Translate this Article...
In her Criterion essay for Grigori Chukrai�s film Ballad of a Soldier, Vida Johnson contrasts it with Fellini�s La Dolce Vita, which was released at the same time, and she cites Soviet filmmaker Sergei Gerassimov (this has gotten a bit convoluted) as saying, �The pathos of Fellini in La Dolce Vita could be put this way: One Should not Live Like This; the pathos of Chukhrai in Ballad of a Soldier could be summed up as: We Should Live Like This.� Every film could quite conceivably be placed in one of these two categories, and if that were they case, then surely Hong Sang-soo�s Like You Know It All (2008) is an example of �One Should not Live Like This.�
Of course, one could probably say that about all of Hong�s films. And just as a quick refresher, here is the basic premise of the typical Hong Song-soo movie: A filmmaker travels somewhere, meets up with old friends, they drink heavily, they say awful things to each other, and then the filmmaker has ill-advised sex with someone, and then theydrink and say awful things to each other (and my God, the drinking; I can�t think of an oeuvre where they drink more heavily). Now, Like You Know It All puts its own unique twist on the old Hong plot: the movie follows a filmmaker named Ku (Kim Tae-woo) through two consecutive adventures. In the first, he is judging a film festival in Jecheon; in the second, he is visiting Jeju island to speak to local film students. In both places, he acts out a similar misadventure: he meets up with an old friend, they eat and drink (heavily), and then he meets the friend�s wife, and he fucks everything up.In Jecheon, the friend, name of Bu, with whom Ku was once in business, says that he�s started a new life (this concept of the �new life� recurs throughout the film), whom he believes is his savior and soul-mate. When Ku has dinner and drinks with them and then spends the night, he does something to enrage Bu beyond all limits of toleration (the nature of which is never made clear), and the next day when he arrives back at his hotel, he finds a message from Bu repudiating their friendship and telling Ku to stay the hell away from him and wife. Ku, who is not the brightest of bulbs, immediately heads to Bu�s house to seek an explanation, and Bu throws a rock at his face, and he flees in terror.
Ku�s subsequent trip to Jeju follows the same basic structure as the Jecheon adventure. In this scenario, Ku is reunited with Yang, an old college professor whom he holds in high esteem, and Yang�s wife, Gosun who, as luck would have it, and unbeknownst to Yang, is Ku�s former girlfriend, who once rejected an offer of marriage from him. Despite the age difference, Yang and Gosun seem to be quite happy; Yang tells Ku that he has started a new life with Gosun. And so they do the usual, and eat and drink, Ku and Gosun having decided to keep their previous relationship a secret. Ku tries to keep his cool, but despite his respect for Yang, he is still troubled by his feelings for Gosun (whom he believes is his soul-mate, having evidently taken a cue from Bu). And so he does everything in his power to fuck things up by asking, �So, how is your sex life?� (Shades of The Room, yes?)
Ugh, I�ve engaged in too much summary vs. analysis/reflection/what have you. But fuck it, I�m not in school anymore, I can do what I want. But I don�t want to say what happens to Ku and Gosun on Jeju; let the viewer see it for him or herself. But I do want to address the question that I�ve raised in all my previous posts about Hong Sang-soo (and he has the distinction of being one of the most profiled filmmakers on this blog) and that is: what is the appeal of these movies? Because, like Ozu before him, Hong really has only one story to tell, and he has made a career of teasing out the slight variations in his frequently similar scenarios. And I�m sure some people would be put off by a filmmaker who almost exclusively makes movies about a filmmaker who makes movies like Hong�s. (For you see, it gets a wee bit meta). But Hong�s themes, despite the seemingly prosaic surface of his films, are rich and grand: art and love. They are not themes easily exhausted, even if Hong�s conclusions about them tend to remain the same: art can�t �save� you, it won�t even necessarily make you a better person, which is too bad, because your personal flaws are really fucking up your love life.
