Interview: Park Chan-wook on Duality and Dissonance in Decision to Leave

Filmmaker Park Chan-wook emerged at the vanguard of the New Korean Cinema at the turn of the century, pushing the boundaries and conventions of his national cinema with works like Joint Security Area and Oldboy. These radically stylized films have featured stark portrayals of violence and sexuality, but director Park always has more on his mind than simple exploitation or entertainment. He locates how these extremities are primal outbursts expressing something raw and unprocessed about humans themselves.

The filmmaker’s latest, Decision to Leave, shifts into a different register. It’s no less playful with genre, yet Park’s insight into the human psyche comes through more intimate and familiar encounters. Those mysterious, inscrutable desires and dualities sublimate themselves not in bodily contact, but in interactions with the digital devices driving our contemporary world.

Strait-laced detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) finds himself drawn into the vagaries of a businessman and avid climber’s (Yoo Seung-mok) death through his widow Seo-rae (Tang Wei), whose mercurial demeanor arouses suspicions and sentimentality in equal measure. Solving the case requires untangling her enigmatic behavior, a process Hae-joon finds daunting because it requires understanding his own impulses to stray from his martial and professional commitments. Their strange romance plays out alongside the film’s noir-like investigation until the two plotlines become indistinguishable from one another—a twisted development well in line with Park’s filmography, even if it comes in a more classical packaging.

I spoke with director Park after he presented Decision to Leave at the New York Film Festival. Our conversation covered his approach to building themes, the origins of his aesthetic choices, and how he came to his depiction of technology in the film.

You cited David Lean’s Brief Encounter as an inspiration for the writing process. Where did that film come into to play for making Decision to Leave?

There’s not a particular point of reference that I can point to in detail. It’s just that the movie inspired me when I was younger. It’s something that made me think, “Oh, so this is a love story between adults.” I think that’s how it came into play. My co-writer [Jeong Seo-kyeong], who I’ve been working with, told me that romance is too ticklish and cheesy of a subject for us. To convince her that we can write a romantic story, I recommended this movie to her. She watched it and said, “Okay, we can do something like this.” Fans of the movie Brief Encounter might question how was this a source of inspiration because there’s nothing in common, but it did become a nice starting point for the story.

I actually watched Brief Encounter because another filmmaker at the New York Film Festival referenced it as a starting point for their movie. That was Todd Haynes with Carol, which is a bit different from your film.

[laughs] That inspiration is clear!

The romance and the investigation are inextricably linked to each other in the film. Is that at all a statement on modern love where people are leaving these digital clues but are still unknowable to us?

I guess you could also see it that way. When I was writing the screenplay, I [undertook] the journey in an attempt to find an answer to the commonality between a detective investigation and romance. It made logical sense to me that I connected the two.

The themes in the film of interpreting reality subjectively have such a fascinating visual representation in things like the dress that can be seen as blue or green and the wallpaper that might be mountains or the sea. Is that something that you were building in the script, or did you discover it in the process of working with your department heads in visualizing the film?

Definitely the latter. Such visual portrayals weren’t present in the first draft. So after I finished the first draft, I was talking with my department heads. As for the costume, I suggested the use of a kind of color to my costume designer: a dress that can be seen as green in such lighting and blue in other lighting. And after I made that suggestion, I incorporated that directly into the script. As I was saying those words to my costume designer [Kwak Jung-ae], I thought to myself, “Oh, this sounds like the line of Hae-joon.” For the costume designer, it can be seen as the first time working with them on the credits, but I’ve actually been working with them since Oldboy. At that time, they weren’t the head costume designer but the assistant costume designer, but we’ve known each other for a long time, so we could have those smooth conversations.

And this is the case for the production designer [Ryu Seong-hie] as well. In the movie, there’s that line, which is a quote from Confucius, about the mountains and the ocean. The production designer heard this, and when they were planning out the apartment of Seo-rae, she planned out the living room to have all the stereo speakers on one side. This was her husband’s living quarters, and then the kitchen would be Seo-rae’s space. Her side of the wallpaper was designed to have this picture of the ocean going on. And when I first saw that wallpaper, I realized it also kind of seems like a mountain range when you see from a plane from up above. I liked the fact that it could both be seen as a mountain and the ocean. That form of duality actually really touched me, and I really homed in in that direction so that the wallpaper can more clearly seem like a mountain range but also the waves at the same time.

