Sunday, October 09, 2005


Kim Ki Duik’s Iron-3, the silent side of cinema

Recently I saw two films of Kim Ki Duik. The first one was The Isle and the second one was Iron-3. Having seen this derictor’s work for the first time I was impressed by the lack of dialogue in his film. In Kim Ki Duke’s work cinema returns to its roots where what is really important is the image not the sound, not the words. Many big director’s of the Silent era complained that sound would destroy the art of cinema. Among them Hithchock often said that talking in the cinema should be done by images. Otherwise, he would say, we are not talking about cinema but about theatre. Hitchock, himself practised the method of less words and more images in one of his best films, Rear Window with J. Stweart. The hero in this film stares on the opposite building spying on the lives of his neighboors. He can see the images through their windows, but the sound rarely reaches him. Most cirtics think that this film symbolises cinema in general.
Truly, Kim Ki Duik’ s films are based on the beauty of the images. The meaning is conveyed by looks and movements. His heroes rarely talk. The only characters in the film that do the talking are the ones that tey truly have nothing signifigant to say. Those who feel deeply, who are emotional, never say a word even if theis lives depend on it. On the other hand their faces and thei body movements convey a whole world of meaning. In Iron-3 especially ( The Isle was also a great movie but a little bit too harsh) the main character not only is speechless but by the end of the movie he has managed to become invisible too ! From the strats his life seems to be a life of invisibility. His leaves in other people’s houses when they are not there, without stealing of making his presence really felt. As the old stories of home-dwars he does the chores and fixes everything that is broken as a token of gradidute for their hospitality. In the end of the film in order to be with the woman he loves without being in danger by her husband he manages to become really invisible. He practices to move and stay in 180o that the human can not see. Becoming completely invisible he is the one that manages to shift the life of the woman he loves and to make her happy. It seems that being invisible is sometimes more important than being really visible and prominent. That’s something we tend to forget rather ofteny.

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