current selection | fantastic plastic machine – lotto (andreas dorau mix)
my first outing to the nyc asian film festival! wooha! its the third day of the film festival and me and fish caught the saturday showings of ping pong and sympathy for mr. vengeance. there was a packed audience for both showings, which was coo for the festival…bad for us, since we got there late for ping pong and ended up in the front row. neck…ouch. the host gave a coo crazy eddie welcome speech before each movie and also gave away posters and prizes. movie was of course much more coo on the big screen. (hero…kenzan!) after ping pong, we grabbed some pommes frites (with sweet mango chutney mayo…yum) and headed back for the 9pm showing of sympathy. so here we go….
cin3matic contraband – sympathy for mr. vengeance
let me begin by saying that theres only ever been 2 movies ive watched that, while i thought were masterpieces of cinema, would never ever watch again b/c of their sheer sadness. the first is graveyard of the fireflies, and the second is jin-roh: wolf brigade. after today, im adding another masterpiece to the blacklist…sympathy for mr. vengeance.
i kind of knew what to expect, but i was still blown away by sympathy…primarily by the fact that i completely underestimated the sheer bleakness of it. sympathy is a movie about hope, and the utter lack of. it asks you what makes people with good intentions do bad things. ryu is a deaf/mute factory worker who is desperately trying to find his sister a kidney donor. after the initial search turns up with the wrong blood type, ryu continues to search all avenues, including illegal ones. when even that doesnt work out, and the hospital does in fact find a donor, he is now short of money and must find the cash necessary to pay for his sisters transplant. this is all the more hard since he had just been fired from his job. when ryu’s girlfriend suggests that they kidnap his former boss’s daughter for ransom, ryu begins his slow walk down the path of self-destruction.
sympathy is unlike anything ive seen. it is not for the weak-hearted…there are no daisies or sunshine in this bleak and somber world. sympathy is about how good intentions can quickly become bad decisions. evil begets evil, and sympathy unflinchingly shows all the ugliness with little held back. most of the movie is silent, letting the actions of the characters speak loudly. as a deaf/mute, ryu expresses a blankness throughout, suggesting almost a numbness to the ugliness that pervades his world. its in his face that you can see how tired he is of all thats wrong in his life. you can see the exact moment when he knows that hes so far past hope that all thats left is self-destruction. there are no happy endings in sympathy. each successive step towards hell leaves indelible images in your mind. as the title suggests, the movie is not about optimism or gratifying conclusions. its asking you to sympathize for those that are no longer able to hope for the best…they can only see the worst.
