Pieta (2012)

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Movie
German title Pieta
Original title 피에타 (Pieta)
Country of production South Korea
original language Korean
Publishing year 2012
length 104 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Kim Ki-duk
script Kim Ki-duk
production Kim Soon-mo
music Park in-young
camera Jo Yeong-jik
cut Kim Ki-duk
occupation

Pieta ( Korean : 피에타; Italian festival title: Pietà ) is a feature film by the South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk from 2012 . The drama, named after the portrayal of Mary with the corpse of Jesus Christ , focuses on a brutal debt collector from Seoul (played by Lee Jung-jin ), who comes from meeting his supposed mother ( Cho Min-soo ), whom he never known, is purified . The low-budget production , for Kim and the script was written and as a film editor worked, came after a three-year creative crisis of the director and is claims to be a new beginning of his career.

The film, conceived by Kim as a criticism of capitalism , with many scenes of violence and Christian symbolism, was premiered in public on September 4, 2012 as part of the competition at the 69th Venice International Film Festival and was the first Korean entry to win the Golden Lion , the festival's main prize. Pieta was shown in cinemas in South Korea on September 6, 2012, and on November 8, 2012 in Germany.

action

The Cheonggyecheon in downtown Seoul. A high-rise estate also threatens the industrial district presented in the film.

Lee Kang-do, who is single, works as a debt collector for a loan shark in Seoul. Every day, the 30-year-old man visits the shabby businesses on the Cheonggyecheon River in the city center . In the poor industrial district, which is threatened to be displaced by the planned construction of a high-rise estate, he collects the money due for his boss. If the delinquent small business owners cannot pay, the kang-do, who is decried as the “devil”, brutally settles the accounts with them. Without any scruples, he cripples the debtor, sometimes in front of family members. Alternatively, he uses his own machines or throws them from tall buildings in order to permanently break their joints. As a result, Kang-dos boss benefits from the disability insurance that the insolvent have taken out in addition to their loan.

One day, an older, attractive woman in her 40s follows Kang-do in Cheonggyecheon. A little later she knocks on the door of his apartment, suddenly steps in and starts cleaning his home. She is thrown out by Kang-do, but despite violence and threat of death, follows him on an assignment the next day. The mysterious woman named Jang Mi-sun claims to be his mother who gave him away shortly after he was born. She pretends to be complicit in his slide into crime and asks his forgiveness. Mi-sun helps Kang-do cripple a defaulting payer and later leaves him an eel in his apartment for lunch. The skeptical and negative debt collector, who never had a family, raped her to test her credibility (“If I say you're not my mother, I'll stop”). After Mi-sun successfully demonstrated her determination, Kang-do accepts her as his mother. She then moves in with him, takes care of the house and cooks for him.

Kang-do changes through living together with Mi-sun and can soon no longer go about his work ruthlessly as before. On one of his forays, he leaves a young debtor intact who wanted to offer his unborn child a better future. The naive craftsman, who involuntarily provokes Kang-do's jealousy, then mutilates himself on one of his machines in order to collect part of the sum insured. At the same time, Kang-do's presence makes his mother more vulnerable to his vengeful victims. Among other things, he can free Mi-sun from the violence of the debtor Tae-seung in an attack, who wanted to take revenge on Kang-do for his crippling. The debt collector then decides to quit his job.

When Mi-sun suddenly disappears, Kang-do is desperately looking for her. He begins to visit his former victims and also his employer who seem suspicious to him. Kang-do is confronted with the consequences of his actions - some of his victims have ended up as beggars on the street or have become addicted to alcohol. He begins to doubt the meaning of money, which Mi-sun called "the beginning and end of all things". It turns out, however, that Mi-sun is the mother of a former debtor Kang-dos who committed suicide. She wants to take revenge on the unsuspecting kang-do through her rapprochement and a planned suicide and drive him crazy. However, she now also feels sympathy for him and doubts her plan.

