With seven feature films to date, Ryoo Seung-wan has become known for his highly innovative and personal approach to genre cinema. His most recent feature The Unjust, about a standoff between a corrupt police captain and a ruthlessly ambitious public prosecutor, was a commercial hit in Korea and received its international premiere in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival.
In the year and a half since Dachimawa Lee you made advertisements for the Korea Tourism Organisation, shot Timeless, a short film financed by Motorola, and directed a music video for Korean hip-hop duo LeeSsang. But there was very little news about an actual feature film. How were you feeling at that time?
Those were the hardest days ever since I started working in films. I thought my career was over when Dachimawa Lee flopped. Several months after the release, we had to shut down the office of our production company, retaining only the legal name. We had to gather at a café if a conference was needed, and every project of ours collapsed. During that unwanted year of sabbatical, I could look back at the path I’d taken up to that point, realising that what I’d achieved and what I’d been were not as great as I’d believed. It was a frightening and difficult time for me, but looking back now I can see that I needed it.
The projects you said fell apart at that time were Yacha, I Enforce, and an action film starring Kane Kosugi. Do you still want to make them?
I really want to make I Enforce, Yacha, and several other scripts I wrote. But recently, my attitude to making films has changed. The industry now is very different from when I started about 10 years ago, and surviving has become the number one principle. If you want to do what you want, first of all you must survive. Of course there are other choices — establishing one’s own system like Hong Sang-soo, or looking abroad for a greater market like Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho and Kim Jee-woon, for instance. But in my case, thinking especially on the latter choice, I’m a person who cannot make a film which isn’t firmly based on reality here in Korea. Making a picture, I seem to prefer “taken” moments rather than “constructed” ones. I have my own plan before filming, of course, but it collapses while filming and I discover the work’s real form from that moment. As for leaving here and working in another language and culture, I fear I might become helpless like Superman before Kryptonite. Therefore, to remain in this industry, what I must do is to meet the minimum requirements of the audience. If I can’t achieve that, I’ll be ruined. If I meet the requirements several times, I might play a riskier card ... then FLOP! and once again have to make more “reasonable” pictures. Of course each filmmaker has his/her own way, but this will be my way: surviving in this industry.
Troubleshooter, your first shot at working as a producer, strongly reminds me of The Unjust. It starts as a oneman action flick like The City of Violence, but the protagonist soon realizes that the social network he faces is too large and complex for him to fight. This idea was manifested in The City of Violence, and it was elaborated in The Unjust. Also, several narrative details and the cinematic style —especially the editing —are very similar to your previous work. Maybe it is more appropriate to say that Troubleshooter is a producer-driven film, in a good sense.
Perhaps the main reason is because it started from my script. By the time I wrote the script in 2008, Korean society, with its new president, had experienced many chaotic [political] changes. These were condensed symbolically into the tragic fire at Namdaemun Gate [Korean national treasure No. 1]. The stress from what was going on in contemporary society probably affected me, as in The City of Violence. Furthermore, many staff members, including the producer and even the director are my long-time collaborators. I offered my opinions in the post-production stage, including editing, so there are probably traces of my tastes. But I’m not sure about how influential my role as a producer was. The production of The Unjust progressed simultaneously with Troubleshooter and I’m ashamed to say that I focused more on directing my own film. As for my production company Filmmaker R & K, I think it’s too soon to talk about its distinctive style or system, since it’s still a young company with only three films.
The Unjust is your first film based on someone else’s script, but you still contributed to the adaptation. What was the difference between your adaptation and the original script of Park Hoon-jeong?
After receiving the script, producer Han Jae-deok and I kept elaborating the details. Our goal was to vividly represent the organic environment of the characters. We thought that in order to make audiences understand why these characters act and react as they do, it was important to focus on the conditions and limits which the environment demands, rather than their own personal characteristics. As a result, the final script became totally different from the original script in the details. But we still followed Park’s theme and mood and this is unquestionably his child.
Many audiences and critics said The Unjust feels “classical.” I thought your stylistic scene-joining technique, the method in which each scene evokes the scene before and anticipates the next one on both technical and narrative levels, gave that impression. Did you plan for this in the adaptation stage?
Sure. How to link two different scenes and create a cinematic rhythm from it is one of my biggest concerns in making a film, even at the script stage. But the final cut was much different from the final script. I’ve come to believe more and more that cinema is an organic medium looking for its own life. To me, the biggest concern nowadays is to find a certain “naturalness.” I’m not sure if I can refer to it as realism. You might say it’s a feeling about “just being there.” Every word and action of each character, and the stories they weave, even an eccentric reaction of a character should all feel natural and understandable to audiences, so that the whole picture creates an integral universe. Before, I didn’t care much about narrative and believed a movie can exist only through actions, being crazed over movies like Six-String Samurai or El Mariachi. Now the narrative is the alpha and the omega of my movie. And if there can be a thing more important than that, it’s character, the people in the movie. My taste for movies has shifted towards “classical” cinema, too — True Grit by the Coen brothers, for instance. I want to make films like that with minimal elements, as in the beginning of cinema, though I won’t be able to make a movie like Buster Keaton’s, of course. Without 3D, without blue screen, without the bravura of technology, I want to make films filled only with the elements that mesmerised me in my childhood —a colourful image, widescreen, the sound of punches, a beautiful set, and wonderful characters. Such an approach might make my film seem “classical.”
