A striking feature of the movie is how it portrays Bok-nam as an animal. She is also treated as an animal by the other characters in the movie and referred to as one. The auntie would say she looks like a pig. The husband would call her a dog. It is as if they are justifying treating her as a degraded human by calling her by animal names that make her appear animalistic. In the scene where she chases the auntie to the cliff, it is as if she has changed from being a prey to a predator. Instead of being a prey that everyone predates on through physical and mental abuse. She has transforms into a stealthy predator hunting down her prey one by one. There is also a scene where she falls to the ground and the husband puts a metal bowl in front of her which made me think of her being like a dog and her husband giving her food by laying it on the ground.
There are also a lot of scenes that appear in the beginning of the movie that appear in a different form in the movie. The scene where the husband throws red nail polish on her body and face which connects with the scene where she continuously stabs him until his blood splatters all over the body and face. The scene where her husband was standing on the rock as Bok nam and her daughter try to make an escape through the boat. The same scene pops up as the boat driver and Haewon try to leave and they see Boknam as a menacing figure on the same position on the rocks. There are also scenes where Haewon would dream about the times she would watch harm fall upon Boknam as she watches idly from afar. Boknam is also seen protecting Haewon in the dream from rape from the boys as well as protecting her from rape from the uncle. As Boknam is abused by her husband behind closed doors and the daughter waits outside eating as if oblivious or not listening, we see Boknam in the same position as her daughter outside on the porch eating as her husband is having sex with the prostitute. The film presents a lot of parallel between scenes with different scenes that always involve Boknam being abused and her triumphing over her abusers.
“Bedevilled” features many instances in which division and groupings are made starkly clear. In terms of islanders, we usually see the brothers in a two-shot, the three supporting ahjummas we see in three-shots, while the oldest halmeoni, the ringleader of the women, gets her own frame. As such, not only does the plot and dialogue clearly delineate hierarchy, but the way in which we view the characters reinforces categories. The halmeoni, arguably the most detestable islander is even put into her own category in death. Instead of being buried like the others, she literally burns. Jang Cheol Su also clearly distinguishes between islanders and mainlanders in his shots. For instance, twice he uses a wide shot, where the inner courtyard and house (ground to roof) are visible. In these scenes, Boknam and the prostitute are visually separated by the post holding up the roof. This set-up is repeated in the next scene when Boknam visits Haewon. They are also visually separated by (fashion) style and skin-color. On multiple occasions characters compare Boknam’s sunburnt skin to either Hyewon’s or the prostitutes milky complexion. Even the genre, slasher film, implies dismemberment and division. Interestingly though, the director transforms in the end, Haewon into the island through graphic matching.
This emphasis on division leads me to wonder whether Jang Cheol Su is not directly criticizing neo-Confucian values, in which relationships are clearly delineated between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, sibling, and friends. Such a reaction is not unwarranted since during the scene in which Boknam ever more feverishly digs up the potatoes, in a frenzy leading up to her killing spree, the ahjummas are singing Korea’s national song, Arirang (somewhat ironic, since Arirang is often a song which expresses Korean’s ‘han’ (feeling of suffering) and yet here Boknam is the one who suffers the most). Since this film was shown internationally, I will assume that the director also meant for Arirang to be subtitled during this scene, which only adds more significance to the song at Boknam’s breaking point.
Two last things: The end credits show flashbacks of the young girls eating the bozo plants. Has Boknam perhaps been eating them all along? I am also curious as to how the title was transformed from the Korean “The Whole Story of the Kim Boknam Murder Case” to “Bedevilled”.
“Bedeviled” is a notably violent and impressive revenge film. It becomes very descriptive and vivid once Bok-nam begins killing the village people one by one. The movie’s fast-paced storyline and stimulating plot are worthy of praise, but we should not ignore the effective camerawork that makes this movie even more powerful to the viewers. Throughout the movie, the director deliberately has put in some minutely-detailed scenes that involve skillful camerawork, which effectively retain the audience’s focus on the screen and let the viewers feel as if they are part of the story as well. This clever technique successfully adds to the suspense of the film, and one can boldly say that it contributed to this movie’s great popularity and its having received several remarkable awards.
The movie’s outstanding camerawork that produces the first-person point-of-view helps the audience fuse into the movie as the main characters, and therefore adds to the film’s vivid effects. One great example is when Man-jong and Yeon-hee return home from night-fishing. Bok-nam, who just had illicit sex with Chul-jong, is lying down and sits herself as her husband and daughter return. As Bok-nam sits up, the movie shows Bok-nam’s sitting up from her point-of-view, by actually lying down the camera unbalanced and changing the angle to upright balanced position. Through this process, the audience can feel as if they are Bok-nam waking up for her husband, and can better fear what is coming up next for her – Man-jong’s abuse. Another scene where such first-person point-of-view technique is used is when Hae-won is doing her yoga and looks at Bok-nam in an upside-down view. Here again we can imagine the cameraman actually recording beginning from an upside-down angle, getting slowly back to normal balanced upright position. This technique allows the viewers to better understand the close relationship between Bok-nam and Hae-won (at least until the serial murder begins) as they can actually experience their situation from a first-person point-of-view.
Finally, this skillful camerawork technique becomes useful when Bok-nam is stabbing Man-jong’s face and body. After a rough combat between the two, Bok-nam finally stabs Man-jong in the heart and the almost dead man falls to the ground. Not satisfied yet, Bok-nam gets on top of him and swings the sickle to stab the man until he painfully dies. During this intense scene, the camera’s view is used to look at Bok-nam in the point-of-view of Man-jong. As Bok-nam keeps stabbing Man-jong with her sickle, we can see the sickle coming at us and the screen literally turning red as Man-jong’s blood covers the screen. As a result, the viewers can vividly experience the fear and the pain Man-jong must have gone through in his last minutes. Through the camerawork technique that allows the audience to experience certain significant scenes in first-person perspective, the director of “Bedeviled” is able to better captivate the viewers’ attention to the already enthralling plot of the movie.
Korean Cinema Professor Steven Chung Jun Seong Ahn
Bedeviled (김복남 살인 사건의 전말)
A very content, frightening, disgusting, and miserable story is contained in this film, Bedeviled. Starting from the end, an Island named Moo-do is resembled as a woman, Hae-Won, laying down on the floor. The director of this film, Jang Cheol-Soo, wanted to metaphor a side view of the island into an intermingled concept of itself. A woman lying down could tell not only comfort but also death. During the movie, violence and murder appears towards both sexes. If forces happened only towards the women, this movie could have been shown as a discrimination against sex. But the director also wanted to mirror the history of Korea that men overpowered women, and the Korean society thought this was reasonable. We can clarify this by understanding old people living in the island because they always say that women should obey their men and husbands. And Bok-Nam, the disobedient woman, fights against a community of the island. The movie contains a hidden message; bystander is an offender. Numerous occurrences happen every day. But most people actually ignore or just watch as if the events aren’t related to them. But those ignorance could change one’s life and bring to death. Life is random. You could become a victim and you won’t be able to escape the reality, which means, no one has freedom in this world. Another important part of this film is Bok-Nam’s view towards people turning their faces away from the truth. When Bok-Nam landed on the peninsula, the sailor gave her portion of the fare to let her have a good time. She says ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Then murmurs herself by saying, “There are also kind people.” This quote is very pitiful because it illustrates that she haven’t seen an actual kind person in the Moo-do Island. And when Bok-Nam confronts Hae-Won, Bok-Nam says in the opposite way, “You are unkind.” Bok-Nam begs for an assistance to Hae-Won, but she denies. Later, Hae-Won regrets her rejection by showing herself that she witnessed the assault of her friend. We should step back and look at ourselves, if we are kind or not.
In Jang Cheol-soo’s 2010 film “Bedeviled,” I gave particular attention to the choice in wardrobe and the role that it played in the mind of the viewer. At the beginning of the film, Hae-won is seen wearing a rather tailored blouse featuring a pattern and skirt that is worn by all of the bank tellers. This not only gives the viewers a feeling of professionalism in Hae-won’s workplace, but also a feeling of boredom in life as all of the tellers are wearing the same look, with the same repetitive job. The tailored and restrictive nature of the costuming also leaves the viewer feeling that Hae-won is trapped and enslaved in the life that she is living. As soon as she arrives on the island, you can see a shift in her wardrobe as she is seen wearing a simple, flowing, and white dress as she recalls her childhood memories and escapes from the confinements of Seoul. This white and airy feeling gives off a feeling of childlike innocence and freedom. It should also be noted that Yeon-hee is wearing a similar dress giving the image of cleanliness in a sea of filth.
Juxtaposed against this fresh and inviting wardrobe is that of the family living on the island. Their clothes are quite mismatched, feature many busy patterns, and appear to be filthy. In my opinion, this represents not only how uncivilized they are, but also the ways in which Bok-nam is stuck in the same never-ending pattern of abuse, just as Hae-won was stuck in a pattern of work when she was in Seoul. Another detail of the wardrobe that I noticed was the prostitute’s bright, floral print right after her sexual encounter on the island. Only a few scenes later, Bok-nam is also seen wearing floral print, only hers is dingy, dark, and covered in dirt. When Bok-nam and Yeon-hee attempt to escape to Seoul, they cover their dingy and unstructured clothes with socially approved and clean clothes representing their escape from the island. Once they are caught and brought back to the island, however, their clothes are again covered in the dirt and grime that infests the family on the island. The final costuming that I would like to take note of is seen towards the end of the film. When Bok-nam finally arrives on the mainland, she is seen wearing Hae-won’s white dress from her arrival on the island. This dress now represents Bok-nam’s arrival into a new world that she is unfit to live in. The very last scene of the movie features Hae-won again in a tailored business suit, only this time colored all black, representative of her new outlook on life after her experiences on the island.
Bedeviled is clearly a violent and revenge film. The violence scenes are vividly illustrated when Man-Jong is beating up Bok-nam. The director does not provide us why or how Man-Jong grew up to become a man of such violence. In a sense, this decision by the director makes the movie even more chaotic and makes the later revenge by Bok-nam understandable to a large extent. To further emphasize this chaotic mood and the nature of the movie, the director uses extremely skilled camerawork, which really closes up on the characters and really enabling the audience to feel the story. I strongly believed that the director implemented this particular use of camera work to really involve the audience to the movie. If the audience was not involved, this movie is just one “extreme” cinema containing many violence and gruesome scenes. But by using camera works and certain point of views, the audience can have a vivid experience. This experience includes the consecutive killing by Bok-nam. These camerawork have emphasized the magnitude of the murdering and really conveys Bok-nam’s strong feeling of hatred towards these people that have caused her trouble for the past 30 years. By doing this, it also reinforces the theme of revenge, which seems to be the main focus of this movie.
Jang Cheol-Soo’s Bedeviled (2010) lacks the possibility of portraying the movie from several vantage points. While the message of women’s hardships in life are clearly provided through scenes of physical abuse and sexual assault, the movie overall forces the audience to view the plot from only one narrowed side – that of the women’s. This is exclusively highlighted by gender role. The men of the village are acclaimed as heroes and the elderly women looking up to Man-jong and Chul-jong further underscores how magnificent it is to be born of a male gender. However, through Bok-nam’s suffers both as a wife and as a mother, it is natural for the audience to consider men should no longer be superior to women. Although gender equality is a weighty matter, the director’s intentions may have been easier to accept had the male characters’ voices occupied a significant portion in the movie. This thought completely struck me when Man-jong returns home to face Bok-nam’s monstrous wrong-doings (murdering everyone that betrayed her) and confesses, “You never opened up to me.” It is certainly disappointing since this is the only time Man-jong appears to be honest about his inner feelings. Indeed Bok-nam is no longer rational enough to even contemplate of mitigating their relationship at this point, especially with blood dripping all over her body
Another major aspect of Bedeviled that seems one-sided is the continuous references to Seoul. Although city-life may realistically be more convenient for the general population, the ever-positive images of Seoul degrades life in the countryside to a greater extent. This is particularly evident in the beginning of the film when Hae-won reaches the island to encounter several women including Bok-nam. Her appearances – pale skin and silky hair along with the clean-cut attire stress the positive images derived from living in Seoul. The standard of beauty thus shifts away from the pure and natural environment and sticks to what is brought by Hae-won from Seoul. Moreover, everything is considered to resolve when setting foot on the city. Bok-nam’s only option of living a better life – to escape the island with her daughter and flee to Seoul undoubtedly implies Seoul to be far more superior to the rural island where she belongs. Perhaps offering the possibility of resolving Bok-nam’s conflicts on the island itself could allow the audience to filter out the debate of urban vs. rural life. However the only time Seoul is explicitly degraded is when Bok-nam urges Hae-won to take little Yeon-hee back with her to the city but Hae-won immediately neglects by exclaiming, “Seoul is scarier than this.”
Bedeviled is a story of how an abused and marginalized woman who is betrayed, loses her daughter, and proceeds to take revenge. The path of vengeance ultimately leads to her downfall, however, and everyone involved either died or was scarred forever. The film is similar to those of Park Chan-wook's in that violence and vengeance comes with consequences, and the violence is gruesomely detailed.
Bok-nam, treated like an animal by the residents of the island, becomes a lethal animal when her daughter was killed, and Hae-won's betrayal did her no good either. The interesting thing to note, however, was that when Hae-won tried to hide from Bok-nam by being behind the prison bars, it seemed to correlate with Hae-won's willingness to conform to her current situation and with what a women's place should be. Bok-nam, on the other hand, broke through the bars to attack Hae-won, and this could draw parallels to Bok-nam's unwillingness to be beaten down anymore and not wanting to be "behind bars." However, when the scene ended with Bok-nam's death, the camera moves to the window bars, but light is shining through them. This could refer to Hae-won's unwillingness to be a bystander anymore, and could be the reason why she finally decides to accuse the two men in the beginning of the film.
‘Bedeviled’ is violent and stimulating film that features dusky reality in Korea. In the film, there are physical and psychological violence. Especially film shows how psychological violence can affect one person through the each sequence. Korean tile (김복남 살인사건의 전말) also well explains how the story of the film flows.
Firstly, ‘Kim Bok-nam’ lives her whole life in Moodo-island. Moodo-island seems really peaceful and ordinary rural distict but there is full of abuse and suppression on Bok-nam. For Bok-nam violence and abusive language from husband is usual life. Also sexual abuse from brother-in-law is one that she has to bear. These two male character shows that Moodo-island is where the male chauvinism is common and isolated place from reality. Even female elders sympathize with males which makes violence toward Bok-nam is reasonable. So, Bok-nam is the victim of the unconcerned violence from all of the people in Moodo-island.
Secondly, ‘case of murder’ started from the escape attempt of Bok-nam with her daughter. However the escape attempt was vain and Bok-nam was badly assaulted by her husband. Besides, husband killed Bok-nam’s daughter accidently though he assault little girl. In the film, Bok-nam’s only hopes of her life were her daughter and her friend Hae-won. The death of daughter means losing the purpose of living and Bok-nam decided to end her life with the cruel revenge. She firstly killed female elders who psychologically assaulted her over 30 years when the male characters left the island. She also killed brother-in-law while he is grabbing her bottom. The scene of murdering her husband shows many symbolic features of her past. The knife symbolizes husband’s phallic, violence, and authority. By stabbing husband with the knife is revenge of Bok-nam’s past life suffering from her husband.
Finally, ‘whole story’ of the ‘Bedeviled’ is the story of Hae-won as witness and assailant of Bok-nam’s murder. In the film, Hae-won ignore 3 different incidents and it means ignorance became a determining cause of murder. At the end, Bok-nam seems forgive or giving up her revenge towards Hae-won which remove Hae-won’s sense of guilty. Personally, I think audiences who know and watch this film need to understand how Bok-nam suffers in the worst place and why she should murder everyone in the island except male elder. Lastly the film ‘Bedeviled’ represent present social issue of Korea that how cruel and unconcerned Korean society towards the weak of the society.