Mi-sun finally fakes a kidnapping and hostage-taking. She falls to her death before Kang-do's eyes from a dilapidated building before the mother of a former crippled debtor can throw her down. When Kang-do Mi-sun's body is about to be buried under a pine tree that was previously planted with her on the river, he finds the body of her real son. The corpse wears a sweater knitted by Mi-sun, which Kang-do assumed was intended for him. Kang-do pulls on his sweater and rests next to the bodies of Mi-sun and her son in the excavated grave before burying them both under the jaws again. The following night he visits the hut of a former debtor couple and secretly chains himself to their van. When the debtor's wife starts the van early in the morning to go to work, she unwittingly tears Kand-dos body in two.

History of origin

The director's creative crisis and failed filming abroad

Director Kim Ki-duk in 2011

Pieta , which is explicitly announced in the opening credits as Kim Ki-duk's 18th film, followed a creative crisis for the director after an accident during the filming of Dream (2008) in which an actress almost died. According to other sources, he should have felt "betrayed" by his then assistant director Jang Hun , with whom he had worked several times and for whom he wrote the script for his own directorial debut Rough Cut . A little later, Jang Hun signed a contract with ShowBox , one of the largest Korean film production companies. Jang Huns subsequent film Blood brothers became with 5.46 million viewers for popular success in South Korea, while Kim's works could never reach such high viewership by far in the past. He later criticized his former colleague for not having been able to resist the “temptation of capitalism ”.

Traumatized and suffering from severe depression, Kim began to live a hermit life in the mountains for three years, away from the film industry and other social contacts. He captured this time with the award-winning documentary essay film Arirang - Confessions of a Filmmaker (2011). Although in the meantime, Amen (2011), a new feature film shot by him in Europe, had been released, he saw Pieta as a new beginning. Before that, Kim himself was unsure whether he was still a master of filmmaking.

According to her own statements, Kim originally wanted to set the film project in Paris and entrust the lead roles to Jude Law and Isabelle Huppert . However, this plan failed due to the tight schedules of the two actors. Sobered by the tedious process of finding appointments for auditions in Europe, Kim moved to Japan after a three-month stay to make the film there. But the film project did not materialize in Japan either, whereupon Kim switched to his home country South Korea to shoot the film there.

Filming in South Korea

Kim shot Pieta in real locations in Cheonggyecheon, where he claims to have spent his childhood and worked in the factories. In total, he lived there for 15 to 20 years. The run-down part of the city was once considered a symbol of the industrial boom in South Korea.

Kim gave ten days to prepare for the shoot. The filming itself, which began in February 2012, would have lasted 20 days, the post-production 30 days. With production costs of 150 million won (approx. 103,000 euros ), only 1/30 of the financial resources for an average Korean feature film were required to finance Pieta . Next Entertainment World (NEW), which is one of the three largest rental companies in the country , was won in advance for the domestic distribution .

Criticism of capitalism and Christian symbolism

Michelangelo's Roman Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica , on which the film's poster advertising was based, among other things

Kim, who also wrote the script, wanted his film to be understood primarily as a critique of capitalism . The money is the “third actor” in Pieta . His work is about "[...] how the financiers of capitalist society make the world bad, worldwide. […] From the losers of this system, those who have lost their way who have no lobby. I [Kim] show the negative side of capitalism and the problems it poses and which we should be afraid of, ”said Kim. When asked about the metaphor of the crippled workers, however, he stated that he had made a fictional film with dramatic effects. For the director, the scenes of violence that appear in the film are “eminently eminent” for the story and could not have been presented “differently” or “not milder”.

