"The torture movie” is how most international guests referred to this work when it premiered at the Busan International Film Festival in October 2012. Word of it spread quickly. “I can’t imagine I’ll ever want to watch it a second time. The torture lasts for almost 80% of the running time,” said a critic to me at one of BIFF’s parties. Then his expression turned serious. “But it’s a tremendous film. It’s an amazing achievement.”
National Security is a fairly accurate retelling of the arrest and torture of political activist Kim Geun-tae for 22 days in the autumn of 1985 (in the film, he is referred to as Kim Jong-tae). Kim was one of the key participants in South Korea’s democracy movement, which eventually forced the ruling military dictatorship to reform the Constitution and introduce direct presidential elections in 1987. Kim later embarked on a successful political career, winning a seat in the National Assembly in 1996 and serving as health minister under President Roh Moo Hyun from 2004-2006. However in the decades after being tortured he continued to suffer from the effects of posttraumatic stress disorder. He died in 2011 at the age of 64 from Parkinson’s disease, which many believe to have been brought on as a result of the torture.
Most films are made for the purpose of entertaining their audience. Occasionally, a director may also want to enlighten viewers on a particular topic, or to present a political argument. National Security is certainly a political film, in that it was released during the presidential campaign of 2012, in which Park Geun-hye, the daughter of former dictator Park Chung Hee, was elected president. But at its most basic level I think this film presents its viewers with a specific request. The request is that we witness the torture that Kim experienced at the hands of government employees in the detention center at Namyeong-dong. In bearing witness to this crime, we may pay tribute to his sacrifice, and understand in some small way what he and so many other political prisoners suffered in this era.
I should explain, perhaps, about the torture. Watching it is quite difficult because of its realistic presentation and the stifling atmosphere that pervades the work. It’s similar in some ways to the torture sequences in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, but much more lengthy and intense. On the other hand, I should reiterate that this is not Saw. There are no pulled fingernails. It’s not bloody or gory, perhaps because it doesn’t need to be. Lead actor Park Won-sang makes us feel the suffocating sense of despair Kim experienced at that time, and in a controlled, subtle way he shows us both the ways in which Kim was broken, and the ways in which he was not.
I realize that at this point in the review, most readers might not be so tempted to seek this film out. But I do want to encourage people to see it – for me, this was the best Korean film of 2012. Director Chung Ji-young did a remarkable job with the characterization of the various people who appear in the film, so that despite ourselves we become absorbed and pulled along by the plot. The film’s humanistic vision extends to the government workers who serve as Kim’s captors, giving the work a much-needed emotional complexity. More than anything, what makes the difficult scenes in this film bearable is the sense that this is a work made primarily not out of anger, but out of empathy for what Kim experienced. The last ten minutes in particular are extremely moving. It’s this empathy that turns National Security from an issue film, into something greater and more valuable.
Darcy Paquet