Post a Comment        E-mail To A Friend        Join The List

Bong-Joon Ho's The Host

by The Bridge
05/09/2007

I'll say this about The Host right now: David T. Lindsay is not going to like this film. For those of you who don't read the Stomp&Stammer, Lindsay is their infamous resident film critic. His infamy stems mostly from his hard leaning right-wing political views, which he tends to drizzle liberally (pun apologetically intended) over his reviews. He examines every film through a stubborn political deconstructionist lens, which might be interesting if he weren't so predictable. Any film featuring a protagonist who is pro-choice, anti-war, queer, or in any other way at odds with the neo-con agenda rerceives a thumbs down, who generally dismisses said film by following this tried-and-true template: 1) Attack the supposedly wanton state of the film's moral ideology, 2) Insist that some obscure piece of shit film from the forties or so did the very same story "first and better" (as if, at this point in the history of the arts, there is some kind of story that HASN'T been told before), and finally 3) Conclude with a smug, left-wingers-are-so-looney remark about the kind of folks who will enjoy the film. And he does it all with sentences composed so awkwardly that they make my articles look well-edited in comparison.

Hmm... what was I talking about? Oh, right, The Host.

Well, Lindsay will be missing out if he acts according to my prediction (or if he has already. I don't get the Stomp&Stammer in my new town, so, for all I know, this has all happened already). I can only imagine that his enjoyment of many a good monster flick is hindered by the genre's tendency to use the monster as a metaphor for mankind's folly coming back to bitch slap us. The Host falls right in line, blaming the creation of its river-dwelling monster - a stunningly well-coordinated overgrown guppie/T. Rex amalgamation - on a US army officer neat freak and the gallons of formaldehyde he has flushed into Korea's Han river.

Six years later (we're in 2006 now), there is a charmingly disjointed family running a snack shack on the river's bank. The mildly dysfunctional group, comprised of a long-suffering patriarch, two ne'er-do-well sons, an over-acheiving archer champion daughter, and the naturally adorable, inevitably jeoporadized granddaughter, are flung headlong into a nightmare when the river monster merges to wreak havoc amongst the river bank's picnicking hoards, eating several and eventually capturing the young 'un. What follows is a deft examination of a family in crisis. As the relatives grieve, bicker, and regroup, their fractured attempts at saving the girl are poignantly echoed by the bungled efforts of government agencies to quarantine and control disaster.

What's impressive about Bong-Joon Ho's film is its agile footing as it hops from the comic to the tragic and back without missing a beat. A scene of familial grief before a shrine to the lost girl is played for laughs, as the tears lead to chaotic quarreling - somehow without seeming crass or insincere. The process of loss is given careful consideration, even as the action hops raggedly along. One scene is particularly moving: The exhausted family convenes at the snack shack for rest and dinner after a long, fruitless day's search. As they eat their dinner, the lost girl seems to appear at the table. Without comment or fanfare, they all begin to feed her their food. The scene makes an eloquent point: when you lose a loved one - before acceptance sets in - the thought of going on is unpalatable, unless you can convince yourself that you are sustaining yourself for their sake. Warm soup is eaten with the irrational hope that you can transfer the comfort and strength it brings to whomever you are missing.

Having said that, there are some weaknesses in the film. The first problem is a personal quirk of mine. I simply can't watch characters sludging through a sewer without getting all squeamish. I mean, it's literally shitty, you know? Advice to my loved ones: never get yourself into a fix that involves me saving you from raw sewage. I'll give it the old college try, but I'll be pussy-footing through the piss, and you'll probably die.

Also, and more importantly to anyone who isn't me, the plot gets murky here and there, mostly due to what I suspect is a pretty substandard translation. The subtitles are often clunky.

By and large, though, this is a film to put on your yes-please list. The young girl and her father in particular offer stirring performances. The girl's role and delivery - in fact, the entire plot - are reminiscent of the recent Pan's Labyrinth and its heroinne. The main difference is that, while Pan's Labyrinth's dream world is a rather fantastical metaphor for revolutionary Spain, Ho's story stays grounded in a more-or-less real world, where the monster is almost plausibly flesh and blood, and built of humanity's waste. The similarities between the two films are more important, though. They both serve as a reminder that not only does humankind often fail to triumph, it is often its own undoing - and, yet, within our flock there are still sparks of love and courage worth some kind of shelter.

Name
Email
URL
Body
Are you human?