Although Kim titled his film after the portrayal of Mary with the corpse of Jesus Christ (or from the Italian word for " pity "), he left a scene in which Mi-sun her supposed son Kang-do (in Korean the name is literally for "robber") in the style of Michelangelo's Roman Pietà in his arms, remove from the film. The image, which was only used to advertise the film, subsequently appeared to Kim as an overly explicit reference. The director, who had previously explored different faiths in his films ( Buddhism in spring, summer, autumn, winter ... and spring , Protestantism in Samaria ) was moved by the sight of the statue of Mary, which he claims to have been in for years while visiting St. Peter's Basilica in Rome Remembered and understood as a "sign of sharing the pain of all humanity". "[...] my film is pervaded by models such as sacrifice, compassion, redemption, which go back to Catholicism .", Says Kim, who has lost faith itself "a little".

reception

Press reviews in Italy

Pieta was traded after its premiere at the International Film Festival of Venice on September 4, 2012 as the favorites for the main prize. Kim Ki-duk's directorial work led, among other things, in a vote among 23 film critics, the critique of the daily festival publication Venezia News . A short review by the Italian daily La Stampa ruled that it was not a scandalous film like the one shown in Venice in 2000, Seom - The Island . Pieta is a “poetic film” that addresses “difficult topics” and digs into the characters in which “demons and the most shameful secrets” lurk. Nevertheless, as usual with Kim, "violence, blood and sex as phases of martyrdom" are included, which would lead to "rebirth in death or in transcendence ". The two main actors are "intense" and Cho Min-soo is a contender for the award for best actress , while Kim used the figurative power of the silent film for tragedy and resurrection . La Repubblica titled Pieta as “film shock, brutal and melodramatic” and also classified it as worthy of prizes, as did the Corriere della Sera . Jury President Michael Mann praised Pieta for “seducing the audience inside”.

Reviews and predictions in South Korea

In South Korea, Pieta was discussed differently by the two major English-language daily newspapers The Korea Herald and The Korea Times , where the film opened in cinemas two days after its premiere in Venice on September 6, 2012, and was approved for ages 18 and over. Although Pieta has almost all the elements that make an audience “uncomfortable” and “bad” (terrible violence, incest, worst human nature), the film is a “powerful and stirring study of good and bad, longing and belonging, as well Money and today's capitalism at its worst, ”praised the Herald . The victims in the film exist in the real world and often make headlines in the news, the small industrial companies are authentic and all the characters and their tragic stories are believable. Never in the past would a Korean film have delved so explicitly into the problem and the lives of the victims. The Times praised the first half of the film, which enjoyed "almost flawless, masterly direction, overwhelming camera work and enthusiastic acting." However, the second half would be "spoiled" by the revenge theme, which would dominate and be repeated until the end credits . The Times highlighted the scenes in the factories and in the apartment building of the protagonist as a “visual feat” - Kim never shows the audience real blood scenes, but embeds “very drastic scenes” (“body parts, meat and fish”). Lee Jung-jin is said to be “not entirely adequately cast” in the male lead, while the performance of the supporting actors was rated “generally great”. The end of Pieta is "the downfall" of the film, which was foreseeable for "a director with a thirst for blood" and which should have ended a scene earlier.

Kim Dong-ho, founding director of the Busan International Film Festival , rated the subsequent success of Kim Ki-duk in Venice as "the greatest success in Korea's film history since the last century".

On September 10, the number of South Korean cinemas showing the Pieta increased from 150 to 200. On the same day, the Korea Film Council announced that Kim's film had been placed in an official sales ranking based on ticket sales with a market share of 12.3 percent Second place would come. The day before, the first edition of the book, which had hit stores, was sold out. As a result, Pieta was predicted to become Kim's most commercially successful film, whose directorial work, with the exception of Bad Guy (700,000 viewers), never reached more than 100,000 viewers in South Korea. Some of his films have been shown in fewer than five cinemas in the country. Critics blamed Kim's tendency towards explicit violence and the portrayal of female characters as victims or order takers in his films for the lack of an audience. Considered a kind of "outcast" in his home country, Kim criticized the monopoly of cinema operations by a few corporations (called "chaebol", which controlled 83 percent of movie theaters in 2010) and said he had considered leaving South Korea for other countries who would rather welcome his work.

The film critic Kwak Young-jin estimated a possible audience of more than one million in South Korea to be realistic. At the same time, South Koreans in their 30s and 40s have recently opened up to films with unsettling scenes, which would help Pieta commercially.

