Tale of Cinema (Hong Sang-soo, 2005)

 

Entirely by coincidence, I watched Hong Sang-soo’s Tale of Cinema the day after the “Joan is Afraid” episode of Black Mirror, a juxtaposition which made Hong’s film seem, if not prophetic, then at least beautifully attuned to art/life paradoxes which take on a new edge in an era of CGI, AI, quantum computers, 24-hour connectivity, and whatever else you want to blame. Of course, Hong’s film contains nothing which obviously constitutes “special effects” (the English title at least evokes Eric Rohmer, which doesn’t seem too out of place tonally speaking), but halfway through it provides a purely cinematic thrill, when one realizes that everything we’ve watched up to that point represents a film that has just been viewed by Dongsoo, the protagonist of the film’s second half, and which he later claims was largely based on his own experiences. He spots the actress from the film in the street, and follows her as she revisits one of the locations; later on they go drinking together, and things develop somewhat as they did in the movie in which she starred, although eventually art and life inevitably diverge. It’s beautifully ambiguous whether Dongsoo’s claim about the past is entirely or partially true, and in turn whether he’s trying to ape what he saw in the film, or reliving a past experience, or finding something unlocked in himself, or some combination of all three; as such the film elegantly expresses the complexity of our interaction with movies. It wouldn’t have been a great surprise if Hong had rebooted a second time; the final note though warns against the allure of such rabbit holes, emphasizing the importance of thinking, of rationality, of applied intent. And indeed, it’s the kind of film that in its unpreachily graceful but detailed way makes you want to reexamine yourself and your coordinates, and to change them for the better.