Korean Film Directors: KIM Jee-woon by Hyung-seok KIM

Author:Hyung-seok KIM [KIM, Hyung-seok]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Seoul Selection
Published: 2011-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

The Quiet Family

KIM Hyung-seok: It was a slightly unexpected debut. What was the most difficult thing on the set?

KIM Jee-woon: There was nothing that was uncomfortable just because I had no experience on a set. Before I went out there, I had talked so much and spent so much time with the staff and actors that I didn’t think it was especially difficult. I treated people sensibly, and everything was accomplished in a sensible way. However, it was a film that told a story in a way that didn’t exist before, which they had to call “comic theater of cruelty,” and I wondered how the established film people in Chungmuro would take it. I went to the set asking myself, “Is it OK to do this scene like this? Won’t the staff think it’s strange? If I make a comedy this way, will people laugh?” From the beginning, it was a battle with myself, but I don’t think there were any difficulty resulting from a lack of experience on set. When I think about it now, I think I was fairly composed on the set for a director making his debut.

KIM Hyung-seok: The Quiet Family is a so-called “hybrid genre” film. It combines comedy and horror, and there are noirish visual elements. Did you have this kind of genre composition in mind from the beginning?

KIM Jee-woon: I didn’t write the script with the idea of mixing; I felt from the beginning that this was the kind of story that I could make. It wasn’t that I had any deliberate intention of mixing two, three, four pre-existing genres in a physical sense, it was because that kind of cinematic sensibility was already mixed biologically within me, so I don’t think I made it revealing any kind of intention. I think that I was already existing like that.

KIM Hyung-seok: Your debut is the story of a family. And you have continued telling stories about families. But in your films, the family is something that seems ordinary, yet it gives a different feeling from the families you see in Korean films, ones that are exaggerated in an excessively dramatic way, or excessively ordinary, or treated as just the surroundings or background for the main character. What does the theme of “family” mean to you? What kind of things do you emphasize when you represent the family?

KIM Jee-woon: I think it’s based on reality. If you watch a family drama on TV, they’re always harmonious, and then the whole family goes nuts over some small thing and they all end up deep in contemplation. I’ve always been skeptical about whether those kinds of families really exist. With my family, and the families of the friends and acquaintances around me, I haven’t been able to find families that express their affections in such a drippy way, no matter how hard I look. I always thought those images were all fake, and like what was shown in The Quiet Family, what seemed to be the image

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