Bedeviled is filled with a really scary, disgusting and yet sad storyline. It can be quite impressive how it expressed the change in women due to the death of her daughter and the mistreatment she had suffered. The meaning of violence and killing was clearly showed in the movie. During the movie, the director showed quite a few minutes long of the murdering scene, it was really good camerawork technique as the focus of issue such the killing with blood shooting out was being concentrated by the audience. the director make use of first person viewpoint and third person viewpoint to help illustrate and emphasize the process of murdering. The director also tried to show many situations of what Bok Nam has been facing. Firstly, she was being mistreated and degraded. She was being named as dog or pig by her husband and husband’s aunty, and was being ordered around to do work. With the death of her daughter, it actually causes her to become an insane murderer and went to kill her husband and the other people in the villagers. Also, statements such as girls do not need to go to school, actually helped to recall the image of what women used to have in the past centuries.
Furthermore, the director would also want to express that in situations where you knew the truth you should probably speak up to fight for the rights. In the case of Hae Won, she knew the truth of the death of Bok Nam’s daughter, Yeon Hee, but she just remained silent and results in the murder chase by Bok Nam. The director probably wants to spread a message that many accidents or situations occurs almost every day. People should not just ignore and pay attention to small little details that maybe helpful to anyone in the society.
At the last few scenes of the movie, the director showed Hae Won lying down and resemble the outline of Moo-do island. I personally felt that it was a very meaningful ending. It kind of reflects that a women lying there and feeling helpless and lost, unaware of what problems the women is facing. This movie definitely help to spread a message to the bystanders to actually start opening their eyes and look around them with their heart.
In the opening scene where there is a background narration of a story by an unidentified man and then there is a scene where a lady is being bullied by a group of men, there seems to be some foreshadowing of what is going to happen in the movie at a later time, where Bok-nam is also bullied and mistreated by not only the men in her family but also the elderly on the island, which is eerily called Moo-Doo Island, which gives the island a mysterious and dark atmosphere since it sounds very much like ‘Voodoo’ which is linked to black magic. As the main character, Haewon, comes into the story, she is portrayed as a person who is the ‘no-nonsense’ kind and who does not really show any sympathy for the elderly. This put the main character in a bad light and I believe the audience did not feel any sympathy for her when she was forced to go for a break and was later laid off. As Haewon goes to Moo-Doo Island for her vacation, her childhood friend Bok-nam goes to receive her and the stark contrast between these two childhood friends can be seen evidently in their dressing and also appearance. It immediately gave the audience a hint of Bok-nam’s life on this island and how she is being treated, which is also shown later on in the film. The two characters live starkly different lives. This also served to confirm the theme of the film, which was gender discrimination against women. As more shots of Bok-nam being mistreated are shown, the audience also sees how Bok-nam finally breaks down when her daughter is killed by her husband and nobody on the island helps her but instead tells lies to cover up the crime her husband has done. As she suddenly looks up into the camera while crying for her daughter, a dutch tilt shot is used to show her unstable state of mind, where she then slowly breaks down and goes around killing everybody. There are also close-up shots used in the scenes where Bok-nam kills the people using a curved knife. There is also a flashback showing Bok-nam protecting Haewon during their childhood days whereas when Bok-nam needs Haewon’s help now, Haewon does not help her. She once again denies seeing what happened to Bok-nam’s daughter, which also contributed to Bok-nam finally turning berserk. During this time, it suddenly dawns upon the audience that Bok-nam, who was a lowly character now suddenly seems to have a lot of power and everybody is afraid of her. Towards the end, Bok-nam finally leaves the island but for a totally different reason - revenge. In the end, Haewon stabs Bok-nam in the neck with a recorder, which is an item that linked the both of them during their childhood days, as Haewon used to play the recorder with Bok-nam. As Bok-nam is on the verge of dying, she still hums the tune that Haewon used to play on the recorder, which gives the audience a hint that Bok-nam may still have some sanity remaining since she still reminisces about their past. However, the place in which Bok-nam finally dies seems like a prison cell and thus also hints that in the end, Bok-nam still can’t really escape and get freedom, even till her death. At the closing scene, Haewon is seen lying wet on the floor in her apartment and the camera then zooms out and shows the outline of Moo-Doo Island, which looked similar to the outline of Haewon. It gave the impression that Haewon was still affected by the dark happenings on the island and she is lonely, just like how the island is like now that everybody on the island has been killed. Haewon’s attitude has changed totally and she is shown to be cooperating with the police as she points out the culprits who assaulted the girl in the beginning, showing her repentance and also leaving Haewon in a better light in the audience’s minds.
The film 'Bedeviled' obviously was violent and there are many scenes of brutality in the movie. Mostly, the idea that the film contains is revenge. People in the island are assuming the attitude of an onlooker with an extreme indifference to all the affairs happening in the village, especially to the main character, Bok-Nam. That brutality never reveals since they are in the island where it is not easy to contact with the outside of the real world. It is described that people’s ignorant is more terrible than violence. At the beginning of the movie, Hae-Won refused to do mortgage housing loan to an old lady begging her. Moreover, she keeps saying she did not see what happened when she actually saw the gang beating a girl on the street. This action absolutely suggests the main idea to the audiences. It serves as warnings to people most likely to ignore and overlook others’ risky situations because it just has nothing to do with them. Also, Bok-Nam says “You are so unkind” to Hae-Won before she dies. The quote itself expresses that how Bok-Nam was even betrayed by her best friend who she thought was her only hope. It shows how those atrocious acts had to commit and was her last ditch effort. The camerawork of the movie was also outstanding and sophisticated. When the camera was shooting the scene that Bok-Nam deciding to murder, it took the scene against the sun, which effected to be seen scarier and very meaningful. When Bok-Nam was standing against the light, with the backlight, she looked larger and somewhat overpowering. The angle from the bottom affected also. It somehow foreshadowed upcoming events and tragedies. Overall, I think the technique of camera was very unique and well-done.
Bedevilled leaves the audience with a strong impression as a gruesome horror movie. However, it doesn't quite fit the archetypal Hollywood serial killer horror movies. Although Bedevilled involves a serial killing woman as one of the main character, the portrayal of the subject matter differentiates itself from a common Hollywood style.
If you ask if the movie's main part was only about murder scenes, the answer is no. Majority of the movie, including the clip during a cast roll at the end, revolves around the lives of two women, Hae-won and Bok-nam. We learn a lot more about Bok-nam before she starts killing people. In fact, the killing doesn't begin until almost at the end. The murder scenes are short and chases don't drag long as it goes on hit by hit. Since the audience learn about Bok-nam's suffrage on Mudo island a lot before the murders, although Bok-nam is a serial killer, the audience can sympathise her a lot. Also, the movies discusses about unfair gender roll position in which the female is considered to be lower and submissive, in which Bok-nam receives unfair treatment, gets frequently beaten, and gets raped multiple times.
The suspense doesn't build up like common horror movies, either. When Bok-nam decides to kill the villagers, there are no exaggerated heartbeat, almost hyperventilating breathing sounds, intense music, and dramatic extreme camera closeup. The camera just shows her standing, staring at the sky, then the piercing white sky and comes back to normal long shot. Bok-nam's first murder scene is also a casual long shot. Other than the fact that she just slit another woman's throat, there are neither intense music nor dramatic camera shots. In fact, the movie's entire murder scenes covers majority of the gore and lacks any kind of background music.
From Bedevilled, the suspense doesn't build from dramatic camera shots or intense music. Even the chase scene, where Bok-nam chases after her husband's mother, is depicted casually. Usually, the chase scenes where a victim is chased by the killer are one of the intense moments in theses movies with fast moving characters and moving cameras, often switching back and forth from long shots to close ups or medium shots. However, in Bedevilled, both characters moves in rather a slight jogging pace. The old woman tries to flee quickly but fails and stumbles clumsily, while Bok-nam just walks after her. Also, the camera moves rather slowly along with them, framing them with the beautiful natural environment of the island in long shots.
Although Bok-nam's life on the island is filled with horrors of various kinds of abuse, the villagers think them as normal everyday activities. Even the death of Yeon-Hee, the daughter of Bok-nam and the only child on the island, isn't considered that dramatic in their lives. Just like how all the cruelties that Bok-nam experienced are carried out as casual incidents, the horror and suspense of the movie is built by the casualness of the murders.
Bedeviled by Chang Ch’ol-su portrays women suffrage through Hae-won’s grotesque and disturbing story where she suffers from the consequences of living in a sexist society. The director takes an interesting route to lead his audience to the main theme of the film. For instance, at the beginning of the film there is the use of sound bridge of the radio while the credits appear on screen. The reason to why sound bridge is utilized in this particular scene is to introduce the ambience of where the protagonist, Kim Bok-nam, is living in. After the credits are over, there is a sudden cut to the follow-up shot of the streets. In this scene the audience still hears the sound bridge sound of the radio, but now the visual is the people walking on the streets. In these shots of the streets, the camera pans around the people as if the camera were a car. Also, another important factor is the blurriness of the camera. The people walking in the street are not visible to the audience, because the director is trying to impart that the extras are unimportance to the protagonist. Suddenly there is a close-up to Kim Bok-nam’s back head that makes the audience realized that all the shots that they have seen and heard since the beginning of the film is actually what Kim is experiencing. All up to now, the viewer can conclude that Kim is a person that ignores everything in her surrounding. However, Kim’s ignorance to other people’s problem comes visible at the scene where the camera moves to the women being abuse by a group of guys. There is a close-up to her hand lowering the radio. This shot shows that Kim is preoccupied by the problem; nonetheless, her actions demonstrate the opposite. The following shot, where the women approaches Kim for help, Kim instead of helping protect the women decides to roll up the window and act as if nothing happened. Throughout this scene the director demonstrates the point of view from the inside of the car. This illustrates that Kim tries to isolate herself from the problems of the others. This is clearly seen when she closes the window as the women pleads for help. In conclusion, the introduction to this film has created Kim’s ignorant and chaotic ambience.
The movie “Bedeviled” addresses why a typical figure of woman in Asia is not straightening out as much as in western culture. The interesting points at issue in this movie show that there are many close-shots of hands and feet. The hands of the men characters do not have an obligation or any restriction to explode their angers. At the beginning of a movie, two men slapping a girl’s cheek and no one around that place tells them to not to do that. Also, Man-Jong and Chul-Jong always do not have any hesitation to use their hands over women to make the violence or the sexual violence. The camera director succeeds to capture and emphasize those points of view through the close shots of their hands. For example, the close-shot of skull ring on a hand from one of two men who terrorized the unknown young woman, the scene of Man-Jong hugging and petting Yeon-hee with his hands underneath Yeon-hee’s bottom, and the other close shots of hands in the scene of men forcefully make the violence over the women. In contrast to these, the old ladies yelling at Bok-nam and insist that a woman is unacceptable to grips a stone at back of her husband when she holds the stone in order to stop Man-jong hitting her daughter. Because deteriorated Confucianism causes the segregation of women and tells that doing what men do is unsuitable to a woman, the malice of Bok-nam is capable of reason. The turning point of Bok-nam, the camera captures closely to sunlight and Bok-nam’s eyes in back and forth for several times. Perhaps the sunlight symbolized Bok-nam’s mental faculties, which is blind to revenge as she cannot bear in mind anything except the revenge. Therefore, she follows a message from the sun and notices what she urges. After the turning point, she dramatically shifts her hands to perform her revenge to people without any hesitation. In addition to these, Bok-nam also gets rid of the old ladies who neglect her as they curse and abuse the word fury over her. Also, she tries in vain, to kill Hae-won because she remains in silence about what Bok-nam struggled and abused. At the end of the movie, Hae-won lies down on the floor, and this scene dissolves to a scene of Mu-do Island. The connection between Hae-won and Mu-do Island significance that Hae-won also contribute the Bok-nam’s malice to be occurred. Through this film, the director clearly delivers that a reason of Bok-nam’s revenge is not only comes from the men, but also from the women who restricted or silenced to her. Furthermore, it exaggerated pointing out to a reality of Korean female’s reputation in society. The female in Korea restricted from both of the men and women who believe in Confucianism. In a fact, women restricted and limited themselves, so that woman’s right does not change for the better.
The film, "Bedevilled" is full of violence and sexual assualts. The film depicts how Bok-nam, the victim of the movie, turned into avenger. However, the movie does not criticize Bok-nam's brutal revenge. Instead, the movie presents what made Bok-nam commited acts of revenge and justifies Bok-nam's vengeance on islanders and Hae-won. I think the director wanted to point out and criticize two things: patriarchal society and bystander attitude toward the victim. To emphasize that there is no innocent bystander, the film starts with the scenes which show Hae-won's bystander attitudes and depicts Hae-won as a cold-hearted woman. In the beginning of the movie, Hae-won witnessed a young woman beaten by bullies. The police officers asked for eyewitness testimony and victim's father asked her for help but she just ignored them. At her work, an old lady asked for a loan but Hae-won disregarded the old lady. Lastly, she even disregarded Yeon-hee's death even though she witnessed and knew that Yeon-hee died due to Man-jong. Hae-won's bystander attitudes triggered Bok-nam's revenge. In the end of the movie, Bok-nam said to Hae-won, "You're unkind." I think this line clearly reflects director's criticism on unkindness, indifference, and bystander attitudes. If Hae-won standed up for Bok-nam and told the truth, things could have changed. Also, in the middle of the movie, Hae-won was almost raped by Chul-jong. If Bok-nam didn't stop Chul-jong, Hae-won would have become a victim like Bok-nam. Overall the film delivers that anyone, even a bystander, can become a victim. The film also criticizes misogyny and patriarchal society. There are 9 people in the island. The island is isolated from the mainland and islanders rely on men. They call Bok-nam "Damn pig." or "Dumb bitch". The local elders even say that "Women's work is nothing to compare men's work" "Stones should only be used to punish women". or "Girls don't need schooling." These shows that islanders have misogynistic attitudes.
I think director's intention is well conveyed to the audiences. However, I can't understand some of the scenes. For example, the old man and Chul-jong keep chewing on bozo-leaf and bozo-leaf often appears in the movie but I can't understand what the bozo-leaf implies.
Bedeviled differs from many movies because it does not have a clear protagonist. Some may argue that we should root for Boknam because she was clearly the victim of ridicule and abuse. In addition, her lack of power in their island community makes her a wonderful candidate for an underdog. However it becomes challenging to be on her side once she begins her killing spree. People empathize other people because they feel similar and can relate to their situation, but it’s gets harder to sympathize for Boknam after she goes crazy because it doesn’t feel like she’s human anymore. Her animalistic behavior transforms the audience’s vision of her into something more like a wild creature. It’s also just difficult to cheer for the character murdering everyone.
On the other hand, others may argue that Haewon is the protagonist because she seems like nothing more than an innocent bystander. However, her lack of negative actions doesn’t make her the character to cheer for. She continually tries to keep herself out of conflict, as seen with her telling the police she doesn’t know who killed the girl and her telling the doctor she was sleeping when Yeonhee died. The character the audience wants to side with would get involved when called upon and stand for victims when they can’t stand for themselves. Although she calls out the men who murdered the girl at the end, her lies about not seeing Manjong kill Yeonhee trumps her good deed. Moreover, the audience can’t side with Haewon because of the way she treated Boknam. Since childhood, she let accepted Boknam’s help but never returned the favor.
There are undoubtedly many characters I hated—Manjong, the main old lady, the rest of the old ladies, and Cheoljong—but there is no particular character in Bedeviled that I empathized with or wanted to be the last one standing in the end. I felt sorry for Yeonhee because of her youth and the horrible childhood she had but didn’t deserve, but there was not enough depth to her character to feel anything more than pity.
Christine Kim The movie Bedeviled is a prime example of a true Korean movie. There are numerous examples of Korean cultural specificity. Ddak chi is a Korean game played by people of all ages. There was a brief scene of when Yeon Hee and Hae Won fold up textbooks and play ddak chi together. Casual group bathes is also very prominent in Korea. In other countries, it is considered “weird” and “uncomfortable” to bathe together. However, in Korea, it’s quite normal and very casual. Even though Haewon and Boknam are both fully-grown women, they bathe together just because. Another Korean element that has been mentioned throughout the movie is bean paste. Bean paste is an essential ingredient to any Korean dishes. Throughout the movie, Manjong would always tell his wife to put bean paste on her wounds. These are just a few of the many Korean culture elements present in the movie.
