Amateur Recommendation Hour: Bedevilled (2010 Korean Film)

Today’s recommendation is a magnetically mesmerizing piece of art. A society and world we live in and know well, into one we used to inhabit as a species, en masse. One some might even remember and somehow find a way to lionize. An almost two hour commitment to the slow build-up of potential mania given way to the reality of the chaos of violence contextualized against a backdrop of social class, gender divides, and broken promises made in an unrequited friendship, sibling-ship, or something even more. A burst of deep crimson blood, gleaming sweat of a Korean summer, and human insanity in a misanthropic rage.

[Content Warning: This film features depictions of graphic violence and sexual abuse]

Bedevilled, directed by Jang Chul-soo, a protege of the late Kim Ki-duk who himself was no stranger to creating works centered around the pathos of base human instinct, is a thriller with a horror slant about a business woman, Hae-won, from Seoul who’s forced to take a vacation after a stressful day leads her to slap a coworker down. Unceremoniously given a break from the stresses of the brutal Korean work schedule through being fired, she visits the rural island where she grew up to re-connect with a childhood friend, Hae-won, whose letters she has been routinely ignoring to this point. 

As tropical as said island is, with a community of tanned, hard-working people (mostly women), the sinister underbelly conveyed through a sun drenched, almost sepia look to it’s color scheme, contrasted with the whiter opulence of modern day Korean city life and office jobs. Creating a clear differential of emotional texture. The upper-crust meets not so much the modern working class, but the cast-offs of modern society. Uninterested in the embrace of the “dystopian” present day. Too loud and bustling for their tastes. They prefer the traditionalism and values of times past, to a damning fault. The fair skinned, cosmopolitan modern city and the tanned, working class, cut off from the bustle of contemporary life. Rawness and reality of previous sentiments and expectations that governed social life exaggerated by a plaintiveness and unmoving commitment to a previous structure. Back-breaking emotional labor is not only taken for granted, but preyed upon. And when the back breaks, the soul follows, the pain transmitted across generations, indiscriminately, but the heart is not all gone, just very close as its soul flickers for clarity and relief from the physical and emotional torture of broken promises. 

Shots are often framed with an intention of power dynamic being realized through upward angles and then, when necessary, downward when the perspective shifts, highlighting the imbalances through which the island life exaggerates to an extreme degree. Playing well into the constant changes of elevation the setting lends itself well to.

The relieved surface layer will last long enough though. Long enough for us to understand the exhaustion of our main characters. One allowed relax their prim and proper city life away from the hectic office buildings and busy streets of Seoul. Another putting on the facade of a smile. Crestfallen beneath the brightest of faces. A small, fleeting break for her too. But for how long? Her break isn’t quite as indefinite as her friend’s. She’s come here in the middle of her hell to relax. Does seem like there’s much fairness in that. My hell is continuing. In fact, I almost hoped you would see it and offer me a route back to something resembling humanity, or at least more extended moments of it than I have been entitled to. I thought we were friends. Or was that before or after you stopped reading and responding to my letters?

She’s doing yoga and taking rejuvenating walks on the beach while I’m being tortured and battered for the “good” of my child, so they tell me. And goodness are they not afraid to tell me. I’m not strong enough to do the kinds of work we rely on them for. My job is to be a good mother, a role model. And that doesn’t apply to them? Why aren’t they expected to be good fathers? You’re enabling them to be miserable, to rule over this island like warlords of a failing country. All to keep the “peace” you’re comfortable with, at my expense. I didn’t come here for this.

It is in how the spiral escalates, you feel the dam breaking with each injustice dealt to Kim Bok-nam. This has been happening for much longer than we have been allowed to see. This is just the breaking point. The years of being ignored, not just by the other islanders, but the one person she thought might offer her some reprieve, maybe even care enough to protect her as she would have were the roles reversed. Holding onto a cherished memory that, to Hae-won, might not even matter or even register in her memory anymore. The aftermath is just an inevitability of what has been fostered.

I believe this work to be a criticism of gender roles, specifically within Korean society, both in a modern sense, and the past to which it clings. The negative stereotypes associated with women, systematic violence carried down from generation to generation, the value of standing up, and the importance of communication. One can only be told to be a certain way, to live in a certain fashion, before they reach a breaking point of no return, bitter, crazed, fully succumbed to the best of themselves they’ve abandoned in a frenzied moment of self preservation and a self-censored rage that has festered for generations. “If it’s good enough for you it’s good enough for me, my heart’s black, your heart’s black. Rules for thee but not for me.” We can be so much more than our most animalistic origins as a species. We have come too far to hold on to survivalist nature so fervently that we must deny people the ability to live as they wish, simply because of who or what they are.

In terms of thematic strength, subject matter, and it being able to pack narrative punch. Reinforced through its story beats as well as its cast of characters through which much of these plights are explored. It realizes it’s critique through believable character growth through their actions, come to life through the subtleties that a slow-change from the status quo to a new state of being is often achieved.