Park Chan-wook finds DECISION TO LEAVE in “The Mist”

In 1972, a lush pop ballad called "The Mist" swirled out of radios all over South Korea. Fifty years later, master auteur Park Chan-wook has taken it as the main inspiration for his celebrated new thriller-romance DECISION TO LEAVE.

In this special episode of the award-winning MUBI Podcast, Park tells host Rico Gagliano about the song's influence on the film, unveils the musical inspiration for a possible future project...and explains why his action sequences always seem to leave his characters breathless.

DECISION TO LEAVE is showing in select US and UK cinemas, and will stream exclusively on MUBI starting December 9th in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, India and Turkey.

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Transcript

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Somewhere in South Korea, at the very top of a tall mountain, a detective searches a crime scene. A mountain climber fell from up here, plummeting to his death. Now the detective's combing through stuff the climber left behind, seeking clues. A backpack, a cellphone, a wallet.....a flask of whisky. He moves to the precarious edge of the mountain, freaking out his partner."Stay away from there" the partner says. But the detective doesn't move. Instead, he squeezes a few drops of artificial tears into his eyes then looks down at the dead man far below. Cut to the dead man's unblinking eyes. Ants are crawling over them. We see the pupils. Sightless and clouded over from the inside.....with a kind of mist. That scene kicks off the plot of <i>Decision To Leave</i>, the new movie from South Korea's legendary Park Chan-wook. On one level it's about this detective, Hae-joon, and his dangerous romance with one of the murder suspects, named Seo-rae. But at heart, it's about seeing. People trying to see things as they are but ending up lost and blind. In fact, there's a song that the film's characters seem to listen to constantly that's called <i>The Mist.</i> I'm Rico Gagliano and welcome back to the MUBI podcast. MUBI's the streaming service dedicated to elevating great cinema, on this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema. Season Three is coming your way in the new year, but today we've got the first of several special episodes to tide you over. It is my interview with Park Chan-wook about <i>Decision To Leave</i>, it is one of the best reviewed films of the year, it won Park the Best Director prize at Cannes and it is in select theaters right now. Park is maybe best-known in the west for his so-called vengeance trilogy, especially <i>Old Boy</i> which, among other things, features a fight scene with a hammer that's probably one of the greatest in movie history, you'll hear us talk about that a little later, as well as what<i>Decision To Leave</i> does and doesn’t have in common with Park's previous films. But I started by asking him about that song,<i>The Mist,</i> which was recorded by singer Jung Hoon Hee circa 1967, and 55 years later inspired this movie. Oh, and a couple of things you'll hear, Park's Korean translated by an actor, but at one point you'll also briefly hear Park's personal translator, in case you wonder where the female voice came from all of a sudden. Also, spoilers ahead. You've been warned. Thank you, Director Park, for joining me. Great to see you. Or hear you! So, you've said in the past that one of the inspirations for the film was the song <i>The Mist</i> and I know you heard it a lot as a kid. What was your first memory of hearing that song? Well, I was little so I don't quite remember the first impression I had, but the song itself was so famous that I felt like it was always with me. I was too little to savor each lyric, but to my young ear, the melody itself was just beautiful and the singer's voice was high-pitched and so soft and smooth, that it was just a beautiful song to listen to. It was the purity of the song that hit me the most at the time. And then, a few years ago I was in London, working on the post-production of<i>The Little Drummer Girl</i> in London, when I re-heard the song and the beautiful lyrics just hit my heart straightaway. Especially the part where it says,"Open your eyes in the mist." What all of a sudden appealed to you about that lyric? Because throughout the song, you get this impression of the one that you love is leaving you. And you see them in silhouette, obscured in this deep fog. That's the dominating image throughout the song. Then, towards the end, you hear this lyric, "Open your eyes in the mist". And that is a command to you, to open your eyes and take a straight look at that person. So, the command is, even though it's misty, things are ambiguous, you have to make an effort to see clearly. Now, what is this song commanding you to take a look at, straightforwardly? I think you can fill in the blank. It could be the person you love or your own emotions, or just reality in general. That was really the inspiration, the conjured image of detective, of someone who always tries to take a clear look at his situation, and that's when I decided to put in the scenes where the detective uses artificial tears. He always uses them to kind of clear his eyes whenever there's a decisive moment that he really wants to take a straightforward look at. That's direct inspiration from the song. And even there's a line that Hae-joon says to Seo-rae,"That dress you wear, that dress that looks green or blue", that idea comes from the song. He's really trying to take a clear look at the suspect, a woman who wears a dress that looks different depending on how the light hits her. The changing color of the dress and that line about the dress was inspired by that lyric. Which came first, though, the song or the screenplay? Did you have the screenplay kind of in your head and then the song inspired certain scenes, or did you hear this song and say,"I want to do a film about somebody"who's trying to find the truth in that fog of misunderstanding?" Everything started from the song, just listening to those lyrics, it was really natural for me to come up with the premise. That the story will be against the backdrop of a misty city, it's going to be a love story, a romance. And then pretty quickly I realised it would be extremely suffocating and frustrating and boring for the audience if my film only just took place in the mist. Cause you can't really see things clearly, you know? It was natural for me to divide the story in two parts, the first part takes place in a city where you can see things clearly, and then the second part you arrive in that misty city.