Park Chan-wook
Park Chan-wook
Park Chan-wookis a South Korean film director, screenwriter, producer, and former film critic. One of the most acclaimed and popular filmmakers in his native country, Park is most known for his films Joint Security Area, Thirst and what has become known as The Vengeance Trilogy, consisting of 2002's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, 2003's Oldboy and 2005's Lady Vengeance. His films are noted for their immaculate framing, black humor and often brutal subject matter...
NationalitySouth Korean
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth23 August 1963
The reason I want to show shocking things is that they always pose an ethical question.
When you first hear Mozart's music, your first impression is that it's very alive, but if you peel away the layers, you can hear sorrow and sadness behind it, and that's what I try to be: multi-layered.
Lots of people think the violence in the films I make is overwhelming, but they think they're seeing something that they aren't seeing.
It is not possible for a person to be completely free of sin and be squeaky clean.
You could say that evil is contagious in that we have this mesmerizing mentor in Uncle Charlie who comes into your life. Every person has a seed of evil inside them, and when you come across such a mesmerizing mentor, he is able to successfully turn it into a flower of evil.
When I was growing up, we were taught in school that North Koreans, and especially the North Korean leadership, were all devils.
In Korea is what I do is I watch the playback of each take with all of the actors and spend a lot of time discussing each take. Also, I use the process we call auto-assembly because I storyboard my entire film right at the beginning, even before pre-production ever begins, so my vision is already laid out on the storyboard for everybody to share. It enables the on-set assembly person, as we call them, to cut together each take into a sequence. This enables a director to review the take within the context of the sequence of the scene.
If you would ask me what my ideal process is, I would say, long pre-production, long production and long post-production.
Living without hate for people is almost impossible. There is nothing wrong with fantasizing about revenge. You can have that feeling. You just shouldn't act in it.
Ever since I arrived in America to promote "Stoker," I haven't had time to go and see it in a theater. The fact that I had to shoot twice as fast as I'm used to in Korea was the most challenging thing about my Hollywood experience.
I have always meticulously storyboarded my films from beginning to end.
I love Philip Glass' work, not only as a film composer but also as a musician. The film score work that he does always amazes and shocks me.
I'd like to do a really masculine film.
I'm not the kind of director who aims to send a message out.