Review: A Dirty Carnival

Hong Kong films, especially those by John Woo, defined the Asian gangster movie. Films like The Killer and Hard-Boiled gave a new vision of gangster life. Woo peddled in cool. Slow-mo, double-fisted gun play, evil and good mirroring each other, doves flying in churches.

Woo liked the idea that good and evil weren't so clear-cut. Gangsters could have ethics, even as they were blowing people away ("but they were all bad!"). There are ludicrous moments such as the Chow Yun-Fat being in love with a blind woman who doesn't know what he does, or the rescue scene at a hospital where babies are being brought out as the body count hits double digits.

Like many Asian films, women don't fare well. Even as many of these directors are married, they seem to lack much understanding of women, so they keep them to stereotypes, helpless or pure.

Korean cinema has taken Hong Kong cinema and added a gritty realism to it. They aren't completely immune from a bit of silliness, mostly related to nostalgia. I'm reminded of the odd film Battle Royale whose conceit is that parents, tired of their rebellious teens have them sent to an island where the last remaining survivor gets to live. Meanwhile, each person is armed with an odd weapon, and slowly, the group descends into a kind of chaos, though not exactly of Lord of the Flies proportions. There's something unrealistic about the whole proceedings, because we're lead to believe that these teens are really on the verge of killing each other (OK, beyond the actual crackpot idea of putting teens on an island, playing Survivor, literally).

In the midst of this mayhem, there are flashbacks to a more innocent time, when the teens were all playing basketball. This scene is played in flashback, where the relationships are hinted at, and then you see what happens.

A Dirty Carnival is pretty sentimental, recalling a time when they were all kids and things were much more innocent.

Hmm, I'll briefly summarize the story. Byung-du is a mid-level gangster, of the sort that occupies GoodFellas. His mother is ill, and he can barely make ends meet. He plays a heavy, extorting money, but getting to keep very little of his own. The gang leader wants the DA offed, and it takes a while, but Byung-du, whose the leader of a tiny gang of his own, decides he must do this, so he can look good.

In the midst of Byung-du's trying to be a better gangster, he meets up with Min-Ho, a childhood buddy, who wants to make a film about gangsters, and needs to interview some real-life gangsters. Byung-du had always had a longing for Hyeon-ju, who is (amazingly) single working as a bookshop worker.

The structure is similar to Spiderman, alternating between Byung-du's life as a gangster, and his courting of Hyeon-ju, who's nervous dealing with a guy that's a gangster, even if he has a heart of gold.

Western music plays a central role in this film. Tango music is played throughout, and much like Hong Kong films, key characters sing songs that have meaning beyond just lyrics, including the Byung-du, Hyeon-ju, and the head gang boss.

What places this film beyond the typical Hong-Kong equivalent is what makes Spiderman more intriguing than Superman or Batman. Byung-du struggles as a gangster. Even as he leads his small group, he can't seem to move up the ladder, without drastic action that leads to drastic consequences.

The relationship between Byung-du and Hyeon-ju is worked out in more detail, much like Peter Parker and Mary Jane. Even so, women tend to be idealized in such films. Hyeon-ju is practically the only female, and she's generally a good person. Would it be more compelling if she weren't so good (she has no discernible faults other than being poor)? This is always a problem when men make movies. They don't want to write about women that they don't want to deal with.

And of course, there's the problem of having gangsters having a conscious and feeling sorry for what they do. It's a matter of circumstances, don't you understand?

Scorsese, for instance, doesn't really peddle in good and evil, but mostly in the weaknesses of men. He doesn't mind making characters that aren't all that likable. In GoodFellas, there's no ideal women. (I've heard, in earlier films, there are guys who imagine women to be alternately saints and sinners, the so-called Madonna-whore complex, but these are views held by the men).

In this view of the world as flawed and good, A Dirty Carnival owes far more to Hong Kong gangster films then say, a Scorsese film. Kim Ki-duk doesn't fall for this. Samaritan Girl has a kind of idealized female, but she's basically a teenage hooker, and even then, she's a bit eerie, smiling all the time, thinking she is trying to achieve a higher goal.

A Dirty Carnival also doesn't kick you in the gut quite like GoodFellas. It lacks Scorsese's intensity, but it also is far more sentimental than Scorsese ever would be. But the violence that does exist is far more intense than the stylized Hong Kong violence. Early on, scenes with gangsters battering each other with poles border between cartoonish violence (how can they be his so often) and something a bit more realistic. Korean cinema doesn't try to achieve wire-fu mastery like the Chinese films where fights are more like kinetic ballet, but attempt to make things more visceral, while still not being perfectly "real".

Why Korean cinema has evolved this way, I'm not sure. Perhaps the history of South Korea with corruption? Or with real riots? Maybe these things inform their films where such events may not have occurred in Hong Kong, so they imagine a kind of violence that's different.

It's not nearly as stark as, say, Takeshi Kitano's work, where he juxtaposes sharp moments of violence with moments of peace and artistic beauty.

I will say, for a film I had not heard of, it was pretty entertaining, even if I thought they could have aimed to be more realistic (how the filmmaker betrays his gangster friend almost doesn't make sense to me, except that he's desperate to be a filmmaker too). Ha Yu, the director, like Kim Ki-duk is able to hint at what people are thinking. As a group, Korean directors show a great affinity for wordless dialogue, getting you to figure out what's going on without words having been said.

As I think about how Korean films continue to garner more attention, I wonder what's happened to Japanese, Chinese (mainland) and Hong Kong cinema.