- What about F.W. Murnau movies?- Hmm? I think immediately of F.W. Murnau movies. He shot in the mist. The movie ends with a new recording of <i>The Mist</i> playing underneath the credits. Tell me about that version. So, when I re-heard the original song a few years ago, around the same time I learned that the song was actually covered by another great singer called Song Chang-sik. Basically I found out that the song had been sung by my favourite and most-respected female singer and by my favorite male singer. So, I thought, wouldn't it be really nice if I can feature those two versions of the song. One by the female and one by the male singer in one film. And that idea developed quite fast. I thought, OK, so I'll have my characters listen to the original version and talk about it throughout the movie, but then at the end of the movie, I'll drop in the male singer's version, like a great gift to the audience at the end. But ultimately, I decided against using that male version at the end, for a couple of reasons. First, because if I ended the film with that version, I thought it would make it feel like my story's really just about the male protagonist's perspective. You know, this detective who meets this woman and in the end he's left alone. That's not what I wanted. The story's both about him and the woman. And the second reason is, I originally used that song in the scene where Hae-jun is searching for Seo-rae at the end of the film. He's crying out, "Seo-rae, where are you?" And when I put the song and the scene together, it was too sad to watch. And that wasn't the intense reaction I wanted, so what I did in the end was to have those two legendary singers come together and record a duet, man and woman both singing. I dropped in the song during the end credits rather than during the finale. Why didn't you want the audience to feel sad at that moment? Well, feeling sadness is OK, I'm not saying the audience isn't supposed to feel sad at the end, what I'm saying is that I don't want them to immediately cry or experience extreme sadness. Because throughout the film I wanted to maintain some distance between the audience and our characters, or the optimum distance, so that the audience doesn't feel pushed to feel sad or laugh too out loud or get too upset at seeing things. My intention was to have a dignified attitude. Elegant, I wanted to have an elegance and for that, keeping that optimum distance between you and the film was essential. This is interesting, because I know the other thing that you have said in the past that you wanted to accomplish in this movie is to tell a detective story where the detective is quiet and kind, and in fact, you're right, he actually says at one point, dignity is very important to him. Why did you want to make a movie that was dignified and about a dignified character? Well, I wanted to show the audience the process of this person being shattered completely. So, the character had to have that sense of dignity at the beginning, because we're gonna see how that's gonna be destroyed and he himself brings everything onto himself, basically. I'm taking the audience into the journey of this character who ends up shattering himself. In the end, he's in the mist looking for Seo-rae, in quite undignified fashion, if you think about it. He's swept up in the waves and he's all wet and he's falling into the water and calls his junior detective almost like a crying baby, he says, "You have to come! You have to help me, it's getting dark."I won't be able to find her!" and he's screaming like a crying baby. So, since this whole process of this dignified person losing himself, being completely shattered, was the point of the film, I needed Hae-jun to have that high sense of pride and dignity from the beginning. But as you said, you also want the audience to have a little distance from that breakdown. You don't want us to get too caught up in his emotions. I think of something like <i>Old Boy,</i> which is the opposite. You're deeply immersed in the psychology of that character, you were fully bowled over by the intense emotions he's feeling constantly throughout that movie. Is there a reason, with this film, you wanted it to be a more distanced movie? Well, <i>Old Boy</i> was that kind of film and <i>Sympathy for Mr Vengeance</i> was the extreme other end of the spectrum, meaning that I have the audience look at the character from a very far distance, taking a very cold and objective look at what the character was going through.<i>Decision To Leave</i> was kind of in between<i>Old Boy</i> and <i>Mr Vengeance.