Bedeviled is also a great example of social transformation and gender troubles. Yeon Hee is not allowed to go to school just because she’s a girl. It wasn’t against the law, but against her father and grandma’s will. The first half of the movie also shows that men are powerful and that women are powerless. The movie begins with a girl ruthlessly murdered by two guys. In Moodoo Island, Boknam is constantly abused and raped by Manjong and Chanjong. Both times the females didn’t fight back; they helplessly let it happen. Many would say that in that time period and in Asian culture, this is normal. However, the social transformation begins when Boknam snaps. The death of her daughter and constant abuse ignited the inner beast within her and she became crazy. She viciously kills everybody on the island, except for the old and silent grandpa. When she killed everybody, she didn’t really struggle to kill them, except for Manjong. He fought her, but this time she didn’t let him get away with it. This is when the gender troubles occur. It is unusual for a woman to kill a man.
The setting of the film “Bedeviled” takes place on an island called ‘Moo-do’. The movie’s theme is revenge of a woman who had been a good wife, a good mother, and a good friend. There are a lot of distance shots when anticipation is at climax. These distance shots can be found when Man Jong, the husband, is coming for Bok Nam and her daughter. Also, same type of distance shot with same settings but different character can be found later in the film when Bok Nam is coming for Hae Won. The similar type of distance shot is used as well during flashback of Yon Hee’s death. When Haewon is sleeping in the office she dreams about Also, pan movement of camera was used to maximize visual effect of Man Jong's blood trail. Also, during all killing scenes, diegetic sounds were maximized to give vivid description of what is happening.
The characters in Moo do are really strange. They neglect all of women's hardships and only care for men. Such patriarchy resembles that of early 1900's or even before that period. Moo do's society show total patriarchy. Even after Yon Hee's death, the old women who call themselves ‘grandmothers’ of Yon Hee takes side of Man Jong. Also, no one dares to correct Man Jong when he has sex with a prostitute in front of his wife, and Cheol Jong has sex with his sister in law, Bok Nam. Throughout the film the old female characters often says that they need man for the island to do hard works. This seems like the reason why they all advocate Man Jong constantly. This film reveals inner strength of a woman, or a mother, when Bok Nam harvests the whole potato cite previous to start the killing of all residents of Moo do. The harvest scene is consisted of shots that become shorter and shorter as the film progresses. The death of helpless woman in the beginning of the film was a forecast of what will happen at the end of the film. If Hae Won had helped the innocent girl, she wouldn't have been beaten to death. Even when she is called in at police station, she still refuses to help other because she doesn't want to get involved in a bad situation. The blooded face of innocent girl in the evidence photo resembles final moments of Bok Nam which was also caused by Hae Won's negligence. Later in the film, Bok Nam tells Hae Won that she is too unkind; this also can be noticed in the beginning of the film where she yells at a helpless old lady who she could've helped.
The movie, "Bedeviled" seems to be a typical violent, thriller movie. However, there is a deeper meaning into it as the film centers around the general theme of revenge and how one's attitude and behaviors can change according to his or her surroundings. It begins with several short takes on the street of Seoul, showing its crowdedness and sense of urbanity. The film contained various camera techniques to build up the tension throughout the movie. In the beginning, it was particularly interesting to see how the camera pointed from the bottom to the top when taking a shot of Boknam and up to bottom when taking a shot of Haewon. It suggested a sense of hierarchy in which it helped portray Haewon as being more superior and well off than Boknam. Also, there was one scene where both characters laid down on the wide bench. This single shot included both Boknam and Haewon, which helped show the clear contrast between them in skin color and clothing. Towards the end, in the scene where the man and Haewon attempt to leave the island by getting on the ship, the camera points at the two characters through the grass in order to show that it is seen in the perspective of Boknam. All of these various camera techniques help in building up the tension and in developing the characters.
The movie also contained various symbolic objects such as bean paste and pipe. These objects do not only appear more than once in the movie but they also each has special meaning. Bean paste represents both cure and resentment while the pipe represents past memory that includes sense of longing and friendship. In the scenes where Boknam gets stung by the bees and even when she kills her husband, bean paste appears. The former case represents cure while the latter scene showed that bean paste represented resentment as it illustrated how it cannot cure everything. It cannot make the pain of death less nor cure one's wounded heart. Even when Boknam comes to Seoul, she brings the pipe with her, which means that it is something important and valuable. She even asks her friend to blow the pipe before she tries to kill her as she longed the past that she spent with her friend. Pipe represents a sense of nostalgia and longing past. The movie overall incorporates various camera techniques and symbolic objects to convey the major theme of the film, revenge. Boknam was not a person who was innately born as a violent individual. Her surrounding people, loneliness, and harsh life all led to her change.
Jang Chul-soo's "Bedevilled" depicts the distinct lives of two childhood friends named Hae-won, a woman living in the busy city of Seoul, and Kim Bok-nam, a woman living on an island called Mudo and their ultimate meeting after years of separation.
From the beginning of the film, the differences between Bok-nam and Hae-won become transparent: one lives the life of a city girl and the other in the countryside. One of the most remarkable differences is shown in the skin color that both characters have: one pale and one tan; Hae-won, being the city girl, lives a life that allows her to remain indoors while Bok-nam lives a life where she is often outdoors working. Though this may be easily overlooked, Bok-nam constantly makes comments and gestures regarding the beauty and admiration for the transparent skin Hae-won possesses (it is commonly believed in South Korean culture that paler skin is more desirable). Another notable difference between the two characters are the clothes that they both wear. When Hae-won first arrives at Mudo, she is wearing a white dress that accentuates her pale skin whereas Bok-nam wears clothing covered in dirt due to the fact that she has been working in the fields all day. Even throughout the film, characters that come in from Seoul is often wearing much more revealing clothing with pure colors while characters from Mudo wear dark, often muddy colors.
At a very prominent point in the film, Bok-nam makes the ultimate decision to leave Mudo and take Yeon-Hee, her daughter, along with her. While on her way to the boat to leave the island, the audience sees a still extreme long-shot of the island with the light sea in the background and Bok-nam and Yeon-Hee walking towards what would be thought of as salvation. This "heaven" is short-lived the moment Bok-nam decides to kill everyone after her failure to bring her child to salvation. Here, Bok-nam is seen in a close up where the sun is blazing in the background. Rather than showing the light as salvation, it is seen as the fire that burns along with her hatred of everyone on the island. After her first round of murders, the island is filled with darkness and many extreme close-up shots to present the darkness that has taken over Bok-nam and the loss of hope and confusion felt in all those in Mudo.
Despite the fact that Bok-nam murders those on Mudo and finally makes it to Seoul, she will never be able to feel the freedom she desired. This is seen in the final scenes of the film where Bok-nam is dying in Hae-won's arms where the audience sees them from outside of the jail cell they are in. This, in turn, represents the inability for either women to escape the fate that has fallen upon them.
The movie "Bedeviled" delivers various reflections and messages to the Korean society. Firstly, the old, biased Korean traditional belief in the male-dominant society is depicted in the film's setting of a small, isolated island. It is absolutely unacceptable and utterly disgusting that BokNam has been raped by different guys in the island since her childhood, yet the entire community denies the truth and acts as if nothing happened; the people seem to think that the guys were just "being men" and that women need to understand men's such natural instinct. BokNam not only suffers from the sexual aspect, but she is also constantly beaten up by her husband and ignored and treated like a pig by the community. The risk she senses for her daughter as her husband grows more interested in the daughter's body pushes BokNam to try escaping from the island with her daughter to protect her daughter and not let anything happen to her daughter that she had experienced in this uneducated, immoral island. This, the mother's willingness to sacrifice for her daughter, is a true example of mother love (모성애) which is another powerful Korean traditional idea. However, when the escape fails and the daughter gets killed by being pushed by her husband, BokNam becomes insane as the death of one's child is the most cruel, helpless thing that can happen to a mother. The second main theme in the movie is the ignorance. Throughout the movie, HaeWon is continously acting as a witness of different situations where her testimoy can bring a huge influence. Especially, when the officer comes to the island and investigates BokNam's daughter's death, BokNam has no one on her side but HaeWon, as every neighbor conceals the accident in the favor of men and the elderly of the community. Neverthelss, just as she remains silent in the opening scene at the police station, HaeWon does not want to get into a complicated situation and, therefore, claims that she did not see anything. This decision and her ignorance, topped with the feeling of being betrayed by the best friend, is the last button to bring BokNam's madness, where she is so angry and hopeless that she decides to kill everyone involved in the situation, including HaeWon. After all the killings and death, Haewon returns to Seoul and heads to the police station to do what she chose to ignore at the beginning. By doing so, she hopes to release some guilt over BokNam, but as anyone can imagine, it will never go away..
Bok-nam is constantly referred to as "pig" and "dog," especially by the elderly aunt and her husband, and their attitude and treatment towards her are horrendous. There is a complete absence of respect and human decency towards Bok-nam and she is merely regarded with the same kindness that is shown towards a "useless animal." After the death of her daughter she transforms into the animal that everyone believes her to be, unleashing the vicious primal instinct that only a threatened mother could be capable of. Overcome with grief and anger, she exacts her revenge on all those who have wronged her. Just as a lioness would attack any animal that have threatened her cubs, she savagely murders everyone on the island without empathy. This depicts the gender roles in Korean society, according to Confucian values a wife was expected to be submissive and dutiful to their husband. Regardless of the beatings she endured, the village elders always sided with her husband even in the instance of her child's death. However Bok-nam breaks free of the traditions created by ancient tradition and serves justice on her own terms. One of the camera techniques used extensively was how the view of the camera changes as Bok-nam transformed from a submissive slave to a terrifying killer. In the beginning of the film, whenever she is being beaten or disrespected the camera is aimed at a downward angle looking down at her, as if we are viewing her through the eyes of her attacker. She looks meek, docile, and weak causing the audience to feel sympathy for her. When she begins her vengeance spree the camera angle switches to an upward angle when the murders are taking place, as if we are looking at her through the eyes of her victims. In a sense, the audience either cheers her on as her rids this earth of horrible human beings, or shivers in fear as she enacts her gruesome murders. This represents the frightening power she has over the inhabitants of the island, and the terror she has forcibly instilled inside them. Since they viewed her as an animal she has revealed to them the savage beast they have unleashed.
Bedeviled In “Bedeviled” there seems to be a theme woven throughout the film of sexism, animal references, of light, bitter revenge, and speaking out. The film opens up with the camera panning through crowds in each shot, setting up the area and there is the sound of a radio in the background. The sound allows the viewers to be naturally placed into Hae-won’s car in which she ignored the assault on a woman occurring outside on the streets. Even when brought into questioning as a witness, she refuses to tell all that she knows even though it would bring justice for the woman who was assaulted. The director clearly shows the maltreatment of women that exists in Seoul even though it is supposed to be a better-off place to be (or at least seen that way in the countryside/Moo-do). When Hae-won visits Moo-do and sees Bok-dam, it is soon evident the sexism and maltreatment of women that occurs across this island as Bok-dam is immediately seen being raped. She is referenced as a dog by her husband, left unprotected by the old women in her village, and forced into a lowly position for most of her life. To Bok-dam, Seoul is a place of hope and future for herself and her daughter. Whenever she things of Seoul, the camera tilts slightly upward and the light around her is brighter. When she attempts to run away from Moo-do with her daughter, Yeon-hee, the camera stays still as Bok-dam and Yeon-hee run further to the background and I think that the director purposely made the far off scene beautiful, with lots of light, to show this theme of light and a turning point of someone’s life. The director uses close-ups to show the frantic-ness and anxiety that Bok-dam feels as she attempts to escape when she realizes her husband, Man-jong is gaining on them. After Yeon-hee’s death, Bok-dam seems a little insane and when she looks up at the sun in the potato field, her whole body seems enraptured by the light. After the scene she goes in a crazed attempt to murder everyone who brought injustice onto her and her daughter. The scene where she looks up at the light, is also another occurrence of a turning point in her life. Though the director may not have meant for the light to have that meaning, I personally thought that the use of taking far-shots and close-ups with the light shining on the person was an impactful motif. Even at the ending scene where Bok-dam dies in Hae-won’s arms, the camera tilts upward from where Hae-won and Bok-dam are sitting which is in the dark jail cell room, up towards where Hae-won is looking into the light. This time, it’s Hae-won’s turning point as she goes to the police station and immediately puts in a statement against the men that assaulted the woman in the beginning of the film. I felt that the director was successful in showing the sexism and maltreatment of women, as well as the power that people have to change and speak up to save another person’s life.
Bedeviled is a dark, psychological film about two women whose lives are intertwined from the time they spend their childhood on Moodo Island. One is named Haewon, a callous woman who lives a dreary life in Seoul, while the other is Boknam, who never managed to escape the island and is being severely abused by the people around her. At first the protagonist seems to be Haewon since the movie starts off with her as the focus, but after she goes to visit her friend on the island, Boknam slowly takes the center for the first stage of the movie. This is consistent with Haewon’s unlikable tendency to stand aside as an indifferent bystander, which she has shown to do time and again. For instance, the film introduces Haewon’s character by portraying how she first refuses to help a woman that is about to be raped, and then refuses to testify against her rapists. Similarly at Moodo, Haewon becomes a silent witness to the heinous acts of abuse directed at Boknam and her daughter, even turning away her cries for help. This cold lack of empathy from her friend is what finally pushes Boknam off the edge in the light of a tragic event.
The island is only populated by two men and a handful of elders, yet Boknam is treated as nothing better than a slave. All the elders hold on to old-fashioned ideas of women being subservient to men and do not even allow Boknam the freedom to talk back to them or leave Moodo as she wishes. Boknam is essentially a prisoner at Moodo and has been all her life. The film portrays how woman are undervalued and abused, even by other women, and how an individual can only take so much before they succumb to their primitive rage. The first half of the movie is a slow, disturbing descent to the second half of the movie, in which Boknam finally snaps and goes on a killing spree of all those who have wronged her. With the buildup of abuse all throughout the movie, Boknam’s massacre works as a kind of sick catharsis to finish off at the climax.
It was interesting how light was used as one of the motifs of the film. Murders and other terrifying acts usually are seen to take place at night, but in Bedeviled, many events happened in broad daylight. When Boknam finally broke and killed all the elderly women, she stated, “I stared at the sun for so long, and it spoke to me.” Even at the end, when Boknam attempted to kill Haewon and ultimately died in her arms, the film cuts to the sight of daylight pouring through the bars of the jail window.
The recorder was another motif commonly used in the movie, first seen when the girls were both young and innocent, and first broken when Boknam was assaulted while Haewon hung back and watched. At the end, Haewon uses the broken end to stab Boknam in the neck and kill her. Still, in her dying moments, Boknam’s last request was for Haewon to play the song of their childhood for her.
Rather than a growth of character, at the end, Haewon has to acknowledge the consequences of her actions. The realization of what she has done hits her, cold and hard, and the final scene is of her lying down on the floor of her apartment while the camera pans out and changes to the image of an island of her likeness. She hasn’t become a better person. Haewon simply realizes what kind of person she has been all along, and must live with the knowledge the rest of her life.
