Shilje sanghwang (2000) Directed by Kim Ki-Duk

Shilje sanghwang (2000)

Real Fiction

Director : Kim Ki-Duk

Language : Korean

While plying his trade in a busy square, a seemingly impassive sketch artist (Ju Jin-mo) is videotaped by a young woman with a camcorder (Kim Jin-ah) as he endures abuse from both his clients and some small-time racketeers. She then leads him to a theatre (emblazoned with posters for a play entitled 'Another Me'), where she contines to film him as he meets his alter ego onstage, and is persuaded to shoot this second self dead and then take violent revenge on all the other people who have ever humiliated him. Over the next hour or so the artist goes on a merciless killing spree, beginning with a rude customer and then working through a list of those whom he regards as his persecutors from the past. Ten (or so) victims later, it is not entirely clear whether these actions are real or imagined, a psychotic's rampage or an artist's catharsis, righteous punishment or the ultimate act of bullying.

Shooting on 'Real Fiction' began at one o'clock one afternoon in Seoul, and ended at twenty past four. No retakes, no corrections, just months of preparations and rehearsals, followed by 200 minutes of raw footage (from ten 35mm cameras and two digital cameras) shot in real time, and then edited down to an 82-minute feature. Like Mike Figgis' 'Timecode' made in the same year, 'Real Fiction' is a bold experiment in isochronous filmmaking - and while it lacks the kind of rich visual aestheticism found in other Kim Ki-duk films like 'The Isle' or ' 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... Spring', the sheer variety of its locations and moods makes it hard to believe its period of production was so absurdly short. This concentrated immediacy lends an unusual degree of realism to events, and yet, in keeping with the paradox in his film's title, Kim Ki-duk goes out of his way to undermine his real-time vérité with an array of alienation effects and surrealistic flourishes - culminating in the director himself calling 'Cut!' and rushing onto the set at the film's end, to the applause of cast and crew.