In mid-September 2012, a government commission selected Pieta as South Korea's official candidate for an Oscar nomination in the category of best foreign language film . The film prevailed unanimously against Im Sang-soos The Taste of Money , Hong Sang-soos In Another Country , Yun Jong-bins Nameless Gangsters and Choo Chang-mins Masquerade . By then, the film had seen 170,000 moviegoers in South Korea. Pieta was not shortlisted by the Oscar jury.

German press reviews and publication dates

The German-language specialist criticism was also largely positive about Pieta . The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung rated the production as "dark" and the competition jury from Venice rated it as "nostalgic", "nasty and aesthetically convincing film" in the tradition of Kim's previous works and conceded price opportunities for the two main actors. The Süddeutsche Zeitung commented in a short review that the film was "pretty brutal and sometimes funny" and presented a "devilishly original story". After its premiere, the world praised Pieta as the strongest and most outstanding contribution to date. It is difficult to praise the "biting, absurd criticism of capitalism" because of the explicit scenes of violence it contains, but Kim's directorial work reaches "his audience as if through a purgatory that one must have gone through". After the Venice Festival ended, Die Zeit also praised the story of the “sublimation of pain through revenge”. “In an unbelievably fine, aesthetically sophisticated way” Kim succeeds “in making the unbelievable rawness of Korean society visible”. The film combines the “Christian motif of the grieving mother and the stylized artificiality of an Asian genre film with a merciless view of Korea”.

One of the few negative voices was that of the daily newspaper , which criticized that the excessive violence scenes in their “sadistic excess” were, as expected, also “arbitrary”. “In their bloodthirstiness they hide the fact that Kim Ki-duk doesn't have much to say otherwise. So it's a shame that the jury chaired by the American director Michael Mann confused the depiction of torture with aesthetic radicalism. ” Rüdiger Suchsland ( negative ) described the production as the director's“ hitherto unfamiliar arthouse variant of an exploitation film ”. He also found the explicit portrayal of violence unnecessary, the audience as "sadistic" and the film not worthy of an award. "Kim mixes elements of various Korean successful films from the competition - in a bad way, but in a way that can be consumed by Western tastes," says Suchsland.

In Germany the film was at the presentation of part of the first Hamburg Film Festival awarded Douglas Sirk price lists to Kim Ki-duk on 4 October 2012 found. The regular German theatrical release took place on November 8, 2012.

Awards

Leading actress Cho Min-soo has received several awards for her performance as Mi-sun.

With Pieta , Kim Ki-duk became the first Korean director to win the Golden Lion , the main prize of the film festival, at the Venice Film Festival. At the award ceremony, he sang the Korean folk song Arirang , which had given the title to the previous documentary about his creative crisis. Other awards included the Leoncino d'Oro Agiscuola , Premio P. Nazareno Taddei and the Mouse d'Oro , which were presented at the Film Festival .

At the presentation of the South Korean Grand Bell Awards in late October 2012, Pieta was nominated for six prizes, including best film and best director. In these categories, however, the film lost out to Choo Chang-min's historical drama Masquerade and won the award for best actress ( Cho Min-soo ) and a special jury award for Kim Ki-duk. Further awards in 2012 were an Asia Pacific Screen Award for Cho Min-soo (Grand Jury Prize) and the US Satellite Award for best foreign language film (together with the French contribution Pretty Best Friends ).

Further awards (selection):