I think 'Bedeviled' has a lot of contrasting elements present. For example, in the scene in which Haewon arrives onto the island, her white dress, clean and styled hair, and pale skin clearly shows that she is a city girl. In contrast, Boknam, Haewon’s childhood friend, has dark skin, messy hair, and loose baggy clothes, which shows that she is clearly a country girl. Also, in the scenes after Boknam gruesomely killed her aunts, there was a storm. After the storm, the skies were sunny and perfect, a stark contrast from the bloody horrors that had occurred on that island. The director of this movie used sounds to emphasize emotions and actions. To be honest, I did not watch many of the gruesome scenes in the second half of the movie because it was too bloody for me, but I was still able to get the general gist of what was going on because of the sounds in the movie. Louder sounds were used to build suspense, and the audience’s reaction sounds reflected what was happening in the movie as well. I think a recurring theme in this movie is childhood. There were many flashbacks and references to Boknam’s and Haewon’s childhood, in which we learned about their past friendship, and see a focus on a recorder that Haewon was teaching Boknam how to play. I think these scenes were used to show how Boknam longed for the past, when she wasn’t raped by boys, and when she wasn’t abused by her husband and his family. Even in the end, Boknam gestures to Haewon to play the broken recorder that she has kept all these years. I felt like there was another contrast in the scene in which Boknam dies, because her dress is soaked from her own blood and the blood of the policeman, but Boknam and Haewon move their fingers in harmony, as if they are playing the recorder. To me, this moment felt like a moment of peace after all of the killings that had occurred, which was a big contrast.
Bedevilled was definitely not what I was expecting. When you preluded our screening of the movie by saying that it was a horror movie, I was expecting a lot more 'horror' from the very beginning. However, the disturbing but not quite horrifying build up preceding the slasher-esque second half almost made me believe that you had been joking with the class, and we weren't in for any guts and gore for today. But the slow construction of the background story is what I think makes Bedevilled one of the most provocative films I've watched to date. For me, the movie brought up a lot of questions about the human condition. No other species on our planet does as much harm to its fellow members as humans do. The inexplicable pain that Boknam has to go through had most of the class gasping or tearing up at some point. This unfortunate character has had to endure so much that even when she goes on her bloody rampage, I never once thought, "kill that bitch," like I did at points of the Housemaid. This made me question, what deems an act of violence justifiable? We have the laws of our countries but are there no codes beyond what civilization has marked as righteous that we as humans sometimes feel allow for exceptions for our actions? When people talk about Korea, sexuality and sexual crimes are not things normally talked about in public discourse. I was extremely surprised to find so many blatantly sexual scenes throughout the movie. In fact, most of Boknam's pain is centered around sex. We see her being exploited by brother-in-law, realize her husband is using her daughter, her daughter was even a product of rape, not consensual love. We also see how these perverted acts of sex have shaped her when she kills her husband by sexually seducing him in the most unconventional of ways. Seeing as this film came out in 2010, I think a central message that I took away from the sexuality of the movie was the start of Korea finally opening up about sex. Sexual topics have always been kept hush-hush in Korea, I would say ever since the comfort women of the colonial period. But now that movies such as Bedevilled are coming out with fairly positive audience reception, I think that Korea can start to work on addressing sexuality through constructive means. There was also an unusual similarity between Bedevilled and Castaway on the moon. In both movies, we have characters who are trying to run away from the problems they face in civilized hellholes and end up on remote islands. At the end of both of their journeys, our initial characters find salvation through others. Of course, their salvations were found via very different means, but I found it interesting how both of these recently produced movies ended up chasing what I saw to be similar messages. In Bedevilled, I felt that the director focused on getting many more close ups of the characters than medium or long shots. There were of course examples of all three, and because of a mixture of shots we know the action takes place on an island, that it is quite rural, the houses are old, etc. But unlike in Castaway on the Moon where the island itself could be considered its own character, Bedevilled's cinematography helps us focus solely on the characters and their actions.
The movie “Bedeviled” tells the story of a community that lives on an isolated island. The subtle cinematic features and characters present in this film contribute to the morally disturbing and horrific aspects of the story. To begin, the characters were all dirty looking and yellow-toned, which was logically drawn to the amount of rural work they do and their exposure to the sun. However, yellow tones are present throughout the whole film. In the beginning, I thought the yellow lighting was to give a horror feel to the movie, but yellow objects began to appear continuously. In the beginning, Haewon is trapped in a bathroom stalls with yellow walls, Bok-nam wears a yellow sweater for a long part of the movie, the bean paste is yellow, the bowl and table during most scenes are yellow, and the lights seeping through the old-fashioned paper doors are yellow-ish; yellow objects that appear throughout lead to Boknam’s realization scene when she stares at the sun, which powerfully emanates yellow. In my opinion, the yellow represents challenge as well as optimism and life—a contradiction that is present in Boknam’s life. Boknam is constantly being oppressed physically and psychologically from the people on the island and encounters neverending hardships. She dreams to live in Seoul, even if she might be a prostitute. Another contradiction that is present in the film is how Boknam has to kill almost everyone in order for her to truly live her own life. She repeats the hurtful phrases her husband says to her while she is killing and burying him. Going back to the significance of yellow, during the scene when she looks at the bright yellow sun, the shots change from looking up at her from the ground to her perspective looking at the sun. The audience can see Boknam’s realization that she has the ability to have power over the others and chase the new life she has always dreamt of.
Haewon’s character throughout the movie barely changes. From the beginning to the end, she is always a bystander who does not help others or speak up. As domestic violence appears in the beginning scene and is a big issue on the island as well, Haewon can be seen to symbolize “bystander” problem in the Korean culture. As domestic violence and male dominance is an ongoing part of Korean culture, little change has occurred . Whether it be a modern and dreamy place like Seoul or an isolated and conservative island, the same issues are still present with little improvement., referring to the modernizing yet still conservative duality in Korea. Furthermore, the friendship between Haewon and Boknam does not change. Haewon has always ignored Boknam. Whenever something horrible happens to Boknam (even if Haewon plays a role in her suffering), she still goes back to her and Haewon accepts her back. The ending scene when Haewon stabs Boknam with the broken recorder represents their love-hate friendship. Even though they were trying to kill each other, they spend Boknam’s last painful moments together; the recorder was put back together easily like their friendship.
Jae Young Lee The film, Bedeviled, depicts vividly two main characters between childhood and adulthood, because Hae-won is completely changed from childhood. She loved Man-bok more than Man-bok loved her before. Since Hae-won taught Man-bok to play the recorder, Man-bok began to love her, but Hae-won left to Seoul and Man-bok has been missing her over the time. In Moodo Island, the movie shows very different environment with outside of Moodo Island. People in Moodo Island have still old-fashioned tradition that defines male chauvinism. Man-bok has been raped by several men and people do not care about this happening at all. This happening can not be understood and can be critic thesedays. Also, I can understand Man-bok’s mind during watching the movie, because she only needs one person to be nice to her or to care of her. In the final, when Man-bok’s daughter got killed, she was so outraged to all people in Moodo Island and began murdering people viciously.
I can say that the movie also wants to tell about people’s ignorance. In the beginning of the movie, Hae-won was the witness who saw the site of the murder but she told the police that she doesn’t know murderer at all due to worrisomeness. Hae-won also saw Man-bok’s daughter got killed by her father, but she lied again. As a result of her all ignorance, she has gotten unfortunate over the time. Therefore, I think that the moive’s second theme is “ignorance.” If people
Throughout Bedeviled, Director Cheol-Soo Jang explores the objectification of women, whether it be in Seoul or Moodo Island. Jang successfully fleshes out this issue through repetitive shots of high heels. The sequence of scenes focuses first on Haewon and then the prostitute, the only two women on Moodo Island that have ever experienced life in Seoul. Towards the end of the film, the camera focuses on Haewon’s heels on the dock, where Bok-Nam left them after wearing Haewon’s clothes to the mainland. The significance of the heels stems from the perceived sophistication and power it gives them. While women in Seoul are portrayed as independent, successful, and sexy, the women on Moodo Island exist solely as a commodity to men. However, considering the opening scene where a women is brutally assaulted in Seoul, along with the scene where the prostitute is dragged away by the brother, we see that the women of Seoul, even with this perceived symbol of independence and strength, are still subject to the same sexual abuse and subordination as the women on the island.
In addition to the focus on high heels, Jang further illuminates the issue of women’s subordination through repeated close-ups on breasts. Now, the Director may just be a horn dog, but I’m pretty sure that he chose these types of shots to fulfill some sort of purpose. In this case, the breasts are always a source of sexual tension. Sounds pretty obvious, right? But upon further reflection, the breasts not only provide an outlet for the carnal desires of the men on the island, but they also produce desire in other women, specifically Bok-Nam and her daughter. Throughout the film, we see how the men simply grope women’s breasts and sex follows seamlessly, most often against the will of women, which further solidifies men’s superiority and power over women. But in another scene, we see Bok-Nam grope Haewon while bathing in the outdoor pools. In addition to this, we also observe Yeonhee’s fascination with Haewon’s breasts because they “make you loved by men”. Through this, it is evident that breasts are not only sexually sought after by men, but also coveted by women. Although these specific female characters are not trying to subordinate one another, their own desires confirm the preexisting social standards that objectify women through the emphasis on the importance of sexual appeal.
The film "Bedeviled" is definitely a violent and cruel thriller movie that explicitly depicts the ignorant attitudes of people towards the inferiors in our society and shows a corresponding dreadful result at the end. Since there were many horrific murdering and bleeding scenes, I could not watch those scenes and closed my eyes most of the time. The dreadful result and ending of the film is resulted by Bok-nam who is just weak and subordinate and endures violence, sweated labor, abuse, sexual harrasment, and incest throughout her life at moo-do island. A life in moo-do island seems really abnormal and gloomy. I believe there is a couple of scenes that foreshadows the dreadful results in the island. The very first scene of the film where a woman gets harrassed by the bullies and finally gets killed describes what a part of Bok-nam's life has been going through by the men in the island. Also, when the main character, Hae-won arrives in the island, she notices the men in the island are all chewing a bozo leaf, which is a weed. The men chew the bozo leaf throughout the whole film and I think it foreshadows the stupidity, malice and cowardice of the people in the island. After Bok-nam lost her daughter and got no help from Hae-won, she suddenly stares the sun and gets an answer of killing everyone in the island. When she decides that, the weather turns into darkness, implying the beginning of the dreadful murders. The murders happened since Bok-nam was so bedeviled by the brutal crimes of the men, ignorant attitudes from the people of the island including Hae-won, and her inferiority. Maybe it was the only choice for her to kill everyone in the island to be free and express her resentment. Moo-do island might seemed at first very beautiful and peaceful island. However, it turned out to be the island that is full of crimes, strong patriarchal thoughts, ignorance, lies and secrets. I think these hidden characteristics of Moo-do island is what the director of the film tried to describe our society today. Finally, the one who kills Bok-nam is Hae-won. Hae-won came to the island to avoid from the busy, worldly life and ignored Bok-nam's request to avoid from the cruel crimes. However, she committed murder and became a part of the crimes by killing Bok-nam. I noticed that the last scene which Hae-won lied down in her house gets overlapped with the scene of the Moo-do island. I think this is another purpose of the director to imply that it's the island or our society who killed Bok-nam at last. Even though this film is very violent and contains some irritating scenes, I think the director well depicted the problems of our society such as many crimes and ignorance to inferiors using the Moo-do island and its inhabitants.
"Bedeviled" begins with a shot that accompanies no sound. Soon after, short takes of streets come in and they alternate with shots taken from inside a car or from Haewon's perspective. These alternating shots engage Haewon and what will develop as a murder case. Nonetheless, Haewon is not directly shown in any of these shots, adding a sense of apathy as audience only observe the victim and thus there is little room for understanding Haewon. Short takes also appear after Haewon is threatened by a murderer. Haewon feels insecure and at the same time, a sense of guilt. Short takes convey a message that she is at mental instability.
Haewon demonstrates hostility to several people throughout the movie. Meanwhile, she wears a white dress, which gives a sense of purity. Her behavior and her attire are in an ironic match. The white dress further plays its role as conveying irony when Boknam comes to the mainland and tries to kill Haewon wearing the white dress. The white dress makes a contrast with what Boknam is wearing. Boknam is wearing a shirt that looks too big for her. This further helps the film construct Boknam as a pathetic character.
The gender discrimination theme is run throughout the film. A lot of gender discrimination, however, come from old women. The line, "We need a man at time like this" is repetitively used, even when Boknam's mother-in-law is at risk of death. Many close-up shots are taken after Boknam starts to kill people. These close-up shots are effective in conveying character's emotions. Starting from the shot of the Sun, the amount of light projected changes (I am not sure about the technique used here), implying the inner change of Boknam.
The main environment, Moo-do island, is a place where there is no effective law. Everything can be sealed by people in the same interest. Boknam and Haewon try to escape from islands. They constantly fail. At the moment of their failure, long shots are often taken. The long shots makes characters look relatively small, further emphasizing their incapability.
The recorder also works as a substance to convey several meanings. First of all, Boknam cannot play the recorder, thus it becomes her dream and hope. Furthermore, the recorder is a substance that connects Boknam and Haewon. Haewon used to wipe the recorder, thinking it was dirty. Nevertheless, she does not wipe the recorder later on. It even works as a tool to eventually kill Boknam, yet Boknam tries to re-fix the recorder, her dream and hope.
The shot in which Man-jong gets stabbed and spiked by Boknam, the low angle shot puts audience into Man-jong's perspective. This makes audience to feel the pain in an effective way. In addition, it further effectively constructs the cruelty constantly shown by Boknam.
The film ‘Bedeviled’ is a based on a true story that addresses about the gender discrimination in Korea. The movie looks like it is reflecting the issue of gender discrimination; however, mainly what the movie depicts is that people today is somewhat ‘unkind’. In the beginning when there was a girl being slapped by group of men, no one around them gives a glimpse or reach for help. Hae-won herself was one of the witnesses to the girl getting beaten up to death, but denies to testify and walks away. This scene is the beginning of the film that indicates suppressing and covering up what really happened. People in Seoul and Moo-do are not so different in terms of this selfishness for the good of their own beings. Hae-won’s second denial of the truth after watching Yeon-hee’s death triggers Bok-nam to murder everyone on the island. Bok-nam constantly reached for help to her childhood best friend Hae-won as she is her last hope to escape from madness of Moo-do’s life, but Hae-won again her selfishness and ignorance was the answer to Bok-nam’s signal for rescue. Bok-nam had no voice or opinion as she was assaulted and sexually harassed from her husband Man-jong and his brother. Simply like one of the grandmothers on the island said, everywhere there is law and one who resides inside such property should obey with no question. Bok-nam therefore lived in silence going through inhumane life in Moo-do in order to survive. Extreme gender discrimination on the island divided the role and lifestyle of men and women, and every men in Moo-do was a godlike figure in which women must obey and support at all times. Whatever happens inside the community was covered up and concealed, and whoever witnessed remains silent as well. The dead silence and ignorance to cover up the truth does not only create innocent victims but also triggers a desire for vengeance in today’s society.
After watching the movie we raise a question of whether the story is a fiction or not due to its sensational storyline and violence. The fact that people even question about the story’s credibility reflects that people’s ignorance toward the society and being ‘unkind’ to the people in need of desperate help does really exist and the fear of the consequences to come in the years ahead should not be underestimated.
After watching Chang Ch’ol-su’s Bedeviled, two popular American movies come to mind, Cinderella and the Saw series. In Bedeviled Bok-nam’s relative abuse her similar to the way Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters abuse her. Bok-nam’s relatives force her to carry out all of the hard and demanding physical labor in addition to commenting on how she is lazy and ungrateful. It seems director Chang Cho’l-su is trying to create sympathy from the audience in order to justify her mental breakdown where she kills everyone. In addition Chang Ch’ol-su creates even more sympathy for Bok-nam by giving her a husband who beats and abuses her and a stepbrother who rapes her. However the point of creating this situation is not so much a way of gaining sympathy from the audience for Bok-nam as it is to gain sympathy for Hae-won. Because of all the times Hae-won refused to help Bok-nam, she is left with the guilt of the deaths of all the island people.
Chang Ch’ol-su’s Bedeviled is also similar to the Saw series because of the theme of punishing people who have not necessarily done something wrong, but punishing those who may have played apart in wronging someone. Hae-won is presented as a woman who does not care about anyone except herself, she is never willing to provide help to anyone (which can be seen in the scene where she denies the old lady a loan). However after witnessing Bok-nam’s mental breakdown and even being chased by Bok-nam she realizes her faults and finally feels guilt. All the times she refused to offer a hand to Bok-nam led to the death of all the people on the island.
