The Korean director talks about Snowpiercer, Haemoo and influences including Alan Moore…

To kick-off the month of April, The Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York invited Korean powerhouse director Bong Joon-ho to screen some of his films, and conduct a series of lectures, in an extensive retrospective. Bong, not only possesses a plethora of international awards, and Korean box office records, but has arguably created the first American studio/Korean directed international hit. Snowpiercer doubled its 40m dollar budget with an international gross close to 90m. While only making 4m. in domestic box office, it ended up making close to 15m from VOD. Bong is renowned over-all for his direction, but has scripted more movies than he has directed, and even worked as a cinematographer on colleague’s films. His talent is embodied by his films, but when I met him, I met an astonishing youthful fervour. He was undeniably a man having fun, with titanic pressure from his big budget movies, and plot arches that possess infamously dense detail, you would expect someone at least stressed or jaded. It became clear that this man was fuelled by doing what he loved, and could talk about his passions endlessly. His demeanour was generous and with every question his mind would seemingly draw back to a fond memory, creating an atmosphere of friendly reminiscence. It was over quicker than I thought, but rewarding nonetheless, Here is the interview I was lucky to be part of…

So theres a lot of themes of family in your films, if not the literal families of Mother and The Host, the makeshift ones of Snowpiercer and Memories of Murder. You grew up in a very creative family yourself, what of your own family dynamic can be seen in your films, and how did they influence you as a director?

I mean my mother was nothing like the one in Mother I assure you…but I had a son, a long time ago when I was an assistant director, he is twenty now. I think a lot of the inspiration comes from my relationship with him. In terms of the emotion found in my films, it’s definitely not a Disney film; so I don’t know how much I can attribute to my family.

Many of your films are inspired by the news, and you have said that you appreciate the concept of chaos philosophically, do you think your films borrow from the unpredictable nature of the actual news?

For instance, I like watching news clips, especially CCTV footage. I even shot a 30 minute film where it looked like it was all CCTV footage (Influenza). When I make a feature film, the way I direct, I wanna believe the situation myself, and make it as raw and life-like as possible, like many filmmakers I like.

So jumping off that, you have been known to make movies about “lovable losers trying to deal with problems they can’t fix”, but now with Snowpiercer you have a superhero, Chris Evans, Captain America, who seems very capable of fixing situations, and arguably does. Is this a departure from your “lovable loser”, or is this somewhat the same?

Its true that Christ Evan’s plays Captain America but in Snowpiercer you can definitely not call him a superhero; or anything even close to that. He is the leader of the tail section, they are the powerless and he leads the charge through the train, but once he gets to the front of the train and he meets the Ed Harris character he becomes a very dark and tragic character, and is 99% swept away by Wilfred’s words.

Even before that in the scene where he is telling Nam what had occurred 17 years ago, his confession and his failure to cut off his own arm, you realize he is actually a very trapped character. He is very far from being a superhero he is actually quite sad and tragic, thats what I find attractive about this character. Rather than positive hopeful characters I am more attracted to these kind.

Speaking of which, this is the first time I heard my own name spoken in a film. My name is Yonah, but I was just surprised to see that it was a 17 year old clairvoyant drug addict, but the clairvoyance specifically is a step away from the hard sci-fi to something more fantastical, why choose to have her in the film, and why include clairvoyance?

In my previous film there is connections with the notion of “Yona”. It was the same actress (Go Ah-Sung) as in the host, and she gets pulled out of the mouth of the monster at the end of the film… (he sees I am not making the connection) Jonah in the bible gets released from the whale. I grew up as a catholic, and studied the bible a lot. I wanted to make a connection somehow so when you see [Yona] in Snowpiercer she is pulled out of a drawer, and right away you can tell that she is very different from the group.

She represents a new generation those who were born on the train as opposed to Tilda Swinton or Chris Evan’s character who grew up stepping on the earth and then found themselves on the train. These generations of children don’t know what the outside world was like.There is a even a term in the film “train-baby”. The character Yona is an important example of this. Even at the very end, the train explodes and everybody ceases to exist, except for these two kids who are a part of this train generation. I definitely wanted to create a separation with Yona from the other characters and she is the start of a new generation, and that’s how I wanted to end the film

I remember when they walk into the greenhouse, you notice the effect the transition has on the audience, the confrontation of life in a dead world, and the experience for those coming from the horrors of the rear cars. How did you prepare the actors for this transition, and what made you include that scene?

The story is about Chris Evan’s and his journey to the front, I wanted to take an approach of the world getting a little bit better one step at a time. Each car, bit by bit, you would see the wealth accumulate. I wanted a very dramatic shift in tone, and told myself from this point on its a different world, and that was the greenhouse section.

If you remember before that scene was the huge Yekaterina Bridge axe fight, its very primitive with the torches and the axes. From there, suddenly you are thrown into this world where you hear Bach, and there is an old lady knitting, its a complete 180. That is what I tried to emphasize with my actors as well; to walk into that world with a speechless dreamy, in a daze kind of way. One way to direct that scene would be to show anger, tell them “this is how they lived all along”, but they don’t even have the energy, the thought process, they are so out of it, and completely in shock, and this continues into the sushi bar, where you have them eating over the frozen harbour.

Your current film is Haemoo, where you go from this tight enclosed train, to the fearful openness of the ocean. You said with snowpiercer you built your story around the setting, was this film made similarly?

I am definitely fascinated by groups of people trapped inside of a space, or inside of a system. In that sense Haemoo is definitely similar to Snowpiercer. But even though the story takes place on a large expansive ocean the characters are all stuck inside this tiny boat as big as a dot. Of course there is a lot of freedom to be out in that environment, but I wanted to highlight that space to show that they are in fact in a very tiny jail. On top of that when the fog rolls in it even becomes more constrained, its a much smaller world suddenly than the train of Snow Piercing, its much for suffocating and stifling. In that sense its a lot more claustrophobic than Snowpiercer.

There are clear cinematic influences in your work. Otherwise, you have already names the bible for one, but what non-cinematic influences appear in your work?

I am a big fan of photography and comic books, in the case of the host… I am having trouble remembering the American female photographer, I love her so much but I forgot her name this is crazy. In the case of Memories of Murder, I was very much inspired by Alan Moore’s From Hell, that also speaks about an unsolved case, Jack the Ripper in London. Charles Burns, I am very curious how Black Hole will turn into film. Lots of comic book artists in general, I am very inspired by comic book art. There is a book that she put out about family it inspired me very much in the making of The Host. I am 47 I can’t be forgetting this photographer’s name (someone googles it) Sally Mann, yes her, her work is fantastic and influenced a lot of my work.