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The Humanist (2001)
Dir: Mu-yeong Lee
The writer of “Sympathy for Mr Vengeance” directs, and the director
of “Sympathy for Mr Vengeance” and controversial hit “Oldboy”
(Chan-wook Park) co-writes.
Does this successful team-up mean that “The Humanist” is another Korean
movie which is set to light up the International markets?
Well, maybe…but then again maybe not.
We meet Ma Te-o (Jae-mo Ahn) in his prison cell, while being interviewed, and
he narrates us through the events that led to his incarceration.
Ma Te-o is cold, spoilt, cynical and amoral. His discipline heavy Father has
re-married a younger Woman (who likes to sleep around) who has a 7 year old
Son, the only member of the Family Ma Te-o gets on with.
Ma Te-o is also a regular church goer…but only to see how rotten the leg
of a beggar (Myoeng-su Kim) , who sits outside, has got and for money his Father
gives him for turning up! All in all he’s a bad lot.
Ma Te-o’s regular, far from well off, companions are Euglena (Seong-jin
Kang), who as a child lost his genitals to a wild dog attack (whose ear he then
bit off!) and Amoeba (Sang-Myeon Park), a mentally challenged man-child with
brutish strength. They have known each other closely since childhood, but have
all shared a very, very strained relationship.
One night, while speeding, they accidentally kill a traffic Cop during a prank.
The Cop‘s partner turns up and holds them at gunpoint, but instead of arresting
the three men he blackmails them into arranging a payment of $300 million Won
for the Cops widow.
After Ma Te-o’s Father refuses to give him the money he arranges for Euglena
and Amoeba to kidnap his Dad, so he can pay the so called kidnappers a $500
million Won ransom!
But things don’t go to plan….
“The Humanist” is a black comic thriller that takes a good chunk of Japan’s Takashi Miike (“City of Lost Souls”, “Dead or Alive”) , a dash of America’s Coen Brothers (hints of “Fargo” here) and binds it all together with a wild Korean sensibility. And it’s this crazed concoction that makes for the film’s strengths as well as it’s weaknesses.
Punctuating the main, linear, plot line are some quaintly staged but very dark
childhood flashbacks and ‘how it might be’ flash forwards (including
a funny re-enactment of the proposed ransom drop) which sometimes work, but
at other times overly complicate the set-up.
The kidnapping plot is actually played out like a sideshow for the film’s
first hour and instead the movie (perhaps overly) concentrates on the various
unusual meetings and run-ins the three lead characters have with the movie’s
support characters (most notably the beggar) and as such the main meat of the
plot seems rather hurried as the film tries to jam in the kidnapping and subsequent
mishaps into the last half hour which results in some of the ‘twists’
coming across as rather contrived.
Thankfully though there are some pretty amusing and whacked -out moments during
this set-up to entertain us as delightfully off-the-wall and just plain weird
character traits are thrown in with wild abandon.
Ma Te-o’s Father likes to pay prostitutes to strip, paint their bodies
up like birds and open and close his bedroom cupboard doors to make his own,
sexually fulfilling, Human cuckoo clock! A sight he vigorously masturbates to.
The, at first, minor character of a Nun (Sun-mi Myeong, “Real
Fiction“) provides an unexpectedly amusing reason why Ma Te-o’s
7 year old Step-Brother speaks in street slang , in a story ark that has nothing
really to do with the main plot but adds some genuine laughs.
We have a great scene where the beggar defends himself with his bad breath and
there’s also a nice gag about the destruction of phone boxes that adds
a bit of slapstick to the proceedings.
But the biggest sub plot (again not directly related to the main plot) is the
relationship between the 3 leads and the beggar. The beggar character brings
not only gruesome black humour to the film (via his maggot filled leg!) but
also a genuine dose of , brief, emotion. And the performance by Myoeng-su Kim
is the most satisfying in the whole movie.
The comedy in the film is black humour for the most part, only going into really bad taste territory during an attempted rape sub-plot. Although it never reaches the gross-out levels of Miike’s work (and as such seems to fall between two stools) there are moments of comedic bad taste to enjoy, not least of which is a truly disgusting ‘cure’ prank played on an injured Amoeba involving excrement, which has a wonderfully disgusting pay-off .
Violence is kept to a minimum during the first hour (a fantasy leg chopping
scene and the Cop’s death aside) but cranks up during the finale where
some pretty bloody sights are thrust into the audiences face.
Nudity is also at a minimum, but is suitably pleasant on the eyes!
The delightfully quirky soundtrack (also by Mu-yeong Lee) is made up of catchy tunes and a very weird Korean language song and fit’s the jumbled and generally warped construction of the film perfectly, and listen out for the unlikely non-Korean additions of tracks by ‘The Stereo MC’s’ and a superbly utilised dose of Nick Cave.
The screenplay ties itself into knots too often and makes life far more complex for the viewer than the actual plot justifies, but the acidic relationship between the 3 guys is nicely done and there are some good twists. Although the film actually ends on one twist too many, with the penultimate revelation actually being more enjoyable than the image that ends the movie.
Overall then we have a quirky, dark thriller that shoots itself in the foot by being far to chaotic in it’s structure and for leaving too little time to play out it’s main kidnapping idea. Which is a shame as there is much here that does work, some genuinely funny moments and just enough exploitative and weird events to keep fans of extreme/trash cinema entertained. Not essential, but worth a look.
Recently released into the UK DVD market by ‘Tai Seng Entertainment
UK ’ the transfer is anamorphic with a clean 5:1 sound mix and English
subtitles (which suffer from a few dubious translations and incorrect grammar
now and again).
The extras are trailers, TV spots, 2 music videos (one of the weird Korean song,
one of ‘the Stereo MC’s’, both cut to the same images from the
movie), some fun ‘Behind the Scenes/Making Of’ footage and something
called EPK, which seems to be some marginally changed footage from the actual
movie with a slightly different translation.