The Novelist’s Film by Hong Sang-Soo
Hong Sang-Soo’s latest film, The Novelist’s Film, begins with a woman, the writer Junhee, visiting her friend's new bookstore, a place where Se-Won has hidden from the intellectual life of Seoul. They talk for a long time, indirectly at first, uncomfortably at moments, but never with real substance or occult intentions. It is the transparent chatter of everyday life embraced from a distance by the quietest image. They are against the store’s wall, in an apparently conventional middle shot, framed with a feeling of disregard, almost of neglect. The camera stands at the standard human height, as if intent on making us feel present, but being at the other side of the screen, we are also protected from the intimate emotions and psychological reactions of their company. After some time, our vision adjusts. It began, for me, when Junhee asked the fairly awkward question: “Why haven’t you called me?” and an eternal silence ensued. But it was a timed eternity, orchestrated for us to notice her lowering eyes, her fumbling fingers, her reaching for words adequate for the situation. She is an actress, confused by the open-ended spontaneity, perhaps also moved by the sentimentality of the illusion. From my distant view, I realize the unnatural traces of her self-control, her innumerable gestures and unconscious movements. Unaccustomed to them, I sharpen my eyes, gather them all, and project them back into the characters. Junhee seems to me blasé and elegant, one who has enjoyed the freedom of talent and creative conviction. Se-Won is reserved and motherly, a gentle nature resigned to her exile from the artistic battlefield. But are these the characters or the actresses?
Kim Minhee in The Novelist’s Film. Courtesy of Cinema Guild.
Part of the great charm of the movie is the unsolvable aspect of this question. They are neither. A young girl, Young-Joo, walks into the previous scene to offer coffee – she would later praise Junhee’s work with the most sincere, nervous expressions of respect and veneration. Hong Sang-Soo, it seems to me, has not started here from an idea, but in the tradition of Carl Dreyer, he rummaged through the streets of Korea for his bon mot. He has captured a character from reality and brought her fully to life through the mediation of his vision. Young-Joo, we are convinced, is the unusually naive maiden beholden to the superior spirit and experience of her elders. She is the conceptual kernel of an argument in as much as reality itself furnishes us daily with types, whom we experience not merely as individuals but as concrete abstractions. The old drunken poet, the beautiful actress, the simple wife, the ambitious but petty industry film director: they are all part of the dramatis personae of our society, players in the real phantasmagoria of encounters and accidents we now observe projected like a dream.
Lee Hyeyoung and Kwon Haehyo in The Novelist’s Film. Courtesy of Cinema Guild.
We are always acutely aware that the characters on the screen are not in any way “real.” We maintain the feeling of their unnatural role, even as we wander through the movie with an intense sensation of their attitudes and temperament. After seeing her friend, Junhee visits a tower, where she meets the director and his wife, who have previously broken a promise to adapt one of her books under a producer’s pressure. Their uneasy meeting ends with them visiting the park where they encounter the actress Kil-Soo, who, like Junhee, is ambivalent about her work. They discuss her position: the director suggesting her decision to not act as a waste of her talents, while Junhee taking a strong stance for her freedom to step away. Her dissertation lasts for minutes – hours, it feels, in contrast to the conventionally fast variations of commercial films – mediated by the observant, mechanical eye of the camera. Like in the films of D. W. Griffith or Straub-Huillet, each shot lasts a whole sequence, without montage and often unmoving, a slight panning only used to keep the actors within the field of vision. They rarely move, except to enter and exit the scene, and here and there, the camera zooms in and out, pans and tilts without direction, as if caressing the actresses and the scene. It is all presented like one of Nietzche’s Apollonian dreams: a shallow frieze of prosaic forms wherein we perceive ourselves and our imagination as separate, detached free-playing forces, encountered from a distance with the glorious wisdom of an invigorated mind.
Kim Minhee, Lee Hyeyoung, and Ha Seongguk in The Novelist’s Film. Courtesy of Cinema Guild.
The idea of this detachment is to be able to deal with the tragic situation of art without burning in the fires of desperation or melancholia. The betrayal of artists by society, their commitment to achieve through their efforts historical feats of the imagination and the myriad ways in which these are undermined, represents the real content of the film. The ambitious director who cares solely for his career, the poet who instead of writing has opened a bookstore, are the pictures of failure. Junhee and Kil-Soo confront this reality by working, giving shape to a new idea of which they cannot predict the results. Their journey is outlined by the sights of innocence, metaphors of those oblivious to foreign concerns and limitations. After the director leaves, and upon the arrival of Kil-Soo’s cousin, Junhee proposes to them to make the Novelist’s Film together. And in preparation, they drink the clearest wine to the gods of poetry.
Kim Minhee, Park Miso, Seo Younghwa, Ki Joobong, and Lee Hyeyoung in The Novelist’s Film. Courtesy of Cinema Guild.
We see an excerpt of the film, and it is the immortal beauty of light renewed at the end of a doomed forest. After the longest night, the magic of colors shift and interblend through leagues of light, and a sense of inexpressible reverence fills the mind of the observer. With the camera at hand, we walk like a careless poet learning to see the brilliant colors of flowers and the slender grace of the woman we love. Over her celestial vision falls the lilac tints of the sky, the ghostly greens sung by morning; there emerges a sense of divinity, a loveliness that is sacred and eternal. As through high gates of green, the eye looks up the vast turn into a cerulean world, and it is through these rich portals that one may sail into the regions of immediacy, those subterranean rivers, those marvelous volcanic springs haunted by dim traditions of overwhelming delight.
It is difficult to define the overall effect of Hong Sang-Soo’s film in retrospect. Its vision is as calm and intellectual as it is delightful. Rarely there comes a break in the solid streams of boredom, the boundless uniformity of modern films. These shadowy finitudes might often inspire speculation, but they rarely inspire thought. Much rarer still do they stir one’s tired mind, like this movie, with the specter of our vanished days, the strong conviction of a creative life, and the necessity of redemption.
Kim Minhee and Lee Hyeyoung in The Novelist’s Film. Courtesy of Cinema Guild.