I think the message the director hopes the audience carries away from the film is that whenever possible help those who are in a worse situation than you because it is better than having the guilt if something happened to that person. Also I think he implicitly implies how when you do something simple for someone but receiver of the help believes its more, they will do as much as they can for you (in childhood Hae-won gave Bok-nam a recorder and from then on Bok-nam tried to protect Hae-won from everything).
The film, Bedeviled, portrays a gory story of revenge that leaves the viewer with discomforting sentiments until the very end. Through establishing the main character, Kim Bong-nam as a victim of incomprehensible torture, the director attempts to capture one of Korea’s most dire social issues, gender inequality. The end result of this gruesome, hyperbolized illustration of male dominance is the feeling of emptiness and despondency that lingers in the viewer’s head.
One of the most important elements of the film is its exploration of mistreatment against the weak. On the Moodo Island, gender inequality is prevalent. The women in the village consider themselves to be sub-par, saying that males should be the ones dominating the women. The people on the island believe it to be perfectly normal for a wife to withstand her husband’s heinous acts of physical and sexual abuse. Such maliciously twisted interpretations of Confucian belief of women obeying their husband illustrates, albeit to the point of hyperbole, the gender inequality issues that are still present in Korean society. A research conducted by OECD shows that Korea is still unable to narrow down the gap between men and women. Even on TV dramas, gender inequality is one of the most common recurring themes. While it is true that the inexplicably sadistic crimes committed by the men of the island are hyperbolized, the film’s portrayal of gender equality issues is laudable in the sense that it explicitly encourages people to become aware of the issue.
It is interesting to note a film effect which sets up the final mood of the film. In order to accentuate the feelings of emptiness and despondency, the film utilizes a dissolve effect in which a shape of an image is dissolved to that of another image of the very next scene. Through this effect, the two scenes are able to conjure up conspicuously similar sentiments and atmosphere. For instance, near the end of the film, the image of Haewon lying down on the ground is transited to the next scene by being dissolved to form an image of the island. Through this effect, the director’s intention of drawing similarities between the two scenes is rather apparent. First, the image of Haewon emits gloomy sentiments stemming from the voidness present in the character’s visage. The hollow eyes that do not seem to have focused vision can be interpreted as her feelings of loss and internal pain. Although Haewon is no longer under physical threat, she is subject to profound discomfort, arguably haunted by regrets and culpability for the murders of her friend, Kim Bong Nam. Had she admitted witnessing the heinous killing of her friend’s daughter, the ‘vengeful massacre’ would not have happened. Similarly, the island is now void, with not a single survivor. The emptiness of the island brings about a sense of melancholy and sadness. While the gruesome murders have come to an end, discomforting feelings linger on, never being able to be resolved or alleviated.
On a final note, the word 무도, which is roughly equivalent to the English word chivalry, is a rather ironic name for the island. Perhaps it is an implicit allusion to our society. Though our society claims to uphold morally upright values, misdeeds never cease to exist.
The film Bedeviled is a story that revolves around two women; Bok-nam and Hae-won. The majority of the movie is about their lives on Moodo Island and the relationship they share as well as the relationships they have with the other people on the island. This was a very grotesque yet sad movie that illustrates how women are treated on this island as well as the way the women treat each other.
The movie had lots of foreshadowing. For example, the first scene when Hae-won acts as though she does not know who killed the woman foreshadows her reaction towards Yeon-hee's death. She tells the doctor that she was asleep when she witnessed everything. Although Hae-won was the protagonist, it was hard to find her likeable due to her negative personality and her lack of action.
The film was also filled with symbolism. For example, the recorder is a symbol of the innocence of childhood as well as the relationship between Hae-won and Bok-nam. When they show them playing the flute, they take turns evenly. However, once the boys come, Hae-won runs away and Bok-nam is left alone to face the group of boys. In the process, the flute is broken which shows the beginning of the imbalance of their friendship. At the end, Bok-nam hands Hae-won the recorder asking her to play it for her and eventually Hae-won stabs her with it. The potatoes were also symbolic. The auntie is always telling them to dig them up before they rain. I think the rain was symbolic of Bok-nam's wrath and revenge. When she begins to kill everyone, the rain pours.
At the end of the movie, Hae-won is seen lying down on the floor. The camera zooms out and you see that Moodo Island is in the shape of a woman . This is ironic because of the way that women were treated on the island. Women do not go to school and their work is 'not as hard' in comparison to the work that men do. Bok-nam is always abused by her husband, his brother and the other women who live on the village.
Although this movie focused on the lives of Hae-won and Bok-nam, it was hard for me to understand either character fully. However, it was a bit easier to understand why Bok-nam acted in the way she did at the end. On the other hand, Hae-won was a difficult character for me to understand because ever since her childhood she was always a bystander.
Main theme of this movie is bystanders’ guilt. The first-person point-of-view makes audience to be bystander themselves and let them think about what they may do in that case. Are we brave enough to speak out the truth? Or will we be silent as Hyewon? This angle of camera makes people to reflect and more honest to themselves. The very last scene of this movie was really impressive. When Hyewon lies on the floor, Hyewon and Mu-island is overlapped. Hyewon is an individual who refused to speak out the truth, but if everyone becomes a bystander as Hyewon our society will be like Mu-island. Being a silent individual will cause a corrupt society. Guilt will not be punished and justice will be blurred. At the end, camera moves far away from the Mu-island and shakes as sea wave. It seems like Hyewon and the island are swept away like truth is disappearing by silence. This last scene implies the whole theme of "bedevilled".
In this movie, Boknam's face is often extremely closed up. When Boknam finally decides to murder everyone, sunshine and Boknam’s eyes are extremely closed up. Boknam stares sun and being lost in thought. Boknam’s eye shakes and she makes a decision. Close-up of a variety of Boknam’s emotion shows her anxiety, anger and fear. In addition, when Boknam kills Manjong, her husband, her cruel and evil face is closed up. This cut shows a person’s degradation in a corrupt society. It is very grievous and pitiful.
This movie was very cruel and uncomfortable to watch. However very deep and made me a moment to reflect myself.
When the film was screening today, I thought to myself, there is no way it is going to be more disturbing than The Housemaid. I was wrong; the film has all the violence and gory scenes it needs. Even the beginning of the film, the director Jang Cheol-Soo, immediately shows an incident of a murder of a woman. In my personal opinion, I think Korean horror films are more gory and detailed in scenes than in American films; I just haven’t seen such scenes in American films that are so detailed like the one scene where Bok-Nam is being raped by her husband’s brother; who can think such twisted plot? Nonetheless, the detailed scenes are the reason why I think Korean films are more emotionally capturing to the audience than the American films; while screening today, I could also hear the audience grieving whenever it showed an unpleasant scene. Although it is quite difficult to determine the main protagonists of the film, I feel like the director intentionally differentiated two groups of people; people from Seoul and people from the island.
Jang Cheol-Soo does an excellent job in creating his two groups of characters. He makes it very obvious that the islanders are naïve, dark-skinned, and messy. On the contrast, Seoul People are described as pale-skinned, busy and complex. Almost all the characters from the island are crudely brutal, with the sex-driven males and the pitiless old ladies. They all treat Bok-Nam as a slave, or even more closely, an animal. She is abused sexually, physically and also psychologically. Haewon, on the other hand, is described as a frustrated single lady. Once the film was over, it is clear that Haewon is an indifferent person; she does not want to get involved in any situations, even when it involves her friend. Although she changes in the end, throughout the film, there are numerous cases where she just ignores the truth. In the beginning when she is brought in the police station, she tells the police that she is not interested in cooperating any longer. Also as a customer service providing occupation, she bluntly and rudely tells the old lady that she cannot do anything about her issues, in other words similar to saying “you are screwed, so go away”. The most shocking case is obviously when Haewon is a suspect when Bok-Nam’s daughter’s death and she denies being a suspect. I think Haewon just grew up to be indifferent and cowardly. There is also one scene when Haewon and Bok-Nam are young and they are attacked by the males and Haewon runs away leaving Bok-Nam being sexually assaulted.
There are many impressive camera works that was considered into the film. When the male islanders are shot for the first time, the camera focuses on all the males together but when it focuses on the old females, there are many scenes where the supreme Halmoni is shot alone away from the crowd of other Halmonies. I guess it was intended to show her power as the leader of the Halmonies. Another interesting camera work is when Bok-Nam receives her sort of “salvation” from the sun. The camera starts off tilted or angled below and behind Bok-Nam and then changes towards the sun, making it seem like we are looking through her eyes towards the sun. Then the camera changes back and forth from the angle of Bok-Nam’s perception towards the sun, to the sun looking at her or in other words the camera zoomed in to her face. In the end, the camera again is angled below and behind her and then a quick transition is made and the camera angled in front of her. This camera work feels like the director wanted to really emphasize the power or salvation transmitted to Bok-Nam via the sun.
Ultimately, Jang Cheol-Soo did an outstanding job in disturbing the audience. What was so brilliant about the film is that the director made the audience think Bok-Nam as a merciful character, instead of a crazy psychopath on a killing spree. While watching the film, we definitely feel the pain that drives Bok-Nam into a serial killer looking for vengeance.
In Bedeviled, one of the major recurring themes had to do with unequal gender roles. On Moo-do Island the woman’s place is to be obedient towards her husband and work without complaint. Bok-nam has to continuously work hard on the fields as well as tend to the bees for their honey, all of which is sold off for a profit that goes solely to her husband. Despite how hard she works, Bok-nam is frequently brought down both physically and verbally by her husband and the grannies. One of the most striking line’s was said by the granny when she says something like ‘a woman is happiest when her husband’s dick is in her mouth.’ As a woman, it’s surprising how engrained into her it is that a woman should be so obedient and filial to her husband. On the island, Bok-nam has no power to bring those that have wronged her to justice. Even when her husband causes the death of her child, everyone on the island, despite having witnessed everything, still sided with Man-jong, Bok-nam’s husband, because he was more important to the island for it’s survival, so important that it didn’t matter that a child died because of him. Throughout the entire film, Bok-nam had no power to defend herself or even her own child. It isn’t until Yeon-hee’s death, that Bok-nam reaches a point where she realizes there’s no way she can continue on just being as she was before, on an island with a murderer and those who would only bring her down every chance they get. The shot where she stares up into the sun, which starts off being so bright it hurts your eyes, slowly gets a bit darker. It seems representative of the change that occurs inside Bok-nam. Bok-nam was originally a bright, cheerful woman, and it seemed despite the conditions she was living in, she could still be happy. This was probably due to her sole source of happiness, Yeon-hee, but after she dies, something in Bok-nam dies too, and that’s also represented by how the clouds begin to cover the sun, just like something dark grows inside Bok-nam that takes over. When Bok-nam begins her killing spree, it’s symbolic of how she’s taking back the power that every single person on that island took from her. The only person she spared, being the old man who never did anything to her. The last person on the island she kills is her husband. As the final as well as the most important murder, Bok-nam viciously killed her husband. For the women on the island, Bok-nam killed them quickly with the sickle. It wasn’t until she killed the men that she got more violent. The more pain and suffering they put her through, the more gruesome their deaths were. It seemed that once Bok-nam killed everyone on the island that hurt her, she somehow regained the power over her life that she lost.
Bedeviled centers around the typical roles of women in both old and modern Korean society. Haewon portrays the contemporary life of a typical city woman whereas Boknam, who was raised and lived in Moodo Island for her entire lifetime, illustrates hardships of being a woman as she is treated poorly in the village as a laborer, a punching bag, and a prostitute. This film highlights the specific gender roles of men and women, as men are acclaimed as kings and women as maids. However, for Boknam’s case, she is not even considered as a maid. Rather, she is treated like an animal, which later in the film reveals her animalism through preying on the village people as if she is a predator. Constantly, the eldest halmeoni emphasizes how Boknam should respect her husband and his family. When Boknam calls her husband by his name, the halmeoni scolds her for not respecting him. Instead of her being the center of her life, Boknam is consistently forced to do the labors. She has no control of her life whatsoever. This is how a typical woman lived in old Korean society. Women had no power and had to follow the husband’s order whether it is harsh or not. Being absolute to the husband was considered as respecting. The film demonstrates numerous examples of powerless women. The opening scene starts with an unknown girl getting ruthlessly slapped by two gangs, and in the middle, the three halmeonis ask Boknam’s husband to fix their houses, which underscores the fact that the roles for women and men are vastly different.
The movie can be separated into two parts: peace and violence. The setting in the beginning is fairly peaceful for the villagers (not Boknam) until Yeon-hee’s death. With different point of view shots, the movie effectively informs intensity of Boknam’s revenge on the people. Before Boknam was powerless, many of the shots were her husband abusing or the halmeonis criticizing her, representing Boknam’s inability to fight back. However, with the sickle, she is not afraid of anything. The sickle dramatically turns Boknam’s weakness to strength. The dramatic and fast-paced killing gives great intensity for audience. After glaring at the sun, she suddenly determines to kill the halmeonis who had no idea that she was planning on murdering them. When Boknam encounters with her husband, she ruthlessly swings her sickly with no hesitation. During the horrific slaughter, Man-jong’s point of view intensifies the horror as the audience can imagine as if we are getting killed. The blood is splattered all over the screen, and we can vividly see Boknam’s face engrossed with hatred and enthrallment.
People often ignore a scene of crime even if they have witnessed a crime scene, because they do not want to get caught into a big issue. For example, people often store up problems of bullying or sexual assault. Although they know that it is wrong, they keep their silence. The film, “Bedeviled” directed by Chul-soo Jang, is a thriller movie that illustrates how this ignorance has bad influence to our society. Hae-won, a single women who works at a bank in the Seoul city, visits the Moodo, an island that she used to live during her childhood. When Hae-won is staying in Moodo, she notices that her friend, Bok-nam, is struggling from her husband’s violence and other villagers’ mistreatment. However, in spite of Bok-nam’s earnest request, Hae-won ignores Bok-nam and consequently, Bok-nam feels betrayed by Hae-won’s apathetic behavior. At the end, after her only daughter was killed by her husband, vengeful Bok-nam ends of killing all villagers including her husband by brandishing sickle. The two main female characters Bok-nam and Hae-won are the metaphors of the two different groups of people, people who are neglected from the social safety nets and people who are in social safety nets, remaining spectators nonchalantly. The director intentionally emphasizes that ignorance and silence could be sin. The tragic ending of this movie shows why we all have to help each other.
The two social atmospheres of Jang Cheol-soo’s Bedeviled starkly contrast each other. The viewer is first transported into the setting of Seoul. The first scene is a tracking shot of people walking on the streets of highly industrialized Seoul. The next scene occurs in Hae-Won’s workplace. Hae-Won is shown having a conversation with an older lady about a loan. The older woman clearly is of a lower status than Hae-Won as she seems unconfident and pleads to Hae-Won for a loan. In contrast, Mudo Island is an undeveloped environment. The dynamic between families is of almost a pre-modern era. Men lie at the top of the hierarchical pyramid, while elders support the men, and lastly women and children lie at the bottom of the pyramid—having little to no power. This dynamic starkly compares to the dynamic shown previously in the movie, where Hae-Won, a woman, works in a position of power, and can decide whether or not to give a loan. Furthermore, the law enforcement of the island is investigated shortly and careless by a detective, who is easily manipulated by the inhabitants of the island. This primitive way of investigating a crime contrasts the organized and secure questioning of Hae-Won in Seoul. Because of the primative, insecure way of questioning in Mudo Island, men are free to abuse women, while in Seoul, men will freely taunt women, but not always abuse them. Lastly, through contrasting imagery of Seoul and Mudo Island, Cheol-Soo suggests that the social atmosphere of Seoul lies in favor of women, while Mudo Island prefers men.
