Bildungsroman Blitz: April 2021
The April media log is about international cinema and their takes on the tragic romance and true crime genres. Plus, a thesis on storytelling and a brand new podcast.
I cannot wait to go back to movie theaters, y’all. I was on the phone with my mother the other day, and I told her that going to the movies was the thing I missed the most since the pandemic began. For me, this is because it is one of the only activities that I enjoy equally by myself or with others. From a solo movie outing where you get to cry by yourself (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, yes, really) to a trip with friends where you run into another group of friends (Knives Out), going to the movies is a fantastic experience.
In the meantime, there is always streaming. And if you don’t live somewhere with a movie theater that brings in a lot of international cinema, streaming services are a great way to watch movies you might not otherwise get to see. I would like to shout out Kanopy in particular, which you can sign up for with a public library card! The two films I am going to talk about are currently available on the much less accessible Hulu and Amazon Prime (sadly), but seriously, check out Kanopy.
Cold War (film, 2018)
Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and co-written by Pawlikowski, Janusz Głowacki, and Piotr Borkowski, Cold War is an historical drama set primarily in Poland and France against the backdrop of—what else—the Cold War from the 1940s to the 1960s. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2018 and was later nominated for three Academy Awards. I had first heard of this movie in comparison to another big Oscar contender that year: A Star Is Born. Both concern a doomed romance between two musicians, but I would like my readers to put that comparison out of their mind, since I think it does a disservice to both.
How can something be romantic without romanticizing a situation? That might seem like a contradictory question, but I am using the following definitions:
ro·man·tic: conducive to or characterized by the expression of love.
ro·man·ti·cize: deal with or describe in an idealized or unrealistic fashion; make (something) seem better or more appealing than it really is.
Cold War is romantic in the looks the lovers Wiktor and Zula share, the songs they create together, and the sacrifices they make to keep each other alive. Cold War does not romanticize Wiktor and Zula’s relationship, which involves deceit, jealousy, insults, infidelity, and moments of physical violence. The film’s aesthetics and structure really help in this regard. It is shot in black and white, which makes images of bombed-out post-war cities and lonely night clubs all the more bleak. And with only an 89-minute runtime, the script travels across decades through ellipses, dropping us into large and small moments in Wiktor and Zula’s lives without spelling out what’s happened in the intervening years. It shows us the strength of their commitment as well as how flawed they are as people—the opposite of an idealized portrayal.
On a more flippant note, despite being a filthy heterosexual myself, I generally have a requirement that fictional heterosexual romances be set against a high-stakes backdrop to make it remotely interesting. This passes that test!
Link Roundup
“Cold War: You’re My Only Home”, Stephanie Zacharek writing for the Criterion Collection
“The gorgeous throwback romance Cold War finds love and strife on both sides of the Iron Curtain”, A.A. Dowd writing for The A.V. Club
“Cold War, a decades-spanning romance, will break your heart”, Alissa Wilkinson writing for Vox
Memories of Murder (film, 2003)
Bong Joon-ho—everyone’s favorite South Korean director who famously made his two Oscars kiss—deservedly received a lot of attention for Parasite. But Bong had been making incredible, original films for 20 years by that point. When I heard Memories of Murder described as one of his masterpieces and compared to David Fincher’s Zodiac, I knew I wanted to check it out.
Like many women who are terminally online and always have multiple Wikipedia tabs open, I’m a bit of a true crime “fan”. A&E docuseries? Lifetime original movies? Laura Lippman novels? You name it, I’m there. While my fixation on these stories (and frankly, the style of the storytelling) is worthy of being unpacked in its own newsletter, for now I mention it merely to say that while I was primed to be hooked by this movie, I was not prepared for what a staggering achievement it is, just as a film and a story itself.
The film is loosely based on the real Hwaseong serial murders, which were carried out between 1986 and 1991. The local law enforcement—detectives Park and Cho—are not prepared for this sort of investigation, preferring to find easy scapegoats, and beating confessions out of them. You might think you know where this is going when a detective from the big city Seoul, Seo, shows up to assist with the case. In the story you might think this is, Seo’s more sophisticated, cosmopolitan approach would be no match for the even more sophisticated and intelligent killer. But the killer isn’t Seo, Park and Cho’s biggest obstacle—the state is.
When the detectives request more police backup on a night they believe the killer is about to strike, their request is denied because the police have more important things to tend to—namely, cracking down on student protests against the authoritarian government. The police chief starts to reprimand Park and Cho for their brutal interrogation methods, but not because he fundamentally disagrees with them. Rather, it’s because the police force can’t risk the bad publicity during a time of political unrest. There’s a lot more specific social commentary that I missed on an initial viewing. I recommend reading the links I provide in the roundup for more on that.
SPOILERS INCOMING. Scroll if you want to skip.
Bringing it back to Fincher’s Zodiac, what elevates Memories of Murder over that film—one of my favorite movies, I want to emphasize—is the way it lets the story live in uncertainty. While Zodiac doesn’t technically commit to ID-ing the Zodiac killer, it falls heavily on the side of Arthur Leigh Allen being the Zodiac. At one point during the movie, the character Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) says that if he could look the killer in the eye, he would know it was him. At the end, we see Robert visit a hardware store where Arthur Leigh Allen is now working. As they make eye contact and Robert’s face hardens, we the audience understand this as a fulfillment of his earlier declaration.
In Memories of Murder, the character Park (played by Song Kang-ho) says something similar; that he can look anyone in the eye and know if they are guilty. While we the audience have already watched Park “see” guilt in the eyes of obviously innocent subjects, there’s still a part of us that roots for catharsis, that hopes he will be able to identify the real killer in the end. In the film’s climax, when the available evidence appears to clear the team’s most likely suspect, Park looks the suspect in the eyes and says:
“Fuck, I don't know.”
Link Roundup
Let’s Get Meta: Why Does Storytelling Matter?
In the description for this newsletter, I describe myself as a storytelling enthusiast. But like, what does that actually mean? “You like stories? Big deal, I also watch a lot of movies/read a lot of books/play a lot of video games. Why make that your whole personality?”
Wow. The voice I just made up in my head didn’t need to attack me like that. But I’ll be brave and respond. I don’t just like stories. I think experiencing and understanding stories is a study of how to better the human experience. And I recently found a YouTube video whose thesis statement mirrors my own.
The video has an obvious clickbait title, but that’s for the algorithm. I highly recommend watching the full video instead of relying on my second-hand description, but if you’re in a hurry here’s the TL;DR. What people get “wrong” about 3-Act structure is approaching it as a tool devoid of context. Story structure wasn’t created in a lab by graduate film programs, it was found organically throughout history. As the video says, “Stories literally are what we believe about the world.” People tell stories to make a case for how to live life, whether they’re conscious of it or not. And people who hear stories are affected by the story’s worldview, whether they’re conscious of it or not.
And so, what better way to end this issue of the newsletter than by recommending a podcast that whole-heartedly embraces the nature of story-as-lesson?
Green Eggs...and Man? (podcast, 2021)
When you think Dr. Seuss, do you think: philosophical debates, psychological roleplay, and the very nature of Good and Evil? That’s exactly what you get from Green Eggs…and Man?
I almost don’t want to give anything else away, because the joy of this podcast so far is going on the journey with Weston Scott and Adam Niemann as they go through Green Eggs and Ham page by page, considering the lessons this book might impart to Adam’s unborn child. There are two episodes out as of this writing, and we are up to page 3. The protagonist has been given a name! The dominant species of this world has been identified as Dog! And plausible reasons for the eggs being green have been considered! I can’t wait to find out what we learn next.