</i> I have to say the reason I'm trying to get at why you chose the style for this movie at this time is that this feels like a movie of its time. We're in a world of misinformation, of distrust, polarization, worries about the future, and it seems like a movie where everything seems unclear and you're just a little bit not sure where you are, or what tone is happening or what the characters are really up to. It seems really of the moment. Was the state of the world on your mind when you made this movie? I didn't mean to put in any particular message or ideology, what I intended was to make a universal kind of classical film that would go beyond border and nationality. But of course, as you said, it's certain if an audience from several hundred years ago watched this film, they wouldn't really understand it and I guess it'll definitely resonate more with a modern audience whose living in a world where we are not so sure if we can trust anybody. Or if we can express our true feelings towards each other. In that sense, my film is more suitable for the modern era. I have to ask you about your action scenes, you're so famous for them, and there's one in this movie that I loved that involves a stairway. For those who haven't seen the film, can you just describe it? Well, the main plot of this film is a male detective who falls in love with a female suspect, that's the main plot. In reality, detectives don't handle just one case, they have several cases going on at the same time, and I love these kinds of sub-plots in my favorite police procedural novels. I thought that would give this film another realistic layer to it. Also, structurally, I like how the subplot can influence the main plot and vice versa. So, the scene you're talking about is when the hero, the detective, is chasing another suspect, not the main suspect. And then, during the pursuit, the suspect starts running up this huge set of stairs outside, and of course it's just so high and so long that just looking at it makes you feel already tired. And then what happens is the hero and his partner race after this guy up the stairs and they start off together but halfway up the partner just collapses in exhaustion. And our protagonist doesn't because he's that kind of person, he's persistent. In the end, he catches him. Now, the thing that occurs to me about this action scene is that a lot of your action scenes often show how physically difficult they are for the characters. I'm thinking specifically of the hammer scene in <i>Old Boy</i> where everybody's just gasping for breath. Everybody is just punished by the end of these things which is, typically in action scenes, the character never even breaks a sweat, why is it so important to you to show the difficulty of these things? I think that’s because my films aren't action dramas but they include action sequences and I wanna have those action scenes as realistic as possible. If you look at the hammer scene, of course nobody could pull off that kind of fight in reality either, but still, I wanna be faithful to the emotional aspect of the fight, so that means my protagonist won't fight like a superhero, he'll feel really tired in the end, he'll be completely worn out during the fight and that's really the bare minimum of what I have to do to give that kind of reality to my action scenes. Your characters are people, not superheroes. Last question and it kind of refers back to my first question about the song you use here, <i>The Mist.</i> You're at this point considered one of the more important film makers in the world, which means you can take these things that you personally love, like songs, or places or actors, and bring them to a global audience. My question is what's something that you would really like to put in a movie just cos you want everyone to know about it but haven't figured out a movie for it yet? Are you specifically referring to something Korean or just in general? I mean, whichever. I can't really think of anything in particular but I can tell you about this - there's a piece of music, classical music, that's been on my mind for several years now and I've been listening to it repeatedly. It's from a Russian composer,- Shostakovich?- Yeah. It's Symphony No. 7 and it's his celebration of the heroic struggle of the citizens of Leningrad during the time when the Nazis besieged the entire city. And that story itself, and the music, has resonated with me so much that I've been listening to the music for the last several years and I'm thinking about how can I introduce this incredible story in music to the wider audience. Maybe a war film, for your next movie? Well, if I ever make that film, it won't be about the war itself. It'll be about the civilians, the citizens, dealing with a time of war. Director Park Chan-wook as usual focusing on people in his stories, whatever the genre.<i>Decision To Leave</i> is South Korea's official entry for Best International Film at this year's Academy Awards. It's in select theaters now and, starting December 9th, you can stream it exclusively on MUBI in the US, the UK, and many other countries. Check the show notes for all the details. And that is our special episode of the MUBI podcast this week. We got a few more of these to come, leading up to February when we're gonna drop our full Season Three. It is all about legendary pairings of great songs and great movies. It's shaping up to be the coolest thing ever, we're talking about tunes from reggae to Hong Kong Canto pop. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it, and by the way, between now and then you may be aware the holidays will be happening. May I unbiasedly suggest the best holiday present would be a gift subscription to MUBI.'Cause let's admit, watching great films isn't just about watching great films, it's about sharing them with great people. If you name me a movie I can't always remember the details of the plot, but I remember exactly who I saw it with. So, to make sure the film lover in your life remembers you forever, head to MUBI.com/gifts and choose from three months to a whole year of MUBI. Great idea, you're welcome. This show was hosted, written and edited by me, Rico Gagliano, mastering was by Stephen Colon, Yuri Suzuki composed the theme music, our English translation was voiced by June Yoon. Thanks this week to Ciara McEniff, Julia Nowicka, Alex Delasalle and London Broadcast Studio. The show's executive produced by me, along with Jon Barrenechea, Efe Cakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca. Thanks for listening, be safe, watch movies.