As Seoul promises a better lifestyle for women, Cheol-soo uses cinematic techniques to depict Kim Bok-nam’s desires visually. A long take of Kim Bok-nam and her daughter walking into the sunrise as they talk of Seoul suggests to the viewer of their hope. Both characters are placed in the middle of the frame, with a lot of empty space to their left and right, creating visual symmetry and harmony. This harmony adds to the light and bright feeling of the scene. In addition, the camera does not zoom or take a close shot of the mother and daughter to view their facial expressions, but the viewer knows their mood through the cinematic significance of the moment. Furthermore, the long length of the scene adds to the suspense of the moment. The viewer hopes that Bom-nam and her daughter will make it to Seoul and have a better life. However, the perfect harmony of the scene leaves the viewer knowing that something must disrupt the harmony to further the plot.
The movie "Bedevilled" by Jang Chul-soo reflects the ugly truth of Korea's traditional idea of male and female through heart-breaking gruesome story of a female islander in Moo-do. The movie focuses on the ignorance of human rights which female members of society went through. Placing the setting of the movie in an isolated and uneducated community amplifies the level of crudeness in Korea's conventional hierarchy system which puts the male on the top, elders and then female and animals being at the bottom. Repetition of female elders saying "this is why we need men" confirms the audience their strong respect towards men and reveals that they are not only physically isolated but also mentally limiting themselves. Also, in the flash back to BokNam and Heawon's childhood, when the boys in the island appears on the screen, the camera shows the girls through the legs of Manjong, which indicates the empowerment of the boys and foreshadows the danger of sexual assault. As the movie proceeds, in a lot of scenes, the camera is often in BokNam's perspective, so that Manjong is always looked up from lower eye level. Manjong is always enlarged and threatening, resulting that the audiences perceive Manjong as a powerful evil figure and sympathise Boknam.
One eminent theme in the movie is the sexual desire of the male characters. Many scenes of sexual intercorse in the movie presents violence. Boys poking BokNam's shirts with a branch of tree, Chuljong raping BokNam and Manjong having sex with a prostitutes; all of these scenes presents hitting or hurting of female characters and none of the scene portrays pleasure. Such a violence attitude towards the intercorse illustrates that the male characters are only looking for release of their primitive desire of sex instead of having a connection with female characters. In addition, the male characters feel empowered during the activity. Perhaps, as Manjong reveals in the end that he felt ignored and not beloved, sex is only way he actually feels powerful over BokNam. So, purposely having sex with another woman in front of her is his nasty way of expressing his weakness. Lastly, the movie conveys that sexual activity symbolises the opposition of love. When Yeon-hee's perception of father's love becomes the sexual relationship with her dad, the movie marks its climax point where it maximizes the corruption of Manjong.
Along with the relationship of male and female, the movie conveys its second theme of ignorance in the society. The ignorance of Hyewon, supposedly BokNam's best friend results in BokNam's absolute breakdown to insanity. BokNam's murder is not Hyewon's fault or responsibility, but she is the only one who could stop BokNam's misery and prevent the murder. The contrast of their skin tones not only differentiate their fate, but also their personality. After the death of BokNam, she adopts bits of BokNam's characteristics and bravely points the men in the police station.
The movie Bedevilled shows the unfortunate sequence of the matter of cause and effect. One of the major causes being Hae-won’s selfishness and disability to feel sympathetic for others. The opening scene is the first example of this discern of others. The view from the inside of Hae-won’s car when she rolls up the window acts as a screen similar to that of a television’s. Although the suffering and the desperate need for help was greatly shown in the girl’s action, she was simply an onlooker and had no role in what was going on the other side. The same went on with the other minor events that occurred where the police officers and fellow co-worker tried their hardest to resolve problems that Hae-won did not want to involve herself in. Hae-won’s negative attitude towards life is what caused her to arrive to the island ignorant of the abuse occurring to her friend by those living there. The excitement that Bok-nam’s contains at Hae-won’s arrival is seen from the long-shot, helping pull in the small boat and jumping on board before her friend even moved a muscle. By that point she believes that her savior has finally arrived, greeting Hae-won with a clean house, food, and washing her clothes as early gratitude for the unasked favor. A mix of jealously and admiration occurs throughout the stay. Moments such as when the two friends bathe and an overhead view of both individuals is seen compares how Bok-nam’s skin and hair have been mistreated by the abuse and working conditions on the island while Hae-won’s the pale complexion and smooth skin represents what the Korean culture signifies as beautiful. Even through the suffering, Bok-nam maintained a positive outlook and finally tried to escape the island after a realization that she couldn’t kill her husband. The first time she picked up the sickle after discovering his intentions towards her daughter, temptation was over-come by the concern for her daughter. However, once Hae-won’s selfishness betrayed her after the death of her daughter nothing held her back from the repaying back the island’s dwellers for everything they had done to her. The death of each individual became worse and more graphic by the amount of hatred Bok-nam contained for them. The end was a puzzle for me because it went from a moment of hate to peace as the two girls reflected on their childhood in the final moments of Bok-nam’s life. She had always taken care of Hae-won yet, she did nothing to thank her back. That’s why Hae-won must have felt guilty and returned to the police station to report the men from the opening scene.
Daniel Rhee Bedevilled Just like how every movie starts off with a scene that sets the context for the movie, this movie seems to start off not with a panning image, but with an image that changes scenes rather than having one smooth transition. As we slowly progress through the various images displayed in the scene cuts in the beginning, we soon realize that the film is shot in the perspective of Kim Hae-won. At first, I did not realize that Hae-won was the protagonist, but once the director shows the scene in which Boknam loses her daughter, the exact same scene is played but this time including Hae-won. Even though Hae-won saw the murder, when she was questioned by the police officer, Hae-won was unable to respond. This puzzling scene further helped me realize that the movie was played in Hae-won's perspective because she knew everything that was going on in the movie. Once Hae-won was on the island, she witnessed everything that happened. Because she knew that Boknam had been beaten all her life on the island, Hae-won was afraid of what would happen if she stood up against the island, which ultimately led to the downfall of Boknam, as we find out later that she also knew that Hae-won knew what was going on in the movie. Another scene which led me to believe that Hae-won knew what was going on was the flashback to when she and Boknam were friends. Boknam sacrificed herself to ensure Hae-won's safety and Hae-won knew it, but was unable to do anything about it. One interesting technical aspect about this film that I have never seen before was that the film never used many moving images like zooms. Other than the one scene near the end where the director zooms out from Hae-won's body as she lies down on her apartment floor to model Mudo Island, no other scene was zoomed in. Any scene that was shot at a distance, the zoom would be a cut scene straight to the intended image. Also, as the movie progressed, the changes in scene picked up, adding that "thrill" effect to the movie. The film became quicker in pace and the faster the plot moved, the characters' actions became more unpredictable. This could be seen in the sequence when Boknam was harvesting the potatoes. The scene changes between Boknam harvesting the potatoes and the grandmas taking their break increased in speed, which created more suspense, ultimately leading up to the tipping point where Boknam begins her revenge. Another symbol of the harvesting of the potatoes can be seen when Boknam is "harvesting" her husband. The speed of the potato harvesting can be mirrored to the speed of her putting the hoe into her husband. The quickness of change in scenes, rather than having the camera move, definitely increased the suspense of the film which in my opinion, made it all the more intense. Aside from the gore and impaling of people, the quickness in scene changes is what made the movie all the more thrilling rather than scary.
‘Be devilled’ (김복남 살인사건의 전말) by Chang Ch’ol-Su is a great example of representative Korean thriller such as The Man from Nowhere, I Saw the Devil, or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. All of these revenge movies give people understandable reasons for the main character to kill people violently and at the end audience support the main character. Also the cobs in these movies are usually powerless which makes the main character to resolve it by him/herself. ‘Be devilled’ examines the difference in regional development between the big city (Seoul) and extreme suburban areas (Mu-do). While the big cities became modernized, the people who chose to live on in the isolated suburbs were labeled as old fashioned. Bok-nam’s husband and Mother-in-law, both held ridiculously conservative views, such as females should do whatever the male tells her to do and that girls don’t need to study, to abuse her as their slave and infringe upon her human rights. On the other hand, Bok-nam’s old friend, Hae-won is an example of contemporary people, highly educated but hard-hearted and neglecting. Bok-nam sent her many letters so she can run away to Seoul with her daughter but Hae-won simply avoids her pleas and goes on with her life with indifference to the problem. Thus Bok-nam tries to escape with Yeon-hee but gets caught by Man-jong, and while he is beating Bok-nam, ends up killing her daughter. This event combined with everything else going on in her life made, Bok-nam, the victim, lose every hope she had, turning into a monster and start the revenge.
The shots in this film are focused on isolation, the views of an on-looker, victim, and the assaulter. The city, Seoul, is mentioned many times in this movie but it does not really show what the city looks like. It is more dependent to the overly exaggerated description of Mu-do and suburban people about Seoul. However, every time the ship reaches and leaves the island, the view is towards the island. The movie flows horizontally, and the shots were taken also horizontally for the fast rhythm of the story. This adds people to think the island is small and awfully isolated from the outside. Secondly, many of the shots are what Hae-won witnessed. This feels like I am looking through Hae-won’s eye. These events that occur in the past and present are witnessed through Hae-won’s eyes. Next, the shot changes between the victim’s view and the assaulter’s view. For example, when Bok-nam attacks Mother, the camera shows the cliff, and the illusion of Bok-nam standing close to her. Then the shot changes to the face of the mother trying to persuade her. Also when Bok-nam stabs her husband repeatedly, Man-jong’s blood splashes over the camera. Then the view changes to how she is looking down on him. This pattern recurs every time she kills someone.
The thing that I noticed is that when Bok-nam was getting assaulted, the view doesn’t show what she is looking at. This made me feel like I became another on-looker that was looking at a fragile and helpless Bok-nam. This technique helps stir up emotion within the viewer and leaves them to helplessly watch Bok-nam being put through a series of painful events.
The film, "Bedeviled" is filled with violent, disgusting and miserable story. It portrays one lady's life from the most pity one to cruel one.
This film starts with Haewon's ignorance of others. She was a witness of one crime scene, but avoids from it to not get bothered, which I interpreted as a summary of this movie. Haewon visits Woodo, where she spent her childhood and meets her old friend Bok-nam and her family. While Haewon was staying in the island, she got to see her friend, Bok-nam, was sexually abused and beaten by her family, as Haewon saw one crime scene in Seoul she ignored it also. Bok-nam finally decides to escape from Woodo to Seoul, where meant a freedom to Bok-nam, with her daugther. However, they got caught and beaten by Man-jong and the daughter died. The police comes over to check about Yeonhee's death and all the people denies about what they saw, even Haewon denies it as she did in Seoul.
Bok-nam starts her revenge for her daughter and herself. Bok-nam kills all the ones who ignored Yonhee's death, but she failed to kill Haewon. After, Haewon goes to police and tells the truth about the crime scene she saw in Seoul as she wanted to forgiven by Bok-nam.
Behind the revenge and murders,a theme that runs throughout the movie is that of silence; a feigning of ignorance. The film starts off with fast pans of the city streets from the viewpoint of a car. There is a sense of carelessness as there is no main focus on the streets. There is also a disconnection with the radio talk show hosts laughing while the lady is assaulted on the streets. She knocks on cars but no one cares; ears are plugged to the radio and the woman’s cries are ignored. This carelessness runs through the entire film culminating in Bok Nam’s eventual revenge.
Right from the start we learn about Hae Won; she doesn’t bother about the assault she witnessed from her car or the old lady getting a loan. She ignores her mom on the phone and throws away letters from Bok Nam. We also see this in the villagers. Bok Nam numbs herself to the extent that she can eat rice outside the room where her husband is with a prostitute. The village aunties ignore Bok Nam and work her to the bone, treating her like the village slave. Even though her husband knows that his brother rapes her, she keeps silent in fear of getting abused further. Hae Won sees Yeon Hee’s murder but would rather keep silent. No one cares about Bok Nam. It all comes together in Bok Nam’s remark that in the village, even if you know, you act like you don’t know (something like this I can’t remember the exact phrase.) Her murder frenzy is a her way of breaking out from the silence and changing her role from oppressed to oppressor (in a sense).
The camera angles work well to represent the important parts of the film. One scene which I felt was extremely well thought of was when Bok Nam stops her frenzy of potato picking and stands facing the sun. The camera captures her from the bottom up giving her a sense of power which she was never given in the entire film. The shot empowers her as we see her against the sun. The same effect is used when she hacks her husband’s body. Rapidly cut scenes of her are shot from below and signifies the power she finally has over her husband. Another shot is of her sharpening the knife but it is rotated (the sharpening block is horizontal to the screen) and represents her state of mind at that moment, she’s not exactly thinking straight anymore. Lastly, in the final scene where we see the island moving further away, the camera seems to be bobbing along with the waves and fades off; it is as though we are on the last boat out leaving behind all that happened on the island to slowly fade away.
Bedeviled is a thrilling movie in which blood is used in dramatic ways on the screen. It uses the camera in ways in which the viewer feels as though they are encountering the slaughter of Bok-nam in person. It is a voyeuristic film in which the involvement of the viewer in necessary to make the film move in a emotional direction towards Bok-nam; feelings of sympathy, pity, and most of all fear. What most struck me in this movie was the onslaught that Bok-nam threw upon her island home and of course in the prison. During most of her attacks on her enemies, most of the shots are medium close shots. This allows the viewer to see all the blood spewing from the bodies she is slaying with her favorite weapon of choice, the sickle. (One side-note is the symbolic nature of her choice of weapon: Bok-nam has suffered on the island where her auntie is always telling her to stop being lazy and pick the potatoes before they get wet. The sickle was a source of imprisonment on her island. She then uses the same sickle that she furiously used to dig up multiple bags of potatoes to kill most of the people on the island. She uses the sickle as a source of freedom. She cuts away at all the people that kept her down in island.) Going back to the blood, some scenes are meant to make the viewer gasp and squiggle in their seats. One in particular is when the husband sits down to drink some water with the boat driver. The boat driver sees blood fall in his cup and he instinctively looks up. The husband looks at the fear in the boat driver's eyes and as the husband looks up, the camera looks up in a hurried fashion and focuses on the severed head that looks down upon them. The viewer knows what to expect but the way the camera moves in this scene brings the viewer into the eyes of the husband and it is as if we had never known that a head was in the canopy. The viewer continues to be pulled into the movie as we hear a scream from Hae-won at which point, the camera follows our instincts to look to where the noise is coming from. We are notified by Hae-won that Bak-nam is about to dismember both males in the scene. Since the takes are medium close-ups, we cannot see Bak-nam enter the frame until we direct our attention to Hae-won's finger pointing in the direction in which Bak-nam is coming from. The trick in the cinematography here is to give the viewer blinders like a horse with carriage. The director intentionally uses these close up shots to bring elements of gore and excitement as seen in the aforementioned scene. And to much applause, this is succeeded in Bedeviled.
Chang Ch’ol-Su's "Be devilled" (김복남 살인사건의 전말) portrays a murderer called, Kim Bok Nam, who lives a miserable and suppressed life in a island, Mu-do, as a victim of the domestic violence as well as the sexual abuse. To justify her murder, more than half of the movie, from the beginning, describes her situation in Mu-Do where all the people including the families ignore and afflict her, resulting in her daughter’s death. However, ironically, the movie itself is not narrated through Kim’s perspective but her friend, Hae-Won’s. The movie starts by Hae-Won seeing a girl beaten by guys and ignoring the girl’s signal for help. And for the first several scenes, her ignorance of other’s and selfishness to get away from a spotlighted life is illustrated.
When Hae-Won comes back home from the police office in the beginning of the movie, her house is very dark and silent that the house itself shows the loneliness and tiredness of her life. However, contrastingly at the end of the movie, after Hae-Won realizes something from Kim’s death, her house seems to have more bright and yellowish light which makes the whole shot of Hae-Won in the house very comfortable and warm. The movie closes with the dissolving of her relaxed bodyline into the shape of Mu-Do and zoomed out. The shot of the Mu-Do island from the outside appears consistently throughout the movie but for the ending, Mu-Do embraces the yellow sunlight which make it to look very silent but somehow settled; Mu-Do received the peacefulness back like how Hae-Won finds the stableness of her mind finally.
