Regardless of genre, the films of South Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho persistently probe at the divide between the powerful and the powerless. The shape of that power is often tied to whatever cinematic form with which Bong is playing. In his directorial debut, the darkly comedic “Barking Dogs Never Bite,” a struggling academic and social climber aim their career frustrations at other people’s pet dogs, whom they perceive as receiving more attention than they do. In “Okja,” Bong went wider with his consideration of animal abuse, wondering about the souls of the creatures fought over by the meat industry and pro-animal-rights groups. In creature feature “The Host,” Bong creates a literal monster out of our abuse of the environment, making plain the cyclical nature of pollution and how our industrial might equal our dehumanization. The star of that film, Song Kang-ho, would also appear in Bong’s “Snowpiercer,” about an uprising by the have-nots against the haves on a train traveling around a post-apocalyptic world, and in Bong’s Best Picture Oscar winner “Parasite,” which considered similar themes about capitalist decay and individual powerlessness. All of that is to say, Bong’s efforts are often focused on the shades of gray that make up the human experience, and that exploration is especially unsettling in Bong’s exceptional crime drama “Memories of Murder.”
The 2003 film, which was acquired by Neon for re-release this year and hits VOD on October 27, is a slow-burn most akin to the works of David Fincher, with the violent sureness of “Seven” and the relentless tension of “Zodiac.” That isn’t to say Bong is attempting to mimic Fincher, but that fans of those films, especially “Zodiac,” would be drawn into what Bong is doing here. “Memories of Murder” adapts a real-life serial killer story and traces all the steps of the investigation—evidence gathering, suspect interrogation, DNA testing—to attempt to understand why it all failed.
There is more to the film, though, than a by-the-numbers recounting of police work. What is so disturbing about “Memories of Murder” is its consideration of the way violence like this festers and spreads. It infects the mind and perverts our patterns. It is one experience to abstractly understand that things like rape and murder happen every day. It is another to see the physical ramifications of that kind of brutality up close and to become entrenched in the kind of all-consuming fear that chips away at moral certainty. “You don’t know this town,” says initially skeptical Detective Park Doo-Man (Song), refusing to believe guest investigator Detective Seo Tae-Yoon’s (Kim Sang-Kyung) theories about the case. But does Park really know it, either?
At the time that “Memories of Murder” was filmed, the identity of one of South Korea’s first serial killers remained unknown. For five years, from 1986 to 1991, someone was targeting women in a rural town outside Seoul. The women ranged in age—from a schoolgirl to a grandmother—but were united in the viciousness inflicted upon them: raped, killed, their corpses dumped in fields or near canals, their own clothing used against them as restraints. The investigation, although it included thousands of suspects, stalled out. When Bong’s film hit South Korean theaters, it was a reminder of a mystery never solved—and victims never avenged.
“Memories of Murder” begins with the discovery of one of those victims, on October 23, 1986. In a lush, sprawling rice paddy, its vegetation glowing green in the sunlight, something that shouldn’t be there has been found. Detective Park arrives on the back of a tractor—dust stirred up by its wheels, dissipating into the golden resonance of midday—and kneels down to peer into a cement-covered canal. A young woman’s body is there, ants crawling all over it. Her wrists are bound, her clothing is haphazardly arranged on her body, and her eyes still hold a terrified gaze. And a few days later, a similar scene, in another field of reeds barely one kilometer away: a woman with her head covered, her hands tied, and the spark from her eyes extinguished.
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It is in the eyes, Detective Park believes, that he can discern whether someone is telling the truth or a lie, and he puts that belief to the test with the investigation. From the beginning, though, things go wrong. Evidence is destroyed. Crime scenes are contaminated. The new sergeant, Shin Dong-Chul (Song Jae-Ho), warns that the media is breathing down their necks, curious about the townspeople’s claims of police brutality and torture. Park’s partner, the hotheaded Cho Yong-Koo (Kim Rwe-Ha), is the reason for the complaints; he would rather beat up suspects than let them talk, and his combat boots have kicked many a suspect. Park, meanwhile, is convinced that a coerced confession is as good as a real one, and specializes in psychological mind games to compel admissions of guilt. The force’s only female officer, Kwon Kwi-Ok (Koh Seo-Hee), actually has some theories, but because she’s a woman, her male colleagues would rather she fetch them coffee. They are not particularly good at this, and they are out of their depth, and they are territorial—so much so that when Detective Seo from Seoul volunteers to join the investigation, he butts heads with Park immediately.
