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Tell Me Something - The Extinction Between You and Me or Him and Her
Tell Me Something - The Extinction Between You and Me or Him and Her
review by Jerry Shin
February 05, 2000
40 minutes of the running time, which was about 2 hours and 40 minutes total, is decisively edited by the director, Jang Yun-Hyeon, himself. Even though he said that this was done because the original length was too long, and the story too slow to develop, this resolute, and very commercial, choice results in the conclusive extinction between the film and the audience.
However, there is no definite evidence that the missing 40 minutes would have provided any clues about what happened to the characters. Tell Me Something is still written in an almost incommunicable language, and is filled with complicated enigmas which are unable to be solved. However, what is truly embarrassing is that there are actually lots of solutions for the various enigmas. The problem is that some solutions depend on very sophisticated psychoanalysis theories. Perhaps the average person who is going to see a movie isn't all that interested in having to be well-versed in deep psychoanalytical theories.
Anyway, all of these things add up to tell us that Tell Me Something is a very controversial film. So much so, that there cannot be any perfect solutions or explanations about Tell Me Something. Because of that, after everybody watches this film, everybody wants to rearrange this puzzle in their own alleged right way. So, what ends up being more interesting is not why she kills them, but why the director Jang Yun-Hyeon puts all of this stuff in a mass in the first place. The reason why his veiled intention is interesting, is that at least he succeeds in arousing wild controversial disputes among people.
The director, Jang Yun-Hyeon said that the extinction and the incommunicable nature between people, is the theme he has pursued in an interview with 'CINE21.' His last work, Contact, is about people who are searching for possibilities of communication between them. On the other hand, Tell Me Something is about the extinction and the results which are caused by them being isolated.
For this the director uses a specific Hollywood genre, the thriller. He puts a dark and gray tone like the noir genre. His characters are strolling around on the gray film screen. At least, Jang Yun-Hyeon knows how to use and quote the rules of Hollywood genres. The severest extinction happens in the scene where the detective, Jo, recognizes everything about Chae Su-Yeon. He looks very intelligent and sarcastic at the same time, but shows his trust, and a male's instinct, to protect a weak female like Chae Soo-Yeon. His blindness, shared by the audience, restricts his suspicion to her continuously. A killer, a pale and weak lady, a detective, this structure makes it impossible to expect that a kind of affection between the protector and the sacrifice can exist. What's expected is frustrating and arouses the extinction between spectators and the film. Furthermore, Tell me something does not give his full text to onlookers. So, they feel the alienation from this film.
Audience's behavior trying to fill-in these blanks in the story is originated from a desire to connect the extinction which is caused by Tell Me Something. Jang Yun-Hyeon is a director who likes to excessively emphasize images. Like he has already shown in his last work, he expresses and emphasizes his character's inner space by visual images. Logical development is not the most important thing to him because he wants to express the character's psychological atmosphere basically, for example, the sorrow, the desire, the isolation, the alienation, the affection etc. To him, the cut 40 minutes, which may be the core to explaining the film, would be useless to express his personal intention.
After the serial murders begin, the memory Chae Su-Yeon has becomes the key to arrest the murderer. The past memories consist of one's present. However, all of the murdered corpses are partially amputated, and each missing part of the various corpses is expected to make one complete body, as the investigation proceeds. So, what the detective Jo must do is combine Chae Su-Yeon's lost memories which are repressed at the bottom of her unconsciousness. When her memories are completed, the murderer will be arrested. However, as fragments of her memories are combined, the case ironically gets vague. In the end, the body is not completed and her memories cannot be finished.
The amount of truth people have is like many cards which have different words and clues on the back. People show their cards to somebody to communicate with them because they're lonely and don't want to be alienated. But, even though he or she gives cards, they still have other cards, the other side of the truth. Actually, Chae Su-Yeon did not tell any lies to Jo the detective. She just told him something and did not tell him certain facts. Nobody can grasp every card that other people have.
In this complicated colony, modern Korea, moderns possess various identities and belong to unknown societies. Even though we believe we belong to each other and know everybody well,
everybody has his/her own cards that nobody can glance at. These concealed cards arouse unconscious extinction between us.
The director, Jang Yun-Hyeon may tell us something confused but whatever the enigmas are, he does not give his every card to us like Chae Su-Yeon, the sorrow and crucial princess. |
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发表于 2004-10-4 03:51