Hae-Nam is a friend of Kim which makes her to be seen as a supporter of the protagonist instead of a foil character. However, everything including the characteristic, the fashion as well as the ideology is so contradicting that it is possible to foreseen the tragedy of their relationship. Also, a lot of symbols appear in the movie including the social studies textbook, the recorder and the soybean paste. Every of the symbol is introduced to be very beautiful and necessary in the beginning of the movie; however, they end showing the disaster. The social textbook represented the fantasy of Seoul and when Hae-Won realizes the desperate truth of Kim’s daughter being sexually abused by her dad, the book is kicked and thrown away to the ocean. The vision of true friendship is also revealed through the recorder, but ended up used to kill the friend. Same with the soybean paste. Everything is all ironically contrasting from its initial meaning, but still it is logically illustrated that it helps to emphasize the impact of the transformation of Kim.
Bedevilled is a well-made movie that evolves from an oppression piece to a graphic revenge tale. The movie raises many dark social issues such as domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexism. I was able to see these issues and its symbolism everywhere in the movie. Some of the scenes and techniques used in the movie were very striking as well.
The use of repetition of props in the film was very interesting. When Manjong, the husband, throws a stone at the beehives intentionally, Bee stings Boknam's body. When she comes home and rests, Manjong tells her to have sex with him. As she refuses, Manjong gets mad, so he kicks her out and throws soybean paste (된장) at her body. The use of soybean paste reappear when Boknam kills her husband. After he dies, she ruthlessly throws soybean paste at his dead bodies expressing her heartbreaking grief. Boknam is able to retaliate him by killing him and throwing soybean paste which reflects Boknam's oppression and resentment. Another interesting point was the use of bozo (맹꽁이풀). Many people in the island were chewing bozo including the two brothers and the old man. Bozo is a kind of hallucinogenic drug which drives people insanely. Every time when brothers were chewing a bozo, they tried to rape or actually raped a woman. As this actions are repeating, a viewer can expect that some bad incident will happen at the moment of chewing bozo.
The movement and effect of the camera was also notable. When Boknam stares at the sunlight, the camera closely captures the bright sunlight and her eyes for few times. As the camera highlights this scene, viewers are able to focus at the moment and instinctively know that big incident will happen. With no surprise, Boknam murders people ruthlessly after staring at the sun. In addition, Boknam stabs her husband and his bloods are all over the places. The camera frames an extreme close up shot here. Viewers also see that Manjong's bloods are all over on the camera lens which created more dramatic effect to this tragic scene.
The last scene, which Haewon's body overlays into the shape of the Mudo island, was very striking. Haewon is a typical person in today's society and Mudo is a primitive and isolated place where Boknam is continuously exploited both sexually and physically. In Mudo, a person has to face terrible things every day and a person can hardly escape. I was not quite sure the hidden meaning of the scene; however, I think that this scene try to reveal an inextricable connection between people (Haewon) and the current society we are facing today (Mudo).
Everyone was responsible for Boknam's tragedy after all. No one helped her despite knowing that their help could save and protect her. People should be aware of our selfish set of mind and ignorance could really hurt someone. Overall, Bedevilled greatly captured a self-centered modern life that is shut down from other people’s lives and its use of camera techniques made this film to be very fascinating.
Before I watched "Bedeviled," I never understood why so many Korean films are violent. However, I finally recognize that overly violent scenes are necessary to convey major problems in modern society: Increased bystanders of crime, Distorted perspective of justice and lack of care to the weaker people. The director utilizes many cues and symbols to illustrate 해원's development throughout the movie. In the beginning, she was at the dull working environment. Everyday, she returns from her work and spends the night alone in the apartment. She refuses all incoming letters from her old friend Boknam. In her refrigerator, we can only see shelves full of Guinness. We can make a parallel connection between 해원's beer and grandfather's marihuana leaves. The grandfather's unlike other islanders, remains still and watches all the disgusting crime scene. Similarly, 해원 always attempts to escape from the grim working environment and drinks beer alone in a locked apartment living room. It seems like 해원 lost her senses to feel the peer's emotion and interact with the loved ones. One of the most disturbing scene includes Boknam's transformation into a beast, which takes revenge on "unkind" people. Although murder scenes were quite graphic, they have a strong impact on the viewers. They ring an alarm to all of us that lack of care of the peers (in this case boknam) can result in tragic consequences. Boknam, as we all know, was a normal mother who want to spend happy marriage life with her husband and children. However, ignorance and lack of care from her husband, friends and neighbors turns her into a monster. After 해원 escapes from the island, she recognizes the importance of justice and care for the weak peers. She confidently stands as a witness of an assault/murder case of a young woman on the street. At the end, she take a shower with her clothes on. Here water resembles rebirth and washing all the sins that she committed to her loved ones.
The film of “Bedeviled” is a full of violence and revenge story of a woman who lives in a small island “moo-do”. The movie director “Jan Cheol-soo” depicts Korean’s society about unfair political power. The movie starts with that a woman “Hae-won” does not verified by witness about a one girl’s murder case. Hae-won’s ignorance gives expectation of another case of murder. Her childhood friend Bok-nam protects Hae-won from young boy’s harassment. However, when Hae-won sees Bok-nam’s husband kills her daughter, Hae-won pretend not to know about it. Bock-not disappointed because she believes that they have hard friendship with purity memory. Also Bok-nam was painful to live in a “Moo-do” island, which can describe as unfair of community. The place of “Moo-do” island has so many crimes and victims but it covers up by powerful people. She tries to be a kind person even though neighbors are mean to her. However, this miserable situation brings Bok nam’s bloody vengeance when “Yeong-hee” killed by them. Finally, Bok-nam kills all people who commit a crime to her and her daughter. I think this film describes that our society is very unfair of community. The director greatly describes how our society might looks like as “Moo-do” island. In many scenes, many problems of our society is contained. Such as Bok-nam cannot do anything even she suffers pain and wrongly accused by neighbors. She attempts an escape from the island but she failed. There is no way to fix unfairness problems in a community so I think Bok-nam have only one way to kill them. It is very cruel that Bok-nam’s murder because she believes it is the way to live her self. When Bok-nam kills her husband, my mind was cleared because she revenges by doing the same way. Furthermore, I realize that our society in reality may crueler than Bok-nam’s murder. Also “Hae-won” also might try to help “Bok-nam”, but she does not want to be one of victims of them. When movie starts with a event of murder, Hae-won rejects to be testimony by witness because she afraid of threats. People might think it is just her character, but this scene contains the mean of that political power is unfair. At the end of story, she tells true as a witness and she takes shower. I think this depicts her wrong attitude are fixed. I believe the movie gives hope of that our society can change positively at the end of story.
The Bedeviled, as its Korean title(김복남 살인사건의 전말) shows, aims to address Miss Kim's murders and the people involved. The merciless murders for revenges on tormenters who insult, abuse, and torture Miss Kim. would be represented to be roughly planned but ceaselessly executed. This very representation in this film which triggers Boknam to exterminate all the people in town is clearly described by the close-up shots on symbolic objects such as sun, or sickle. It was uncertain to me whether or not the sun and sickle constitute useful approaches to film at first; however, as I watched the film twice, scene construction of repeated close-up shots on sun and Bok-nam with a sickle clearly foreshadowed the Bok-nam's gradually rising insanity. So, these close-up shots seem to maximize a human being's desperation on the film and in this respect, I think that these skills are very effective to proceed these scenes by showing Boknam's changing emotions and make audience empathize themselves into Boknam.
Tina Nguyen
ReplyDeleteBedeviled
A striking feature of the movie is how it portrays Bok-nam as an animal. She is also treated as an animal by the other characters in the movie and referred to as one. The auntie would say she looks like a pig. The husband would call her a dog. It is as if they are justifying treating her as a degraded human by calling her by animal names that make her appear animalistic. In the scene where she chases the auntie to the cliff, it is as if she has changed from being a prey to a predator. Instead of being a prey that everyone predates on through physical and mental abuse. She has transforms into a stealthy predator hunting down her prey one by one. There is also a scene where she falls to the ground and the husband puts a metal bowl in front of her which made me think of her being like a dog and her husband giving her food by laying it on the ground.
There are also a lot of scenes that appear in the beginning of the movie that appear in a different form in the movie. The scene where the husband throws red nail polish on her body and face which connects with the scene where she continuously stabs him until his blood splatters all over the body and face. The scene where her husband was standing on the rock as Bok nam and her daughter try to make an escape through the boat. The same scene pops up as the boat driver and Haewon try to leave and they see Boknam as a menacing figure on the same position on the rocks. There are also scenes where Haewon would dream about the times she would watch harm fall upon Boknam as she watches idly from afar. Boknam is also seen protecting Haewon in the dream from rape from the boys as well as protecting her from rape from the uncle. As Boknam is abused by her husband behind closed doors and the daughter waits outside eating as if oblivious or not listening, we see Boknam in the same position as her daughter outside on the porch eating as her husband is having sex with the prostitute. The film presents a lot of parallel between scenes with different scenes that always involve Boknam being abused and her triumphing over her abusers.
Charlotte Fitzek
ReplyDelete“Bedevilled” features many instances in which division and groupings are made starkly clear. In terms of islanders, we usually see the brothers in a two-shot, the three supporting ahjummas we see in three-shots, while the oldest halmeoni, the ringleader of the women, gets her own frame. As such, not only does the plot and dialogue clearly delineate hierarchy, but the way in which we view the characters reinforces categories. The halmeoni, arguably the most detestable islander is even put into her own category in death. Instead of being buried like the others, she literally burns.
Jang Cheol Su also clearly distinguishes between islanders and mainlanders in his shots. For instance, twice he uses a wide shot, where the inner courtyard and house (ground to roof) are visible. In these scenes, Boknam and the prostitute are visually separated by the post holding up the roof. This set-up is repeated in the next scene when Boknam visits Haewon. They are also visually separated by (fashion) style and skin-color. On multiple occasions characters compare Boknam’s sunburnt skin to either Hyewon’s or the prostitutes milky complexion.
Even the genre, slasher film, implies dismemberment and division.
Interestingly though, the director transforms in the end, Haewon into the island through graphic matching.
This emphasis on division leads me to wonder whether Jang Cheol Su is not directly criticizing neo-Confucian values, in which relationships are clearly delineated between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, sibling, and friends. Such a reaction is not unwarranted since during the scene in which Boknam ever more feverishly digs up the potatoes, in a frenzy leading up to her killing spree, the ahjummas are singing Korea’s national song, Arirang (somewhat ironic, since Arirang is often a song which expresses Korean’s ‘han’ (feeling of suffering) and yet here Boknam is the one who suffers the most). Since this film was shown internationally, I will assume that the director also meant for Arirang to be subtitled during this scene, which only adds more significance to the song at Boknam’s breaking point.
Two last things: The end credits show flashbacks of the young girls eating the bozo plants. Has Boknam perhaps been eating them all along?
I am also curious as to how the title was transformed from the Korean “The Whole Story of the Kim Boknam Murder Case” to “Bedevilled”.
Charlotte Fitzek
Bedeviled (2010)
ReplyDelete“Bedeviled” is a notably violent and impressive revenge film. It becomes very descriptive and vivid once Bok-nam begins killing the village people one by one. The movie’s fast-paced storyline and stimulating plot are worthy of praise, but we should not ignore the effective camerawork that makes this movie even more powerful to the viewers. Throughout the movie, the director deliberately has put in some minutely-detailed scenes that involve skillful camerawork, which effectively retain the audience’s focus on the screen and let the viewers feel as if they are part of the story as well. This clever technique successfully adds to the suspense of the film, and one can boldly say that it contributed to this movie’s great popularity and its having received several remarkable awards.
The movie’s outstanding camerawork that produces the first-person point-of-view helps the audience fuse into the movie as the main characters, and therefore adds to the film’s vivid effects. One great example is when Man-jong and Yeon-hee return home from night-fishing. Bok-nam, who just had illicit sex with Chul-jong, is lying down and sits herself as her husband and daughter return. As Bok-nam sits up, the movie shows Bok-nam’s sitting up from her point-of-view, by actually lying down the camera unbalanced and changing the angle to upright balanced position. Through this process, the audience can feel as if they are Bok-nam waking up for her husband, and can better fear what is coming up next for her – Man-jong’s abuse. Another scene where such first-person point-of-view technique is used is when Hae-won is doing her yoga and looks at Bok-nam in an upside-down view. Here again we can imagine the cameraman actually recording beginning from an upside-down angle, getting slowly back to normal balanced upright position. This technique allows the viewers to better understand the close relationship between Bok-nam and Hae-won (at least until the serial murder begins) as they can actually experience their situation from a first-person point-of-view.
Finally, this skillful camerawork technique becomes useful when Bok-nam is stabbing Man-jong’s face and body. After a rough combat between the two, Bok-nam finally stabs Man-jong in the heart and the almost dead man falls to the ground. Not satisfied yet, Bok-nam gets on top of him and swings the sickle to stab the man until he painfully dies. During this intense scene, the camera’s view is used to look at Bok-nam in the point-of-view of Man-jong. As Bok-nam keeps stabbing Man-jong with her sickle, we can see the sickle coming at us and the screen literally turning red as Man-jong’s blood covers the screen. As a result, the viewers can vividly experience the fear and the pain Man-jong must have gone through in his last minutes. Through the camerawork technique that allows the audience to experience certain significant scenes in first-person perspective, the director of “Bedeviled” is able to better captivate the viewers’ attention to the already enthralling plot of the movie.
Byeong Wan (Danny) Kim
Korean Cinema
ReplyDeleteProfessor Steven Chung
Jun Seong Ahn
Bedeviled (김복남 살인 사건의 전말)
A very content, frightening, disgusting, and miserable story is contained in this film, Bedeviled. Starting from the end, an Island named Moo-do is resembled as a woman, Hae-Won, laying down on the floor. The director of this film, Jang Cheol-Soo, wanted to metaphor a side view of the island into an intermingled concept of itself. A woman lying down could tell not only comfort but also death. During the movie, violence and murder appears towards both sexes. If forces happened only towards the women, this movie could have been shown as a discrimination against sex. But the director also wanted to mirror the history of Korea that men overpowered women, and the Korean society thought this was reasonable. We can clarify this by understanding old people living in the island because they always say that women should obey their men and husbands. And Bok-Nam, the disobedient woman, fights against a community of the island.
The movie contains a hidden message; bystander is an offender. Numerous occurrences happen every day. But most people actually ignore or just watch as if the events aren’t related to them. But those ignorance could change one’s life and bring to death. Life is random. You could become a victim and you won’t be able to escape the reality, which means, no one has freedom in this world.
Another important part of this film is Bok-Nam’s view towards people turning their faces away from the truth. When Bok-Nam landed on the peninsula, the sailor gave her portion of the fare to let her have a good time. She says ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Then murmurs herself by saying, “There are also kind people.” This quote is very pitiful because it illustrates that she haven’t seen an actual kind person in the Moo-do Island. And when Bok-Nam confronts Hae-Won, Bok-Nam says in the opposite way, “You are unkind.” Bok-Nam begs for an assistance to Hae-Won, but she denies. Later, Hae-Won regrets her rejection by showing herself that she witnessed the assault of her friend. We should step back and look at ourselves, if we are kind or not.
In Jang Cheol-soo’s 2010 film “Bedeviled,” I gave particular attention to the choice in wardrobe and the role that it played in the mind of the viewer. At the beginning of the film, Hae-won is seen wearing a rather tailored blouse featuring a pattern and skirt that is worn by all of the bank tellers. This not only gives the viewers a feeling of professionalism in Hae-won’s workplace, but also a feeling of boredom in life as all of the tellers are wearing the same look, with the same repetitive job. The tailored and restrictive nature of the costuming also leaves the viewer feeling that Hae-won is trapped and enslaved in the life that she is living. As soon as she arrives on the island, you can see a shift in her wardrobe as she is seen wearing a simple, flowing, and white dress as she recalls her childhood memories and escapes from the confinements of Seoul. This white and airy feeling gives off a feeling of childlike innocence and freedom. It should also be noted that Yeon-hee is wearing a similar dress giving the image of cleanliness in a sea of filth.