They disagree about who to investigate. They disagree about tipping off the media to how they’re progressing in the case. They disagree about which clues matter and which don’t. And as they spar, women keep dying—and rumors about who the killer could be spread. Could it be the mentally deficient Baek Kwang-Ho (Park Noh-Sik), who was obsessed with one of the victims? Could it be, as the town’s middle school students gossip, a man hiding in an outhouse, who creeps out at night to stalk women? Or could the crimes have some connection to the concrete factory that looms over the town, casting an ugly industrial shadow over a place otherwise so verdant?
“Memories of Murder” thrives on the tension that develops in a time of uncertainty, and it uses Park and Seo as antagonistic figures who each exemplify the difficulty of solving a case like this. “My eyes can read people,” Park insists, but his superstitious beliefs—including visiting a shaman for a concoction to help find the killer—don’t go anywhere. Instead, his attention to detail is one of his greatest strengths, and his slow realization that his brash methods are putting people in danger demonstrates regard for others’ safety that isn’t immediately clear from the character’s braggadocio. On the opposite side is Seo, excellent at spotting patterns—the killer strikes when it rains, and targets women wearing red—and deeply trusting of evidence (“Documents never lie”), but also too sure of himself. Seo believes that his big-city experience is the key to solving this case, and that inability to understand the worth of others, or the value of their contributions, might be the greatest mistake made during the investigation.
Bong and co-writer Shim Sung-Bo are deliberate about the specific cultural details they incorporate to build to the town’s unease, and those elements build upon themselves. A scarecrow erected by where the first woman’s body was discovered bears the painted threat, “Turn yourself in, or may you rot and die,” and suggests a vengeful specter bound to the location. There’s a shortage of additional police to help with the investigation because they’re too busy responding to political demonstrations in other parts of the country, which leaves the investigation team short-staffed. Park and Seo wander around picturesque locations unique to Korea’s rural geography (fields of cabbage swaying in the breeze; woods full of aged trees) that are marred by the blood spilled upon them. Peaches, cultivated in Korea for centuries and believed to represent prosperity and happiness, are used in a garish and macabre way in the murders. Civilian defense drills, which seem to happen every couple of weeks, are announced by reverberating air horns, lead to town-wide blackouts, and include students dressing up as if they’re emergency responders and practicing evacuations. “Pretend you’re dead,” one girl says to another, and it sounds like a curse.
There is an increasingly stifling quality to the atmosphere of “Memories of Murder” that suggests a natural endpoint—an inevitable resolution to so much conflict. The film’s rejection of that, though, is also the strongest example of Bong’s point about violence and how it invariably transforms us. The climax of “Memories of Murder” takes place outside of a train tunnel, its curved archway the divisive point between so much darkness within and so much without. As Park and Seo grapple with their suspect, that tunnel acts like a yawning mouth, its dank depths enveloping any who come too close. Park and Seo, who vary so much in their methods. The man they’re investigating, who could be performing the part he thinks the police want him to play. “That’s what you want to hear … right?” he asks them, and that little bit of doubt—and the way uncertainty can be either a strength or a weakness—is the struggle “Memories of Murder” forces us to re-examine. The film’s 17-years-later coda, and its breaking of the fourth wall, only adds to the perplexity it transfers to us as viewers.
“Memories of Murder” is one of the best of its genre, and its consideration of the murky morality that is shared by both accusers and accused remains a compelling example of Bong’s cinematic portraits of power.
“Memories of Murder” is in select theaters now and will arrive on VOD, courtesy of Neon, on October 27.