UPDATED: Partly my fault, partly Nicola's but now finally we have the full transcript interview that we had with
Park Chan-Wook for
Thirst... How are you enjoying Comic Con so far?
It has been great fun so far, all of these people in costumes are great, and also those not in costumes are just as interesting.
How important is Comic-Con to the film?
Unfortunately I am not so familiar with the different tastes of American audiences and how the marketing is being approached for the film, so I dont really have a ready answer for that question.
How did you come up with this unique story?
I have said that I started thinking about this film about ten years ago, but you might even say that you can find the origins of the story even farther back in my life. I used to be a practising Catholic when I was very young, so you might even say that the origin of this story goes way back. I went to church until I was in high school. That is when a local priest came to my father and said, youve got to send this boy to the seminary. Hes going to be a Bishop someday. I became scared and basically stopped going to church at that point. That is because I liked girls, and that is probably when I started to think about the sexuality of a priest. Im just kidding about all of that. Even from this early stage, I had a great respect for people in the priesthood. These people who sacrifice everything in the servitude of others, they give everything away to other people. Looking at priests dedicating their lives to others, I thought this is a type of martyrdom. So I wanted this noble priest to go through the greatest suffering possible, and to test the character in that way. What would be the greatest suffering he could go through? That led to the thought of turning him into a vampire and forcing him into the situation where he now has to drink the blood of other people in order to survive.
What fascinates you about the theme of imprisonment?
Rather than state of mind, I am approaching it more at the level of physical space. This confined space is what fascinates me. If you take this wide open space as a background, there are too many variables that you can see in one given image. What I want to do is to take things into this confined space and simplify everything. This makes it function as a metaphor for the complete world. For example, in Oldboy, the place where the character is imprisoned is a very confined, limited space, in which he is forced to spend 15 years. What I want to say through that is that 15 years in this prison or confined space, and 15 years out in the world, are fundamentally the same. We are all wondering, Why are we here? How can we get out of this place? When are we going to get out of this place? By which method are we going to get out of this place? These questions apply equally in this confined space as they do in everyday life. These existential conditions are ones we find ourselves in just as much as the character does while trapped in this space.
How prominent is the vampire genre where you are from?
I cannot say I am an expert on the body of Korean mythology, but as far as I understand there no vampire myths in Korea. It is through the influence of Western films and culture that vampirism was introduced into Korea and began to gain popularity. If you mention vampirism to a Korean person they will almost always think of Count Dracula. There have been TV shows using this character, but usually they would be caricatures of this character that turn it into out-and-out comedy.
There was a movie developed as a horror film, but developed for the cinema-going audience, it came across as a comedy because the vampire would be inside a coffin, somehow making his way into Korea. He rises up one night and begins to feed on teh blood of Korean women. However, at the time it was difficult to cast actual Caucasian actors. So, what they did was they went to an American army base and got a general infantryman to play this character. Rather than a Priest holding a crucifix, they had a Buddhist monk with prayer beads in his hands.
Is there a vampire equivalent in your culture?
As far as I am aware, usually when you see a monster in a scary story, they would be people who have died due to a wrong-doing, hold a grudge, and seek repentance and justice against their perpetrator. They appear as a ghost, so the people cannot see them for what they are, get scared and run away.
Tell us about your visual style and aesthetics.
Questions like this always put me on the spot. In studying film, which I did by myself, I always thought it was natural for films to be this way. I thought that a film is not like reading a book, and it should be something that is experienced, something that you feel through video and audio. By making an audience feel, the film gets across its logic or its statement. When you have this logical concept or an idea in your head, it should be conveyed by making the audience feel these ideas or concepts. Even though a filmmaker might have this idea in his head, an audience should be able to see, hear and feel what this thought is. Every element in filmmaking should be designed so as the audience can feel the intentions of the filmmaker. All different elements should be arranged so that a particular emotion could be derived from that. For me, due to my personality, I want the audience to feel my thoughts in a very intense way. That is probably why I spend more time organising these filmmaking elements and designing them in such ways. To sum it up, I dont know how to make films any other way. This is how I learned that good filmmaking should be.
In all of your previous films, the cinematography was predetermined. In this film it was shot more freely. Did this make it easier or more difficult?
In terms of camera following an actors movement, in this film it gave them a bit more freedom to move around, but not to such a degree that there was much difference between this film and my previous films. The difference was probably more accurately felt by my cinematographer, who now had to follow the actors.
How does your removal of clichés affect your use of music and sound?
It is a separate matter when you look at the music. The intention to take away these clichés didnt necessarily affect the music. There are two kinds of music used in Thirst. One is a tune composed by Bach, which the main character plays on his recorder. The other is this very, very old Korean pop music that the pathetic mother-in-law and the character of the son listen to. These are two very different kinds of music that are very contrasting. You probably could not find two pieces of music that contrast each other more. By doing this, I want to express the critical theme of this film: external elements that enter into and effect what the internal environment.
How do you feel about horror films? Might we see a continuation of the Thirst storyline in any more of your films?
When I say that I cant watch horror films, and that I dont like horror films... although they may sound similar, these two statements are very different. The reason I cannot watch horror films is that I am so receptive to the effects that the filmmaker intended for the audience to go through, to the point that it horrifies me rather than being enjoyable entertainment. In short, you can say that I am the greatest horror fan who cannot watch horror films.
The Hard Rock café was rocking hard at 9am as I arrived to interview
Park Chan-Wook about his Cannes prize-winner
Thirst. Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes,
Thirst is a vampire film with a difference.
Chan-Wook: Well, rather than being killed by a priest, my vampire is a priest. He has no aversion to garlic; sunlight does not kill him; he does not reside in a coffin, and finally, he has no fangs.
This approach moves away from gratuitous violence and gore, and into the psychological effects of pushing his characters to the brink. Chan-Wook has respect for priests, describing them as noble. The question he poses for the priest is this: Since this character happens upon this situation through no fault of his own, should he feel guilt?
Thirst has been described as his most mature film yet, and opens in the UK on 16th October. You can read OWF's Simon Gallagher's review of the movie from Cannes,
HERE.