S. Korean film gets top prize in Venice

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Kim Ki-duk

The Venice film festival wrapped up in controversy on Sunday after Kim Ki-duk took the Golden Lion with his Korean morality tale Pieta amid reports the jury had wanted a different winner. The Hollywood Reporter said the jury had been prevented from choosing US director Paul Thomas Anderson for the Scientology-inspired The Master because the film was already picking up the best director and best actor awards.
Festival rules state that no one film can win more than two awards and the reports said the jury was therefore forced to consult again and settled on Kim’s Pieta, a gut-wrenching condemnation of money-grabbing capitalism.
In an unusual career with no film training that has taken him from being a manual labourer, street artist and trainee preacher to art house master, Kim said he was elated after becoming the first Korean to win the festival. “I am not trying to earn money with my films. I shot Pieta with the equivalent of $100,000 (78,000 euros),” said the pony-tailed Kim, who is known for shooting quickly and on low budgets with Pieta being his 18th film. “My aim is to take the temperature of the world from time to time,” he said.
Kim also explained the significance of the Korean folk song Arirang which he unexpectedly belted out from the stage after collecting his award to the delight of an audience used to predictable thank-you speeches from winners. “We Koreans sing it when we feel lonely or abandoned but also when we are happy. It symbolises the many hills we have to cross — from sadness to joy — the meanders of life,” said Kim, speaking in Korean with English translation.
The South Korean’s film is a bleak story about a brutal loan shark who preys on the clapped-out workshops of a district of Seoul that is quickly being redeveloped, until a woman claiming to be his mother suddenly appears in his life.
The character’s gradual struggle for redemption is played out in an emotional crescendo of violence and revenge as well as unhealthy Oedipal tie between hero and heroine that concludes with an almost religious ending.