The 12th Tokyo FILMeX opened on a typhoon day, but thankfully the torrential rain did not stop guests and filmgoers from packing the Toho Yurakuza theater for the opening ceremony. Quietly,Tokyo FILMeX has become Asia’s premiere film festivals focusing on independent movies, and a most cinephile-like given by the head of the jury, Amir Naderi, reinforces this aspiration, as he called the festival “his home” for having been here multiple times, and praised it as a “university” where people can watch “the roots of cinema” before giving personal recommendations to a few of the retrospectives at the festival, including one for Japanese auteur Shinji Somai.
(Curiously and somewhat awkwardly, for a festival that prides itself on its non-mainstream focus, 4 commercials played before the opening film. That’s right, TV commercials, which I’ve never seen done at any film festivals, however commercial their focuses are.)
The opening film that follows the Jury’s speech is Arirang, the latest work from Korean director Kim Ki Duk (famous for his provocative, but often misogynist thrillers), which already won in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this year. For a festival that prides itself on independent Asian cinema, it’s not surprising that Arirang was chosen as the opener, seeing how it was made by the director himself alone using a digital SLR. Yet at the same time, it is also puzzling that a film this pretentious and self-absorbent was chosen.
The story behind Arirang comes from Kim’s own life, who for the past three years (but that has apparently ended since this film went to Cannes) in an isolated mountain cabin, after a life-threatening accident on the set of his film Dreams, which seriously traumatized the director. So with the help of his tools, iMac, and Land Rover, Kim moved to the cabin and cut off all contact with the film industry in order to reflect on the accident and what it meant for his career. Apparently, after two and half years of a hermit-like lifestyle (he cooks rice using snow water, grills his own fish), Kim got the urge to film again. However, unable (or unwilling) to get back to the industry, he bought a camera and filmed self.
While Kim may think the accident was the lowest point of his career, Arirang begs to differ. Besides unremarkable shots of his mundane routine, which involves mostly drinking espresso and eating, the film’s mostly consisted of Kim asking himself questions, which he then answers from a different angle. Most of Kim’s questions are related to his own thoughts on his success, and he answers with obtuse philosophical meanderings that show a man with no mental clarity over his material nor his spiritual existence. Half way through the movie it has become a witless meta-film that challenges the audience to feel pity for a man who can’t stop adoring his past accomplishments (which is of course, defined by wins at major festivals). In one segment, we watch Kim, wrapped in a warm blanket, breaking out in tears as he watches a younger version of himself in a scene from Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. And this is followed by shots of stills of himself working, and pictures of his movie posters. Why? We have no idea except that Kim can’t seem to rid himself of his obsession with his achievements.
Different from a documentary, Arirang is made by a man who deliberately turns on a camera before each action. This style instills too much of a premeditated tone to the film, and thus depriving it of a naturalistic fluidity of more successful observational documentaries. Furthermore, Kim seems to have over-edited the film, and it’s replete with conventional cinematic cutaways that betray the confessional and solitary spirit of what he’s trying to get at. Kim is exposed as a man who relies too much on conventional cinematic method to make an anti-film, without understanding the irony of such endeavor.
The fact that Kim is too aware of himself being filmed and strikes a certain pose in response to the camera, makes it even harder to for us to feel the kind of sincerity he is trying to portray. Kim’s own tears glisten under the dim fluorescent light, but we can’t tell if they are genuine or created for the audience to see. Ultimately, the problem with Arirang is that in the face of greater travesties affecting the common man around the globe, Kim’s own concern with hubris seems helplessly trivial.
