At Home in the World
A crafty voyeur breaks, enters and does people's laundry in offbeat Korean film
3-Iron
Opening soon at Green Hills 16
The element of voyeurism inherent to all cinema probably explains why I'm a movie buff. I'm the kind of guy who listens to other people's conversations in restaurants and peeks into my friends' medicine cabinets. As a teenager, I'd sometimes round up my buddies and sneak into the backyards of families we knew were out of town, to swim in their pools; and once while riding the elevators of a downtown hotel at night, we found a floor under renovation and spent a blissful, uninterrupted hour squatting in an unlocked luxury suite. What can I say? I like my life just fine, but I still can't help peeking over the fence, to see if the people next door are living any better.
Kim Ki-duk's lyrical Korean dramedy 3-Iron is about a guy like me, only with more guts. Jae Hee plays a bent young man who drives around on a big motorcycle, posting noodle shop flyers on doorknobs. If a flyer stays up overnight, Jae knows the residents are out of town, so he breaks into their home and hangs out. He takes a shower, cooks some dinner, watches some TV and then crawls into bed. Before he leaves, he waters the plants and does some of his host's laundry and fixes anything that needs fixing. If Jae gets caught, he doesn't try to make up a story; he just deals with the consequences and either takes a beating or delivers one, depending on the circumstances. One day he finds a partner, a model (played by Lee Seung-yeon) whom he saves from an abusive boyfriend. She rides away with him on the back of the motorcycle and silently joins his ritualized B&E.
Some might find 3-Iron a little cutesy, and certainly the lead characters don't behave the way actual people behave (outside of certain American independent films). But that's not really the point. Like Kim's Spring Summer Fall Winter...and Spring, 3-Iron has a lesson to teach, and lessons aren't always subtle. On one level, the film is a spiritual fable: about entering a space, taking a little and leaving a little. It's about how civilization drapes unevenly over the natural hills and valleys of the true world.
On another level, the entire movie is a sublime act of voyeurism. Kim lovingly shoots these strangers' homes as shrines to domesticity, and he uses shadows and reflections in the manner of Brian DePalma or Robert Altman, turning people into walking ghosts. Kim likes stories that twist and turn back on themselves, and he can't resist peppering 3-Iron's gentle scenario with random violence and ironic repercussions. But mostly, the movie is a series of striking, melancholy images of people striving and aching and ultimately finding a way to make themselves at home in places they don't belong.
—Noel Murray
