Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s films are often marked as ‘novelistic’ but this misses an essential quality of their making. In his day, Eric Rohmer too was referred to as ‘novelistic’ as are Mia Hansen-Løve and Hong Sang-soo now and this description is presumably aimed at their dependence on techniques which the novel also shares. For sure, the films of Lee Chang-dong, himself a former novelist, do this also but to corner them in this way is somewhat reductive.
Lee’s films go beyond the novelistic in their use of a filmic vocabulary which belongs to cinema alone. His use of space, duration, camera movement, lighting, and how all these, alongside the classically novelistic elements of structure, dialogue and exposition, can be sculpted allows him to create movies of remarkable formal beauty and thematic vigour. In Possible Love, his first film in eight years, now available for streaming on Netflix, Lee continues this approach and by doing so has released a deeply felt, socially conscious and mysterious classic that is likely to find its way onto many a top-10 list this year.
In Possible Love, laid off by SP Heavy Industries, welder Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and his gregarious wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) – both Lee regulars – are approached by Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong, who played the rich mother in 2019’s Parasite, with which comparison will inevitably be made), a documentary filmmaker. Ye-ji wishes to make a film on labour struggles and in the depressed Ho-seok she feels she’s found her ideal subject. Employing the full performative range of this exceptionally talented cast, Lee often lulls us into a false sense of security before completely subverting our plot expectations. And as usual with a Lee film, what’s on the surface is never what it seems.
Ye-ji applies for funding though her husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) is a dynastic multi-millionaire, and like Lee’s previous film, the ambiguous masterpiece Burning (2018), South Korea’s wealth inequalities are in sharp focus.
Sang-woo sees something Ye-ji either does not or pretends not to, telling her, “You’re doing great method acting… You’re different from them people. But you yourself believe that you’re the same.” His cynical edge sits uneasily – or neatly – with the warm relationship he shares with Ho-seok and Mi-ok, taking them out to dinner, inviting them to his luxury holiday home, and teaching their son taekwondo, but seldom does it force him to reflect on his own position vis-a-vis others such as the holiday home’s oddly mute caretaker. In their world, the voices of the poor are only heard when it benefits them.
Ye-ji replies: “I’m trying to love these people. I’m a documentary filmmaker. A documentary’s strength comes from the people it depicts.” One wonders to what extent these are Lee’s own thoughts. Does the film as a whole function as a sort of documentary into the responsibilities of filmmaking, adding another layer to its edifice?
Though the film mostly retains the sensibilities of fiction, Lee’s roving camera mimics doc-style camera movement and his preoccupation with accounts of the labour struggle resembles a documentarian’s outlook. But there is one other recurring feature of Possible Love that adds to this formal disorientation. During her interviews with Ye-ji, Mi-ok lapses into nostalgia, recounting the early days of her relationship with Ho-seok, and these memories are played out for us in real time using real actors in real settings. Despite their feel however, whether these are flashbacks is suspect. Is there not something obviously documentary-like about them, as if they’re scenes of re-enactment from Ye-ji’s documentary? Of course, this is on purpose: but what is Lee telling us? Ye-ji too delves into her life story with Sang-woo but this doesn’t necessitate flashback/re-enactments. Despite what she feels about herself and her own past, Ye-ji and Sang-woo’s lives have always been stable and comfortable. On the other hand, Mi-ok and Ho-seok’s lives are always in flux as they alternately struggle and thrive in their attempt to live.
Indeed, it is the change of losing his job, his friends and lifestyle that sends Ho-seok into a spiral of decline but in a way, his steadfast silence and despondent demeanour is ambiguous. Is he in pain from the injuries inflicted on him by the police? Is it a defence mechanism against the mental wounds inflicted on him by colleagues and company? Or is he simply at a loss, clinically depressed? This is left for us to decipher yet we do know for sure that Ho-seok is a simple man, provincial in upbringing, and his former life, with its financial stability, loving family and drinking escapades with colleagues, was enough for him. All of a sudden, betrayed by all these, he is finally given the space – likely for the worse – to reflect. And what he discovers deeply disconcerts him.
The greatness of Possible Love is that it works on multiple levels; each reading has its own credibility. To get a sense of this one needs to step back to see that the way the film has been constructed allows for, even encourages, such layered understandings. This interpretative deferral, located in the film’s writing, only brings to mind other great works of art whose beauty rests upon their openness – Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Camus’ L’Etranger, Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’Amour, Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó or Lee’s very own Burning – and perhaps it is the case that after all, the word ‘novelistic’ is a good way to capture the subtly elusive and awe-inspiring films of Lee Chang-dong.
