Rian Johnson sits down with Korean film director Bong Joon Ho to discuss the full span of his career.
There were two moments from his childhood that really seemed to stick with him and make sense as an origin story for his career in film. Bong was born in the countryside, in a lush, green town on the side of a mountain. When Bong was young, around 7, his father got a job in the city and he found himself uprooted into a concrete jungle. He said everything about the shift of environments was shocking to his system. He found the landscape harsher and colder. He found the people more serious and intense. He didn’t understand at the time why his family had to leave his birthplace and he wrestled to make sense of it in his own mind.
He also talks about how he watched Psycho around the same time, at age nine, and how it was his earliest memory of a film really sticking with him. He couldn’t believe someone could make something like that. He was fascinated by how the story unfolded, all leading up to the shocking twist at the end.
Flash forward to Bong’s filmography and you see these early imprinted themes strung throughout his work. He deals with themes of urban darkness contrasting against the beauty of nature. In his films you can feel that longing to return to the lush greenery of his childhood. Cities are often portrayed as cold and clinical places, full of calculating and equally cold characters.
Bong also speaks about the maturity of the Korean film industry. And how when he started out, there really was no industry and he would need to wear all sorts of hats to get his films going. Now, very quickly, there is an organized and unionized film system in place. He says as more opportunities have come, the Korean film scene has leveled up. He thinks that soon it will be on par with the craft and services you can find in Hollywood. In that sense, his films are much easier to make these days, because there is that shared understanding and experience in film.
He also speaks about the pleasure of being a writer director. He loves to plan out and craft his scripts. He’s working on a followup to Parasite at the moment, as well as another project. Like many creators, he has found the lockdown time to be a fruitful one and he has made good strides to set up his next projects. He also talks about his routine as a writer, and how he needs to work in cafes. He found the words hard to come by in the early days of the lockdown when everything was closed. Now that his favorite cafes are back, he is writing two films simultaneously. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to find out what those projects are all about.