The movies Bong Joon-ho calls “milestones in 1990s cinema”
As far as Korean filmmakers go, at least in a contemporary sense, they don’t get much bigger than the legendary Bong Joon-ho. Having made some of the greatest Korean movies in modern cinema, Bong has established himself as an auteur of his native country alongside the likes of Park Chan-wook and Kim Jee-woon.
While 2019’s Parasite might have taken the limelight when it comes to Bong’s best works, having won the director three Academy Awards, his efforts spread much further to the likes of his crime tragicomedy masterpiece Memories of Murder, as well as The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja.
It was the very first year of the 20th century that Bong’s directorial feature debut, Barking Dogs Never Bite, arrived, although the previous decade saw him graduate from the Korean Academy of Film Arts and work as a cinematographer and lighting technician before finally getting to make his own movie.
Being wrapped in the world of 1990s cinema, Bong was well-placed to consider what the greatest movies of the era were, and in an interview with Korean Film, he once spoke of two films that certainly left a big impression on the decade: Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs and David Fincher’s Se7en.
The interviewer pointed out the fact that Kiyoshi Kurosawa had been inspired by Fincher’s Se7enwhen it came time to make his excellent Cure movie and followed up by wondering whether Bong had been equally influenced by Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs when making Memories of Murder, seeing as both films concern an elusive serial killer.
Bong responded, “Both American movies you mentioned have become milestones in nineties cinema. They continue to exert a transversal influence worldwide on the new generation of filmmakers.” Indeed, both The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en marked a new air of darkness that entered the world of crime cinema in the 1990s.
Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs arrived in 1991 and was adapted from Thomas Harris’ 1989 novel of the same name. Jodie Foster stars as Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee tasked with finding a serial killer by the name of Buffalo Bill, who consults an imprisoned killer, Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins.
Fincher’s Se7en arrived four years later and stars the likes of Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow. It tells of an almost retired detective and his new young partner who tries to catch a serial killer in an unnamed, crime-ridden city who seems to be committing his crimes based on the seven deadly sins.
While such films were indeed milestones of the 1990s, Bong resisted admitted that he had been inspired by either Se7en orThe Silence of the Lambs when it came time to make Memories of Murder, explaining, “Nevertheless, I don’t consider them to have had a great influence on Salinui Cheok, which is based on a true story that really occurred in Gyeonggi Province between 1986 and 1991.”
Indeed, the true inspiration for Bong’s masterpiece came from shocking events that caused ripples in Korean society for many years. If the likes of Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs are considered classics of the 1990s, then Bong’s Memories of Murder is easily a milestone of the 2000s and a further landmark achievement in modern Korean cinema, too.