The film has a very classical look but also incorporates modern technology. What was your approach to the characters’ interaction with the devices and how you built that into the visual style?

At first, it was devastating. I wrote a detailed treatment at first, and based off of that, my co-writer wrote the first draft. I noticed that there were many scenes of texting, and I didn’t like that because this movie wasn’t supposed to be about teenagers. It was supposed to be classical romance. I tried to brainstorm ways to avoid this, like talking over the phone or meeting in person, but it wasn’t easy. And after giving this much thought I realized if I can’t avoid this, I will instead actively incorporate this. So that’s how the translating app came to be. After writing the translating app into the script, I was finally satisfied. I realized that this use of technology creates a very interesting dissonance to the film. There’s that classical style and that romantic sentiment, but it’s combined with modern technology. It’s an old-fashioned, classic romance that also reflects the lives of modern people.

Was there a thematic component beyond the naturalism of the fact that these characters would be using the devices? Seo-rae really leans on the translation app at the moments where she was overcome with the most emotion and needed technology to step in and mediate the situation on her behalf.

This is actually a very important principle in my creative process when it comes to aesthetic or artistic choices. Certainly, they can sometimes start from, “I want to make this or that aesthetic choice,” but it can also start from something regarding the details or something more realistic. So, for instance, our female lead in the movie is a foreigner. You might say that this decision that I’ve made in the film represents the themes of loneliness as an individual in society or the lack of communication in modernity, but I wasn’t attempting to convey such themes like that. I made the character Chinese in order to cast Tang Wei. So of course, it started from that, but I want it to look as if it was to discuss such themes. And in order to do that, I cast such an actor. You could almost say that it works in reverse, and I always want the audience to see it that way.

The same [goes] for the example of the translating app as well. I actually thought of the translator app because I wanted to minimize scenes of texting. But, similarly, as if to convey the difficulties of communication and the role of technology, it works to convey such things. Now it works as an important device within the film further advancing the theme that I want to convey, so it is a very significant portion of the story. Seo-rae is fairly good at Korean, but anyone who speaks a foreign language can relate to this. When they want to pour out their hearts and speak quickly and accurately with no errors, that’s when she uses the translating app. And, of course, the translating app’s accuracy actually works as this fantastical device because it translates so quickly and so accurately. But please regard this is just a part of the world of the film.

It’s fascinating how you visualize technology in the film’s aesthetic, such as how you provide a POV shot from inside the phone. Part of that comes from your realization that we look at phones as if we’re looking at the person who we’re communicating with, but that also has the side effect of personifying the technology. Were you presenting that without judgment, or were you trying to make a statement about the ways in which we interact with our devices?

I haven’t really thought about it that far. It was just imagining the lover peeking inside the phone. You could say it’s kind of like this childish imagination of mine. Another similar example being the last scene when Hae-joon picks up Soe-rae’s abandoned phone from her car and plays the voice recording. On the phone screen, he actually sees a reflection of himself when he was saying those lines. It’s actually a flashback told through the phone. This actually comes from a childish imagination of mine of when you’re hearing your own recorded voice, you imagine a video of yourself saying that playing in your head.

You often caution viewers in introductions that the film isn’t necessarily over when the first case is solved. Is delivering such an illusory early conclusion to make the audience realize that the film primarily about the relationship, not so much the resolution of a murder case?

When part one is over, at that point in time, the story doesn’t stray too far from a typical noir film. The man is in love with his suspect, and did the woman commit the crime or not? The story flows from the perspective of the detective. And finding out that he has, in fact, been tricked by the woman, he lets her go. This whole chunk of the story can be described as a noir movie of its own. But in part two, as if almost told in a symmetrical fashion, we see the female character is watching the man. The female character is now making the decisions. The woman is the one recording from her Apple Watch device as well, so that’s where we see that symmetry. This is when we go beyond the noir genre and tell the actually important bit of the movie.

Translation by Jiwon Lee