A Reflective and Non-Reflective Work on Iron-3

By Sndor Csik

Korean cinema
It is good for the reader to have a basic understanding of Korean cinema before starting to deal with the movie Iron-3. Korean directors seem to be seamless in conquering western cinemas. Let us reflect a bit on the reason for this phenomenon and where do Korean directors gain their inspiration from. Korean cinema inevitably makes a strong effect on the western viewer. It is something fresh, something new, something highly innovative for our western mind. The average western moviegoer starts to get bored when he knows how a story will end when has watched about half of it. We wish to see something new. This is the point, where Korean cinema gains ground. It presents us, with a plot and scenery so different from the ones we are accustomed to. When watching a Korean movie, our mind is not, cannot be contaminated with preconceptions. We sit in the cinema-chair with a 'tabula rasa-like mind, experiencing these movies with a child-like, immaculate mind. We are presented with an exotic world the rules of which we do not know and in most cases we are kept fascinated with images of a high aesthetical or artistic value and ideas we can identify with, but are presented in a form, which is excitingly different from the ones we know. But what is the rich source of inspiration, from which Korean directors gain their ideas? Many agree, that its primary source is the hard times Korea (both North and South Korea) has lived in the last century. As Anthony C. Y. Leong writes in his book: Looking back over the past one hundred years, the most striking aspect of modern Korean history is the amount of turmoil that the country has endured. Within ten decades, the people of what is now South Korea have seen the fall of the age-old Choson Dynasty, endured the oppressive rule of the Japanese, had their country divided by the Cold War, fought their former countrymen in the Korean War, struggled long and hard to establish a true democratic state, and suffered from the meltdown of the Asian economic crisis. However, as the old proverb goes (or at least how it was presented in Disney's Mulan),

The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rarest and beautiful of all (Leong 5). For historical reasons the Korean nation has a divided national identity and thus a divided self identity as well. As Hyangjin Lee writes in his book, what we see in many Korean films are reflections of on one hand, the conflicting ideas of contemporary Koreans on their self-identity as a divided nation. On the other hand these films show that Koreans are still strongly committed to their common cultural traditions despite their current partition into two states and the resultant political conflicts between them (1). Knowing this, now we can focus our attention to one of the most famous South Korean directors, Kim Ki-Duk, writer and director of Iron-3 in order to understand this movie of him better.

Kim Ki-Duk
Kim Ki-Duk is a peculiar director. He did not receive any academic education on films, but studied fine arts in France. It is agreed among critics, that this period was essential for Kim to become what he is now. Kim Ki-Duk was a factory worker until his thirties. He did not have time to watch movies and anyway he thought he would not have been able to understand them due to his low level of education. In his thirties he went to Paris to study fine arts. There he received some decisive impressions which started him on his way as a director (Merajver-Kurlat 10-15). He lived in France for 3 years. As he says about the French language, during this time [I learned] very little; I memorized nouns and verbs to live. At times, it was a blessing that I didn't understand the language, which was also a cause of frustration. However, I didn't want to learn and live with a deep knowledge of the [French/U.S.] society and history. I could know many things through the people's expression and behaviour. Even now, I think that it is fortunate for me not to know too much about English of European languages (Marta Merajver-Kurlat 15-16). This attitude is very much present in his movies. Characters do not speak much. As in Iron-3, for example, the two main characters Tae-suk (the drifter boy) and Sun-hwa (the married woman)

never speak to each other, and still, their closeness is very much perceptible. In a video interview for BBC Kim said: It is true, that my movies do not have much dialogue. It is to suggest that spoken words are meaningless. As the world has developed, spoken words have become full of lies and hypocrisy. The absence of dialogue therefore is to emphasise what you do, your actions and since nuances are very difficult to translate in foreign films, I've chosen for characters to have very little dialogue (Interview with Kim Ki Duk). Similar to Godard, the famous French Nouvelle Vague director, he also works without a written script. For the movie Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring as he said, he only had a synopsis written to a paper of an A4 size for each seasons and details were decided on the spot (Interview with Kim Ki Duk).

