|
|
楼主 |
发表于 2004-10-5 16:41
|
显示全部楼层
Reviews
Paul Malcolm, LA WEEKLY, Excerpt from Seoul Harvest,November 2002
"His [ Im Kwon-taek's] latest, Chihwaseon (2002), won the Best Director prize at Cannes and stands as his most fiercely personal film to date. But it was back in the 1970s that Im, who will appear in person to present the film, turned away from a thriving commercial career to craft more serious explorations of Korean identity. In Chihwaseon, a painter, drunk and turn-of-the-century cultural hero, Jang Seung-up (Choi Min-sik), repeatedly rejects -- in the interest of pursuing his real art -- lucrative offers to illustrate erotic books. While on one level this breathtaking period film unfolds as a conventional story of self-destructive genius, it comes with a vision of an artist at the height of his reflective powers and an exploration of how an artist's personal obsessions can feed the self-image of an entire nation."
Richard Corliss, TIME MAGAZINE, Excerpt from Cannes Kiss Off,June 2002
"And Im is the Korean grandmaster. He's been directing for 40 years; nearly 100 features. Chihwaseon, his portrait of 19th century painter Jang Seung-Up (known as Ohwon) is both a biography of an inspired, difficult man and as close as Im is apt to come to autobiography. Like a film director, painters work in public: the brilliant peasant Ohwon is ever surrounded by members of the artist class who, in their cool high hats with wide brims, look like hip Hasidim. He applies his drips and daubs like a performance artist (or like Jackson Pollock, another alcoholic who mistreated his women). Im lays out this complex mindscape with the precision of one who knows the artist's wary relation to his audience. As if referring to his own segue from popular movies to art films, he has Ohwon say: "People read in my paintings only what they expect. I must get away from that. If I don't, I'm their prisoner." Just now, Asian films are prisoners of Westerners' expectations. But with artists like Im, films from the East will never lack artistryÑor a worldwide audience."
A.O. Scott, THE NEW YORK TIMES, September 2002
Living the Artistic Life in 19th-Century Korea
Chihwaseon, the new film by Im Kwon-Taek, the prolific grand old man of South Korean cinema, is one eminent artist's biography of another. The subject of the film is Jang Seung-Ub, a 19th-century painter known by the pseudonym Ohwon who lived, in Mr. Im's rendition, like a vagabond rock star. Jang, born a commoner and discovered as a boy by a sympathetic aristocrat, dazzled and scandalized his country's politically fragmented ruling class and spent his long career in and out of favor, and in and out of trouble.
For viewers (like this one) not versed in Korean history, the movie's broader narrative currents may be hard to follow. Occasional printed titles referring to events like the anti-Catholic persecution of 1866 and the peasant revolt of 1894 are somewhat helpful, but the shifting allegiances in which Ohwon and his patrons are embroiled remain confusing. As, perhaps, they were to the artist himself. He is meant to be the kind of national hero not readily assimilated to any political program.
His work, undertaken at a time when the country was struggling to retain its identity in the shadow of its more powerful, imperially minded neighbors, Japan and China, is understood as an expression of the strength and uniqueness of Korean culture. During his apprenticeship, Ohwon dutifully studies Chinese models, but the source of his vivid and intricate compositions is the unique beauty of his native land.
The depiction of the artistic temperament will seem familiar to anyone who has seen "The Agony and the Ecstasy," "Lust for Life," or "Pollock." The stout, goateed Choi Min-Sik, who plays Ohwon, bears a passing resemblance to Julian Schnabel, the filmmaker and former bad boy of the New York art world (who designed the poster for this year's New York Film Festival, where "Chihwaseon" will be shown tonight and Monday), and the character incarnates myths about the wildness of creative genius.
"How can I paint without an erection?" Ohwon bellows during his residence (indistinguishable from captivity) at the royal court. "If you want to paint, first learn how to drink!" he tells an admiring portraitist who wants to know his secrets. Accordingly, Ohwon's moods vacillate between roistering good spirits, sad-eyed lechery and furious melancholy. And always, he paints Ñ alone and in front of a gathering of notables in tall, wide-brimmed black hats, before and after sex, indoors and out, drunk and sober.
Mr. Im's meandering, episodic tale keeps its subject at a distance, observing even his wildest moments with decorous detachment. But if the director can be a plodding storyteller, he is also a visual artist as inspired, at times, as Ohwon himself. He lingers over the painter's delicate, vibrant compositions, providing a lesson in aesthetics underscored (and sometimes undermined) by the comments of various patrons, rivals and clients. In 19th-century Korea, it seems, everyone was a critic.
Mr. Im's own aesthetic command is evident in the movie's wealth of beautiful, perfectly framed images of nature - shots so full of passion and perception that they could almost be paintings themselves.
from: http://www.kino.com/chihwaseon/chihw_rev.html |
|
发表于 2004-10-5 15:53