You had used cinemascope before, but this was the first time you specifically mentioned the format. In an interview in the pre-production stage, you said you wanted to capture the landscape of Seoul with it. Are you satisfied with the result?
There are some images I like: the shot of the Han River when investigator Gong tails Cheol-gi, or the night view from the top of Seok-gu’s building, etc. I’m struggling with the image of modern city, though. For example, I know so well about the old neighborhood in Crying Fist. In such a place, I realize without a doubt exactly where I should say “Hey, come here, kid,” or “Bro’s not in.” On the contrary, I’m not sure how to capture the landscape of this metropolis, where the characters should be, or even what they can do here. Maybe the problem came from the change of my own living environment. I moved out of Seoul after Crying Fist, and even the office had to move out after Dachimawa Lee. Besides, compared to other filmmakers who are good at capturing city landscapes, I’m stingy with landscape inserts. There is little room in my movies to include inserts. How to “widen” the frame is still an issue for me.
There were debates on the ending of The Unjust. Many viewers said it would be better to end the film with Cheolgi’s promotion and the final report from the National Forensic Service.
The other day, [screenwriter] Park Hoon-jeong also said he hated Cheol-gi’s death, which had been introduced by another adapter of the script. In Park’s original story, Cheol-gi survived and made another deal with Joo Yang. I told him that I would have chosen that ending if I had seen his version of the script. Personally, I like that kind of an ending. Did you notice that after Cheol-gi hears about who was the real offender from the NFS, the camera zooms out as if that would be the last shot of the film? I didn’t notice that when I was filming the shot, but it might indicate what my unconscious really wanted. But I don’t want to regret the choice at this point. The issue then was how to persuade female audiences in such a hardboiled genre film. The production team thought we had to provide a certain degree of pity at least, to grab the audience. Furthermore, in my ethical system, punishing Cheol-gi would be a happy ending for him; better to atone for his sin by death rather than survive and be embarrassed. I still keep thinking about my choice. However, there’s one thing I’m proud of about this issue: I offset film-noirish sentimentalism by adding the epilogue of Joo Yang. Working with musical director Jo Young-wook, we really hated the excessive sentimentalism in Cheol-gi’s death scene. But production people liked that version most. So I thought to myself, “You guys want this? Okay, I’ll give it to you. But I’ll end this film in my way!” If there hadn’t been the epilogue, I would have removed the whole part after Cheol-gi’s promotion and made it openended. Since I had the hidden card of Joo Yang, I decided on a “one for them, one for me” tactic.
Speaking of Joo Yang, I cannot help mentioning the acting of Ryoo Seung-beom. He silenced everyone who had said he wouldn’t be fit for the role of a prosecutor, with a stunningly accurate embodiment of a stereotypical middle manager of an organisation.
Usually I don’t agree with people who say that Seungbeom is my persona, but in this movie, that might be true. Among all the characters, Joo Yang changed the most in my revisions, and all the details added came from my own characteristics. I often make my crew uncomfortable with oblique/sarcastic remarks deliberately, sometimes just as a joke and other times to demand something excessive. Seung-beom knows too well about that. He usually doesn’t doesn’t reveal our kinship while filming and calls me “Director,” but this time, he said, “I know what you want, bro.” Anyway, I too, was impressed by his acting. Do you remember the line, “If you do too many favours, they think of it as their right?” Since that’s the punchline of the scene, most actors would have emphasised it. However, he goes crazy before the line, and then says it in a low tone. At that moment, I thought to myself, “Now you’ve reached the level of Song Kang-ho.”
The Unjust was regarded as the sudden “transformation” of a former actionmeister. But I thought of it more as an expansion of your previous works. Do you think there really is a clear distinction?
I can’t agree with the “sudden” part, but there is a change. I’ve never made a film so comfortably before The Unjust. Maybe this kind of story fits me well. I realised that I’m interested in dealing with the relationship between individuals: how the relationship works and how it fails. The more I focus on it, the deeper I have to dig into the society and culture in which I live, and the greater the distance between me and my fictional world. Frankly, I have lost my interest in pure genre. Nowadays, genre feels like an industrial method to get money from investors and audiences, and it seems to have nothing to do with creativity. My next project will be an espionage film, but to me, it’s a story about liars. There will be minimal genre conventions and star actors, suspense and high-octane action sequences. But the main reason I want to do it is that so I can tell a story of characters who doubt each other, questioning “How far I can trust this person?” or something like that. So the motivation for me to start a picture has totally changed. I’m not saying that my former interest in genre was mistaken. It’s just that I have worked that way many times, so now I want to try another approach.
Hong Jiro