Iron-3
Dealing with Iron-3 is not an easy task. As a person, who also also feels attracted to create, I know it from personal experience, that no work of art can be created solely by the mind, and thus, perceiving any work of art with mere mental analysis is also impossible. In this paper I do not aim to give explanation regarding the message or the meaning of Iron-3, but rather to show some approaches to the movie and point out certain aspects which might be worth to meditate on. As it is a Korean film, I feel tempted to approach it from a Buddhist point of view. By this I do not mean the plot, but the whole movie and also art in general. This movie especially reminds me to the Buddhist kans. A kan is a short story, dialogue, sentence or question which cannot be understood with the mind. For example, a well known kan reads: Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?.. Although, one can find many essays trying to explain this particular kan, and I must admit that some of them I had the opportunity to read are really bright, these analyses cannot reach the essence of the kan. The aim of a kan is to challenge the mind with a question it cannot solve. Thus, the mind gets excited, tries hard, but fails and slowly gets tired, then tranquil and eventually with continuous, and didactic

practice true intuition can show itself and reveals the unspeakable meaning of the kan to the practitioner. In my point of view art is something very similar. As Marta Merajver-Kurlat writes in her book on Kim Ki-Duk and his movies, You do not need to think; this is not an intellectual exercise. You need to watch, to watch carefully, and to open all your senses to what is on the screen. You will probably discover that, at some point or other, you too were there (xiv). The philosopher William G. Smith has a different (although probably subconsciously quite kanistic) approach to the film. He says: Most viewers will be intrigued by 3 Iron, but will find some scenes to be incomprehensible. I find those scenes to be illogical, but haunting and unforgettable. I want to make more sense out of them than I can because I care about those scenes and the two characters who fill them with their presence(177). Artists seem to be conscious of this phenomenon, as they usually prefer not to talk (or say as little as possible) about the so-called message or meaning of their work, knowing that what can be said is just a tiny fragment of what is present in a work of art. They rather let individuals to see what the filter of their subjectivity lets them to see instead of providing the what their filter of subjectivity perceives. But, to satisfy the perseverant reader, who started to read this paper with the intention of acquiring a better understanding of the movie, I hint in this section some questions and ideas, which he or she can further develop if intends to do so. Let us start with Kim Ki-Duk himself. He said the following about Iron-3:
We are all empty houses Waiting for someone To open the lock and set us free. One day, my wish comes true. A man arrives like a ghost And takes me away from my confinement. And I follow, without doubts, without reserve, Until I find my new destiny (Smith 178).

In his book William G. Smith suggests the possibility, that Tae-suk (the drifter boy) might become a ghost at the end. This view is shared by many others. The Hungarian title of this movie could be translated into English as Slinking Ghosts curiously in the plural form. As Mr. Smith points out, there are references which can be interpreted in a way, that at the end Tau-suk have reached a more elevated, transcendental state. We can see that the beatings of the jail guard do not seem to hurt him, while previously he was hurt by the golf balls. The scene at the very end, when he is standing on the scale with his soul-mate Sun-hwa (Smith 178), they weight 0 kg. But, this idea can also be challenged by the closing sentence of the movie: ...It is hard to tell that the world we live in is a reality or a dream. It is not clear if the ending scene is a dream of a character or not, and if so, of which character. The true meaning of this movie might be none of them, and all of them at the same time, including all the other opinions not mentioned in this paper. Quoting the free verse of Sndor Weres, the XXth century Hungarian I would conclude:
Earth is the purgatory of lies. Everything lies around us: the pseudo-infiniteness of space, the pseudo-reality of things, the pseudo-multitudity of us. And yet, in humans' mind even truth is dancing: everything is true and nothing is so as one. The only way out from this flood of lies is indeed the one which appears as our foremost cheater: imagination. Among the many faces of pseudo-reality it's up to your imagination to restore true reality. Nor the mountain neither the valley is the real, but the beauty your imagination experiences when fixed on their shape, and from the pseudo-infiniteness of the seeming world your journey leads along imagination towards your true, inner-absolute (Weres).

Works Cited
Interview with Kim Ki Duk. BBC four. 12 October 2008. YouTube. 03 June 2011. <http://youtu.be/5YX3_LhVbf0> Leong, Anthony. Korean Cinema. Victora, Canada: Black Dot Publications, 2003. Lee, Hyangjin. Contemporary Korean Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Kurlat, Marta. Kim Ki Duk. New York: Jorge Pinto Books Inc, 2009. Smith, William. Socrates and subtitles : a philosopher's guide to 95 thought-provoking movies from around the world. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co., Inc, 2010. Weres Sndor: A Kpzelet, A Teljessg fel (my translation), Magyar Elektronikus Knyvtr <http://www.mek.iif.hu/porta/szint/human/szepirod/magyar/weores/teljesse/teljfele.mek>