PostED ON 15 OCTOBER 2022

Lee Chang-dong, the 68-year-old from South Korea, a renown and engaged writer and briefly Minister of Culture of his country, has chosen the cinema to create a humanist and fascinating universe.

In six films directed between 1997 and 2018, Lee Chang-dong has constructed a world composed of characters of varying ages, often of humble social background. Some wonder what they are doing there, others question if they are even real. The filmmaker makes powerful use of the senses – sight, hearing, touch – everything that can impact humans, to develop an instinctive and unconscious closeness with the viewer. His cinema is alive. Everything plays a role. The train marks the passing of time, the horizontal and natural landscape offers a reprieve, a verticality of buildings reflects an inner chaos, while the dance of a bare-chested girl at twilight (Burning) gives us the impression of witnessing an indefinable and miraculous moment unfold, without knowing completely why or what the director is trying to convey... For Lee Chang-dong is a great filmmaker of mystery. His cinema is more about questioning the enigmas of life, rather than solving them.

© Pine House Film/DR

Lee Chang-dong's films also underline difference. His protagonists bring to light the hidden side that we all harbour. Desires and secret dreams come to light through beings as free as the unrestrained and fabulous disabled couple in Oasis (2002). Doing what they feel against all odds, remaining beings of mystery because they are impossible to fathom, is the marvellous idea that permeates this film of very unruly love. The Lee Chang-dong style is about expressing oneself first and foremost, not always trying to understand everything. Lee Chang-dong's characters have one point in common: they are courageous. The lost former cop in Peppermint Candy (2000) faces up to his status as a man who never manages to achieve a balance, but who still does his best to remain standing.

Lee Chang-dong's fictional characters are constantly escaping, making his films an adventure to watch because they are totally unpredictable. Art is one of the ways in which they escape physically and even more so, mentally. The young mother in Secret Sunshine (2007) teaches music. The grandmother in Poetry (2010) perpetually takes notes in a diary in the hope of turning them into poems, as much to combat Alzheimer's disease as, paradoxically, to forget that her grandson has caused the death of a teenage girl in appalling circumstances. The sensitive and lonely young protagonist of Burning (2018) uses writing to keep his love for a missing girl alive. Regardless of age, social condition, or manner, what matters to Lee Chang-dong is restoring the mystery of each human being.

Virginie Apiou

Sunday screenings:

Poetry by Lee Chang-dong (Shi, 2010, 2h19)
Comoedia Sun. 16 4:30pm

Burning by Lee Chang-dong (Beoning, 2018, 2h28)
Pathé Bellecour Sun. 16 6:45pm

Documentary
Lee Chang-dong: The Art of Irony by Alain Mazars (Lee Chang-dong, un art de l’ironie, 2022, 1h)
Villa Lumière Sun. 16 2:30pm (followed by Heartbeat, short film by Lee Chang-dong, 28min)