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for Pieta . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , October 2012 (PDF; test number: 135 502 K).
  2. ↑ Profile at hancinema.net (Korean, accessed on September 11, 2012).
  3. ↑ a b c d Fainaru, Dan: Pieta at screendaily.com, September 4, 2012 (English; accessed September 11, 2012).
  4. ↑ Felperin, Leslie: Pieta . In: Daily Variety , September 5, 2012, p. 10.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Zander, Peter: A mother's heart can forgive a lot . In: Die Welt , September 10, 2012, p. 22.
  6. ↑ a b Levantesi Kezich, Alessandra: Wellington l'ultimo regalo a Raoul Ruiz . In: La Stampa , September 5, 2012, p. 31.
  7. ↑ a b c Lee, Claire: Kim starts shooting 18th film . In: The Korea Herald , February 20, 2012 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  8. ↑ Park Min-young: Kim Ki-duk's one-man production creates a stir . In: The Korea Herald , May 16, 2011 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  9. ↑ Schweizerhof, Barbara: Diary film: In the loneliness only alcohol helps at welt.de, February 2, 2012 (accessed on September 12, 2012).
  10. ^ Buss, Esther: Arirang - Confessions of a Filmmaker . In: film-dienst 2/2012 (accessed via Munzinger Online ).
  11. ^ A b Caprara, Fulvia: Kim Ki-duk: la "Pietà" salverà dal capitalismo . In: La Stampa , September 5, 2012, p. 31.
  12. ↑ Zander, Peter: One has to be the favorite . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 6, 2012, No. 244, p. 21.
  13. ↑ Lee, Claire: Kim Ki-duk returns with brutal revenge tale . In: The Korea Herald , September 6, 2012 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  14. ↑ Finecut launches sales on Kim Ki-duk's Pieta . In: Screen International , February 10, 2012 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  15. ↑ AFP : South Korean film "Pieta" wins the Golden Lion in Venice . September 9, 2012 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  16. ↑ a b Kwaak Je-yup: 'Pieta' filled with bloody revenge . In: The Korea Times , September 6, 2012 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  17. ↑ a b Manin, Giuseppina: Denaro, follia, Michelangelo: la via della redenzione; . In: Corriere della Sera , September 5, 2012, pp. 42–43.
  18. ↑ AFP : South Korean, US films tipped for Venice film prize at channelnewsasia.com, September 6, 2012 (accessed September 12, 2012).
  19. ^ In concorso: "Pietà", il film-shock della Mostra conquista il popolo festivaliero at repubblica.it, September 4, 2012 (accessed on September 12, 2012).
  20. ↑ AFP : Korean morality tale wins Venice film festival . September 8, 2012 at 7:05 PM GMT.
  21. ↑ Lee, Claire: Kim Ki-duk becomes 1st Korean director to win top film prize at Venice . In: The Korea Herald , September 9, 2012 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  22. ↑ a b Cho Chung-un: Can 'Pieta' enjoy success at home? In: The Korea Herald , September 10, 2012 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  23. ↑ Youkyung Lee ( AP ): Golden Lion winner silently struggling in South Korea . September 11, 2012, 2:56 PM GMT (accessed via LexisNexis Economy ).
  24. ↑ 'Pieta' to compete for Oscar's best foreign film award . In: Korea Times , September 13, 2012 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  25. ↑ Dath, Dietmar: Killer, children, commanders . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , September 5, 2012, No. 207, p. 31.
  26. ↑ Vahabzadeh, Susan: Barbie Attacks . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 6, 2012, p. 12.
  27. ↑ Zander, Peter: Pay with your bones . In: Die Welt , September 6, 2012, No. 209, p. 24.
  28. ↑ Nicodemus, Katja: Killer, listen to your mother . In: Die Zeit , September 13, 2012, No. 38, p. 48.
  29. ↑ Nord, Christina: Holy Bimbam, the holy seriousness is there . In: the daily newspaper , September 10, 2012, p. 15.
  30. ^ Suchsland, Rüdiger : Der Münchhausen des Kinos - Venice 2012, episode 13 at negativ-film.de, September 9, 2012 (accessed on September 12, 2012).
  31. ^ SDA - Basic Service German: Douglas Sirk Prize for director Kim Ki-duk . August 24, 2012, 10:38 AM CET (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  32. ↑ Kniebe, Tobias; Vahabzadeh, Susan: Ripe for atonement . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 10, 2012, p. 11.
  33. ↑ Premi collaterali della 69. Mostra ( Memento of the original from September 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at labiennale.org, September 8, 2012 (accessed September 11, 2012). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.labiennale.org
  34. ↑ 'Gwanghae' ™ sweeps Daejong Film Awards . In: The Korea Herald , October 31, 2011 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
  35. ↑ Awards in the Internet Movie Database (accessed October 15, 2017).