Five-Legged Iguana

reVIEW (46)
SARINUI CHUEOK
(MEMORIES OF MURDER)

Before Korean director Bong Joon-ho made a decidedly bigger splash with his creature feature Gwoemul (The Host), he had already made a significant impression on the global cinema stage with his 2003 serial killer procedural, Sarinui Chueok (Memories of Murder).

Set in 1986 and based on a real-life unsolved case, Sarinui Chueok chronicles the predations of a serial rapist and killer in the Korean countryside, and the unfolding investigation as local detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho, seemingly ubiquitous in the best of Korean cinema, whom Bong would again collaborate with on Gwoemul) is made to work with city boy Inspector Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung), who’s just arrived from Seoul to help crack the case.
Despite a premise that sounds like a very run-of-the-mill serial killer thriller, what makes Sarinui Chueok stand out as a shining exemplar of the genre though is the manner in which Bong grounds the narrative in the time and place of its setting.

This is 1986, in the Korean boondocks, where crime scenes are routinely disrupted and compromised by unruly children, curious gawkers, the press, and runaway tractors; a pre-Internet Korea, without even the technology and equipment for a standard DNA check. It’s Grissom’s worst nightmare…
This low-tech procedural aspect, Bong’s film shares with David Fincher’s Zodiac, another brilliant serial killer thriller of recent vintage. But what makes Sarinui Chueok even more fascinating is how the narrative is truly of Korea, how the plot and script can’t simply be transplanted to, say, an American setting for an English-language remake.
This is Korea, where civil rights advocates will frankly be horrified at the manner in which suspects are treated and confessions extracted, making this the worst nightmare of any of the dozen or so Law and Order casts as well…

It’s this very particular national identity though that serves to make Sarinui Chueok Exhibit A in the case that you can always approach what seems to be a dead horse of a genre with new and vital eyes (something Fincher also managed to do with Zodiac and Showtime is doing with Dexter).
It’s also Exhibit A in the case of never making the mistake of aping the wrong conventions of a foreign film when you’re clearly not making one. (Think Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, which tried so hard to be an Asian art film, when it clearly wasn’t.)
In this latter case, Sarinui Chueok also shares its commendable distinction with Exhibit B, Sebastian Cordero‘s Cronicas (Chronicles). Produced by Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron, Cronicas is likewise based on a real-life serial killer case, this time, in Ecuador. Though I do admit to finding Sarinui Chueok a far more absorbing film, Cronicas is nonetheless a very non-Hollywood approach to the genre that is very grounded in its Ecuadoran setting.

What also makes Sarinui Chueok such a memorable and distinctive entry in the annals of serial killer thrillers is its sense of humour; this is going to sound strange, but Sarinui Chueok is the funniest serial killer thriller I’ve ever seen.
Again, Bong takes that very particular Korean setting and sensibility, and finds strains of amusement in the proceedings, without overstepping the boundaries of good taste. Though there are chuckles and guffaws to be found here (mainly in the manner in which the investigation is conducted and the rural circumstances that surround it), we never truly forget that this is a gruesome case, whose details and deviant minutiae were alien, not just to the provincial townsfolk who were intimate with its disturbing leavings, but to the country as a whole.

And if you’re not totally convinced, then consider that Sarinui Chueok was the most watched film in South Korea in 2003, and is currently the fourth most viewed film in South Korea of all time. It also won Korea’s Grand Bell Awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Leading Actor (Song).
So if you’re looking for something different on the serial killer thriller front, or discovered Bong Joon-ho through Gwoemul, you should really check out Sarinui Chueok.
It’s effective, lyrical, and yes, funny, and that’s not something you can say about most serial killer thrillers.

Parting shot: Though the narrative is elegantly compressed in this film, the real-life case also mirrors the actual Zodiac case in that this was a terribly protracted investigation which was ultimately left unsolved: ten similar murders occurred between October 1986 and April 1991, and over 3,000 suspects were interrogated over its course.

Parting shot 2: Reviews of Bong’s Gwoemul and Fincher’s Zodiac can be found lurking in the Archive, where episodic recaps/reactions to Dexter also reside.

(Sarinui Chueok OS courtesy of soju22.net; images courtesy of seoulselection.com; Memories of Murder DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.)