a frozen paddy field; a man hung by dogs; the cut-out paper eye (an especially treasureable, Dali-esquire moment) on the face of Eun-OK, the killing of the dogs over a dirty puddle, and so on. In fact there's a touch of surreality about the film that continues right until the end, with the soldiers crawling in the field. Kim's achievement is in unifying so convincingly, and without any monotony, a multi-charactered narrative that includes such extreme concerns as disfigurement, minor bestiality, and murder. If you fancy such a strong and austere cinematic brew, then you won't be disappointed.

Call me strange, but Kim Ki-Duk's THE ISLE is one of my favourite Korean movies. Not just the beautiful imagery, not just those scenes that had people fainting in the theatres, but because I empathised a lot with the characters, and the symbolism of their environment and their actions was very much in tune with my sensibilities. OK, so I'm strange . Much as I enjoyed watching it, I won't try and argue that watching THE ISLE is a 'pleasant' experience - not one to leave you with a smile, so I was prepared for something a little bit serious and grim with ADDRESS UNKNOWN. It is not a little bit serious and grim at all... it is *completely* serious and amazingly grim.Kim Ki-Duk is less interested in exploring the somewhat global issues of human feelings here, but instead wants to explore the feelings of a nation - Korea, still living in the shadow of the Korean war. The characters here come across as a little apersonal (it's ok, I just invented it) because they are embodiments of the country's experience... the division, the loss of autonomy, the dehumanisation that people feel, caught up in the conflicts between North and South and between Capitalism and Communism. Obviously to suggest that this was a universal Korean experience would be unreasonable, though Kim Ki-Duk is not interested in exploring balancing factors in this particular movie. People suffer. And suffer. And suffer. And then they suffer for a while. He is relentless in his examination of the pain that he clearly feels, for himself and for his country.It must be said that I know almost nothing about Korean history (though I am learning a lot as I type!), or of contemporary Korean society, so I don't know how common the feelings that Kim Ki Duk expresses here are, or how realistic his assessment of Korea's post war condition is. It all feels very believable, very convincing... but certainly none of the Korean people I have met are quite as utterly miserable as they must be if ADDRESS UNKNOWN were an accurate depiction of their lives.I think there is no doubt that for at least some people, and some communities, the feelings that Kim Ki Duk brings to the fore in the movie represent real feelings and real situations. But I think that it must be assumed that it is not an even-handed assessment of the situation, that he was quite certain what he wanted to say and permitted no deviation from it. In a way this is the movie's undoing... it is so relentless in its pursuit that it becomes too easy to get detached from it, to treat it as political allegory rather than a tale of human hardship. A little more warmth, a little bit of humour, maybe just one or two moments where at least one character was *slightly* happy... and I would have been much more able to bond with them, and their tragedies and miseries would have been that much more poignant as a result.A fairly small matter, and to a degree this observation may simply be an observation that I am not Korean. The movie is a very personal look at the feelings and circumstances of a nation, and having had no comparable experience myself, it is obvious that I'm going to struggle to fully relate. If I couldn't empathise with the characters though, I could at least sympathise with them. The characters themselves were good characters, and the performances were mostly very good. Notable exceptions are the American soldiers in the movie, whose English dialogue and delivery is really quite embarrassingly bad The movie is very light on dialogue - little that is important is expressed through words, because it doesn't need to be. Always a good thing in a movie.It is the younger characters of the movie that are centre stage, those who were born years after the Korean war ended, but are still suffering its consequences. It's always refreshing to see young actors deliver mature performances, and this is one such example.THE ISLE probably impacted me mostly because of the visuals - the beautifully photographed and haunting environment in which the movie took place. ADDRESS UNKNOWN is not nearly as pretty, which can partly be based on location, but also the fact that the style is a lot more realistic, gritty even, as opposed to THE ISLE's abstractness. It is still well filmed though. I wrote of THE ISLE after seeing it:"if you want to take away the beauty of his film, you have to be willing to pay the price of the horror"ADDRESS UNKNOWN is a less successful movie for me because once you get past it's horror, instead of beauty you find there's just a bit more horror . OK, it's not as bad as that... but the tone is quite unremittingly bleak. I don't know whether to recommend the movie or not. I liked it, but I'm not sure how many others will. Definitely not a movie to put on to take your mind off a troublesome day anyway!

I love this movie! OK, it's horrible, it's disgusting, watching it mademe sick...and saying that I experienced physical pain is not a lie.There is no happiness in this film. Everyone is depressed andeveryone has difficult problems to deal with, and those problemsdon't get solved, but rather get worse during the film. But this iswhy I love it! A film that can give you such strong feelings, even ifthe strong feelings are depression and pain, is a GOOD film!Might be good to see this if you think YOU have problems. =)