MIFF 2012 - Day 13
Bit of a grim one today. Lies, betrayal and suicide all seem to be on the menu.
In The Fog
In Nazi occupied Russia, a man is set free while his three compatriots are executed. The partisans believe he's an informant and take him away to be executed. But they're ambushed, and the accused man saves his executioner and they walk through the forest with a third partisan. Each remembers the events that led to him being there. It's a bit of a mess, and makes most of its points about two thirds of the way in. After that, there's just the revelations of the third guy, who is far less interesting. Up until then he's just been in the background, and he should probably have stayed there. In the end everyone dies, but it takes its own sweet time getting there. A long, ponderous film that starts well and would have been far more effective with 30 minutes cut from the end.
The King of Pigs
This film would have been far more effective with a single line cut from the end. A few people in the audience burst out laughing, and the rest of us just groaned. It's a shame, because up until then it had been a tense and emotionally exhausting story of school bullying and social stratification. The ideas behind it are really well developed, and there's a payoff line at the end that really drives home the bleakness of the story being told. It also features the worst subtitling job I've seen in years, and the fact that I had to mentally rewrite lines to get the gist of some scenes would have been distracting if I wasn't so involved in the story. It does have its problems, the framing narrative shows that one of the characters has killed someone, but it never comes up again and it has no impact on the story. And there's that truly awful final line. But overall it's a really good, if grim, exploration of the darker side of Korean society.
In The Fog
In Nazi occupied Russia, a man is set free while his three compatriots are executed. The partisans believe he's an informant and take him away to be executed. But they're ambushed, and the accused man saves his executioner and they walk through the forest with a third partisan. Each remembers the events that led to him being there. It's a bit of a mess, and makes most of its points about two thirds of the way in. After that, there's just the revelations of the third guy, who is far less interesting. Up until then he's just been in the background, and he should probably have stayed there. In the end everyone dies, but it takes its own sweet time getting there. A long, ponderous film that starts well and would have been far more effective with 30 minutes cut from the end.
The King of Pigs
This film would have been far more effective with a single line cut from the end. A few people in the audience burst out laughing, and the rest of us just groaned. It's a shame, because up until then it had been a tense and emotionally exhausting story of school bullying and social stratification. The ideas behind it are really well developed, and there's a payoff line at the end that really drives home the bleakness of the story being told. It also features the worst subtitling job I've seen in years, and the fact that I had to mentally rewrite lines to get the gist of some scenes would have been distracting if I wasn't so involved in the story. It does have its problems, the framing narrative shows that one of the characters has killed someone, but it never comes up again and it has no impact on the story. And there's that truly awful final line. But overall it's a really good, if grim, exploration of the darker side of Korean society.
posted by Andrew Lee at 12:07 AM
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