ReplyDeleteJuxtaposed against this fresh and inviting wardrobe is that of the family living on the island. Their clothes are quite mismatched, feature many busy patterns, and appear to be filthy. In my opinion, this represents not only how uncivilized they are, but also the ways in which Bok-nam is stuck in the same never-ending pattern of abuse, just as Hae-won was stuck in a pattern of work when she was in Seoul. Another detail of the wardrobe that I noticed was the prostitute’s bright, floral print right after her sexual encounter on the island. Only a few scenes later, Bok-nam is also seen wearing floral print, only hers is dingy, dark, and covered in dirt. When Bok-nam and Yeon-hee attempt to escape to Seoul, they cover their dingy and unstructured clothes with socially approved and clean clothes representing their escape from the island. Once they are caught and brought back to the island, however, their clothes are again covered in the dirt and grime that infests the family on the island. The final costuming that I would like to take note of is seen towards the end of the film. When Bok-nam finally arrives on the mainland, she is seen wearing Hae-won’s white dress from her arrival on the island. This dress now represents Bok-nam’s arrival into a new world that she is unfit to live in. The very last scene of the movie features Hae-won again in a tailored business suit, only this time colored all black, representative of her new outlook on life after her experiences on the island.
MinJoon Choi
ReplyDeleteBedeviled is clearly a violent and revenge film. The violence scenes are vividly illustrated when Man-Jong is beating up Bok-nam. The director does not provide us why or how Man-Jong grew up to become a man of such violence. In a sense, this decision by the director makes the movie even more chaotic and makes the later revenge by Bok-nam understandable to a large extent. To further emphasize this chaotic mood and the nature of the movie, the director uses extremely skilled camerawork, which really closes up on the characters and really enabling the audience to feel the story.
I strongly believed that the director implemented this particular use of camera work to really involve the audience to the movie. If the audience was not involved, this movie is just one “extreme” cinema containing many violence and gruesome scenes. But by using camera works and certain point of views, the audience can have a vivid experience. This experience includes the consecutive killing by Bok-nam. These camerawork have emphasized the magnitude of the murdering and really conveys Bok-nam’s strong feeling of hatred towards these people that have caused her trouble for the past 30 years. By doing this, it also reinforces the theme of revenge, which seems to be the main focus of this movie.
Dong Eun (Agnes) Lee
ReplyDeleteNarrowed point of view in Bedeviled
Jang Cheol-Soo’s Bedeviled (2010) lacks the possibility of portraying the movie from several vantage points. While the message of women’s hardships in life are clearly provided through scenes of physical abuse and sexual assault, the movie overall forces the audience to view the plot from only one narrowed side – that of the women’s. This is exclusively highlighted by gender role. The men of the village are acclaimed as heroes and the elderly women looking up to Man-jong and Chul-jong further underscores how magnificent it is to be born of a male gender. However, through Bok-nam’s suffers both as a wife and as a mother, it is natural for the audience to consider men should no longer be superior to women. Although gender equality is a weighty matter, the director’s intentions may have been easier to accept had the male characters’ voices occupied a significant portion in the movie. This thought completely struck me when Man-jong returns home to face Bok-nam’s monstrous wrong-doings (murdering everyone that betrayed her) and confesses, “You never opened up to me.” It is certainly disappointing since this is the only time Man-jong appears to be honest about his inner feelings. Indeed Bok-nam is no longer rational enough to even contemplate of mitigating their relationship at this point, especially with blood dripping all over her body
Another major aspect of Bedeviled that seems one-sided is the continuous references to Seoul. Although city-life may realistically be more convenient for the general population, the ever-positive images of Seoul degrades life in the countryside to a greater extent. This is particularly evident in the beginning of the film when Hae-won reaches the island to encounter several women including Bok-nam. Her appearances – pale skin and silky hair along with the clean-cut attire stress the positive images derived from living in Seoul. The standard of beauty thus shifts away from the pure and natural environment and sticks to what is brought by Hae-won from Seoul. Moreover, everything is considered to resolve when setting foot on the city. Bok-nam’s only option of living a better life – to escape the island with her daughter and flee to Seoul undoubtedly implies Seoul to be far more superior to the rural island where she belongs. Perhaps offering the possibility of resolving Bok-nam’s conflicts on the island itself could allow the audience to filter out the debate of urban vs. rural life. However the only time Seoul is explicitly degraded is when Bok-nam urges Hae-won to take little Yeon-hee back with her to the city but Hae-won immediately neglects by exclaiming, “Seoul is scarier than this.”
Ryan Chang
ReplyDeleteBedeviled is a story of how an abused and marginalized woman who is betrayed, loses her daughter, and proceeds to take revenge. The path of vengeance ultimately leads to her downfall, however, and everyone involved either died or was scarred forever. The film is similar to those of Park Chan-wook's in that violence and vengeance comes with consequences, and the violence is gruesomely detailed.
Bok-nam, treated like an animal by the residents of the island, becomes a lethal animal when her daughter was killed, and Hae-won's betrayal did her no good either. The interesting thing to note, however, was that when Hae-won tried to hide from Bok-nam by being behind the prison bars, it seemed to correlate with Hae-won's willingness to conform to her current situation and with what a women's place should be. Bok-nam, on the other hand, broke through the bars to attack Hae-won, and this could draw parallels to Bok-nam's unwillingness to be beaten down anymore and not wanting to be "behind bars." However, when the scene ended with Bok-nam's death, the camera moves to the window bars, but light is shining through them. This could refer to Hae-won's unwillingness to be a bystander anymore, and could be the reason why she finally decides to accuse the two men in the beginning of the film.
‘Bedeviled’ is violent and stimulating film that features dusky reality in Korea. In the film, there are physical and psychological violence. Especially film shows how psychological violence can affect one person through the each sequence. Korean tile (김복남 살인사건의 전말) also well explains how the story of the film flows.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, ‘Kim Bok-nam’ lives her whole life in Moodo-island. Moodo-island seems really peaceful and ordinary rural distict but there is full of abuse and suppression on Bok-nam. For Bok-nam violence and abusive language from husband is usual life. Also sexual abuse from brother-in-law is one that she has to bear. These two male character shows that Moodo-island is where the male chauvinism is common and isolated place from reality. Even female elders sympathize with males which makes violence toward Bok-nam is reasonable. So, Bok-nam is the victim of the unconcerned violence from all of the people in Moodo-island.
Secondly, ‘case of murder’ started from the escape attempt of Bok-nam with her daughter. However the escape attempt was vain and Bok-nam was badly assaulted by her husband. Besides, husband killed Bok-nam’s daughter accidently though he assault little girl. In the film, Bok-nam’s only hopes of her life were her daughter and her friend Hae-won. The death of daughter means losing the purpose of living and Bok-nam decided to end her life with the cruel revenge. She firstly killed female elders who psychologically assaulted her over 30 years when the male characters left the island. She also killed brother-in-law while he is grabbing her bottom. The scene of murdering her husband shows many symbolic features of her past. The knife symbolizes husband’s phallic, violence, and authority. By stabbing husband with the knife is revenge of Bok-nam’s past life suffering from her husband.
Finally, ‘whole story’ of the ‘Bedeviled’ is the story of Hae-won as witness and assailant of Bok-nam’s murder. In the film, Hae-won ignore 3 different incidents and it means ignorance became a determining cause of murder. At the end, Bok-nam seems forgive or giving up her revenge towards Hae-won which remove Hae-won’s sense of guilty. Personally, I think audiences who know and watch this film need to understand how Bok-nam suffers in the worst place and why she should murder everyone in the island except male elder. Lastly the film ‘Bedeviled’ represent present social issue of Korea that how cruel and unconcerned Korean society towards the weak of the society.
Bedeviled
ReplyDeleteBedeviled is filled with a really scary, disgusting and yet sad storyline. It can be quite impressive how it expressed the change in women due to the death of her daughter and the mistreatment she had suffered. The meaning of violence and killing was clearly showed in the movie. During the movie, the director showed quite a few minutes long of the murdering scene, it was really good camerawork technique as the focus of issue such the killing with blood shooting out was being concentrated by the audience. the director make use of first person viewpoint and third person viewpoint to help illustrate and emphasize the process of murdering. The director also tried to show many situations of what Bok Nam has been facing. Firstly, she was being mistreated and degraded. She was being named as dog or pig by her husband and husband’s aunty, and was being ordered around to do work. With the death of her daughter, it actually causes her to become an insane murderer and went to kill her husband and the other people in the villagers. Also, statements such as girls do not need to go to school, actually helped to recall the image of what women used to have in the past centuries.
Furthermore, the director would also want to express that in situations where you knew the truth you should probably speak up to fight for the rights. In the case of Hae Won, she knew the truth of the death of Bok Nam’s daughter, Yeon Hee, but she just remained silent and results in the murder chase by Bok Nam. The director probably wants to spread a message that many accidents or situations occurs almost every day. People should not just ignore and pay attention to small little details that maybe helpful to anyone in the society.
At the last few scenes of the movie, the director showed Hae Won lying down and resemble the outline of Moo-do island. I personally felt that it was a very meaningful ending. It kind of reflects that a women lying there and feeling helpless and lost, unaware of what problems the women is facing. This movie definitely help to spread a message to the bystanders to actually start opening their eyes and look around them with their heart.
Joey Tay Hui Lin
In the opening scene where there is a background narration of a story by an unidentified man and then there is a scene where a lady is being bullied by a group of men, there seems to be some foreshadowing of what is going to happen in the movie at a later time, where Bok-nam is also bullied and mistreated by not only the men in her family but also the elderly on the island, which is eerily called Moo-Doo Island, which gives the island a mysterious and dark atmosphere since it sounds very much like ‘Voodoo’ which is linked to black magic. As the main character, Haewon, comes into the story, she is portrayed as a person who is the ‘no-nonsense’ kind and who does not really show any sympathy for the elderly. This put the main character in a bad light and I believe the audience did not feel any sympathy for her when she was forced to go for a break and was later laid off. As Haewon goes to Moo-Doo Island for her vacation, her childhood friend Bok-nam goes to receive her and the stark contrast between these two childhood friends can be seen evidently in their dressing and also appearance. It immediately gave the audience a hint of Bok-nam’s life on this island and how she is being treated, which is also shown later on in the film. The two characters live starkly different lives. This also served to confirm the theme of the film, which was gender discrimination against women.
ReplyDeleteAs more shots of Bok-nam being mistreated are shown, the audience also sees how Bok-nam finally breaks down when her daughter is killed by her husband and nobody on the island helps her but instead tells lies to cover up the crime her husband has done. As she suddenly looks up into the camera while crying for her daughter, a dutch tilt shot is used to show her unstable state of mind, where she then slowly breaks down and goes around killing everybody. There are also close-up shots used in the scenes where Bok-nam kills the people using a curved knife. There is also a flashback showing Bok-nam protecting Haewon during their childhood days whereas when Bok-nam needs Haewon’s help now, Haewon does not help her. She once again denies seeing what happened to Bok-nam’s daughter, which also contributed to Bok-nam finally turning berserk. During this time, it suddenly dawns upon the audience that Bok-nam, who was a lowly character now suddenly seems to have a lot of power and everybody is afraid of her. Towards the end, Bok-nam finally leaves the island but for a totally different reason - revenge. In the end, Haewon stabs Bok-nam in the neck with a recorder, which is an item that linked the both of them during their childhood days, as Haewon used to play the recorder with Bok-nam. As Bok-nam is on the verge of dying, she still hums the tune that Haewon used to play on the recorder, which gives the audience a hint that Bok-nam may still have some sanity remaining since she still reminisces about their past. However, the place in which Bok-nam finally dies seems like a prison cell and thus also hints that in the end, Bok-nam still can’t really escape and get freedom, even till her death. At the closing scene, Haewon is seen lying wet on the floor in her apartment and the camera then zooms out and shows the outline of Moo-Doo Island, which looked similar to the outline of Haewon. It gave the impression that Haewon was still affected by the dark happenings on the island and she is lonely, just like how the island is like now that everybody on the island has been killed. Haewon’s attitude has changed totally and she is shown to be cooperating with the police as she points out the culprits who assaulted the girl in the beginning, showing her repentance and also leaving Haewon in a better light in the audience’s minds.
Felicia Chay
The film 'Bedeviled' obviously was violent and there are many scenes of brutality in the movie. Mostly, the idea that the film contains is revenge. People in the island are assuming the attitude of an onlooker with an extreme indifference to all the affairs happening in the village, especially to the main character, Bok-Nam. That brutality never reveals since they are in the island where it is not easy to contact with the outside of the real world. It is described that people’s ignorant is more terrible than violence. At the beginning of the movie, Hae-Won refused to do mortgage housing loan to an old lady begging her. Moreover, she keeps saying she did not see what happened when she actually saw the gang beating a girl on the street. This action absolutely suggests the main idea to the audiences. It serves as warnings to people most likely to ignore and overlook others’ risky situations because it just has nothing to do with them. Also, Bok-Nam says “You are so unkind” to Hae-Won before she dies. The quote itself expresses that how Bok-Nam was even betrayed by her best friend who she thought was her only hope. It shows how those atrocious acts had to commit and was her last ditch effort.
ReplyDeleteThe camerawork of the movie was also outstanding and sophisticated. When the camera was shooting the scene that Bok-Nam deciding to murder, it took the scene against the sun, which effected to be seen scarier and very meaningful. When Bok-Nam was standing against the light, with the backlight, she looked larger and somewhat overpowering. The angle from the bottom affected also. It somehow foreshadowed upcoming events and tragedies. Overall, I think the technique of camera was very unique and well-done.
Sora Paik
Dong Min Shin
ReplyDeleteBedevilled leaves the audience with a strong impression as a gruesome horror movie. However, it doesn't quite fit the archetypal Hollywood serial killer horror movies. Although Bedevilled involves a serial killing woman as one of the main character, the portrayal of the subject matter differentiates itself from a common Hollywood style.
If you ask if the movie's main part was only about murder scenes, the answer is no. Majority of the movie, including the clip during a cast roll at the end, revolves around the lives of two women, Hae-won and Bok-nam. We learn a lot more about Bok-nam before she starts killing people. In fact, the killing doesn't begin until almost at the end. The murder scenes are short and chases don't drag long as it goes on hit by hit. Since the audience learn about Bok-nam's suffrage on Mudo island a lot before the murders, although Bok-nam is a serial killer, the audience can sympathise her a lot. Also, the movies discusses about unfair gender roll position in which the female is considered to be lower and submissive, in which Bok-nam receives unfair treatment, gets frequently beaten, and gets raped multiple times.
The suspense doesn't build up like common horror movies, either. When Bok-nam decides to kill the villagers, there are no exaggerated heartbeat, almost hyperventilating breathing sounds, intense music, and dramatic extreme camera closeup. The camera just shows her standing, staring at the sky, then the piercing white sky and comes back to normal long shot. Bok-nam's first murder scene is also a casual long shot. Other than the fact that she just slit another woman's throat, there are neither intense music nor dramatic camera shots. In fact, the movie's entire murder scenes covers majority of the gore and lacks any kind of background music.
From Bedevilled, the suspense doesn't build from dramatic camera shots or intense music. Even the chase scene, where Bok-nam chases after her husband's mother, is depicted casually. Usually, the chase scenes where a victim is chased by the killer are one of the intense moments in theses movies with fast moving characters and moving cameras, often switching back and forth from long shots to close ups or medium shots. However, in Bedevilled, both characters moves in rather a slight jogging pace. The old woman tries to flee quickly but fails and stumbles clumsily, while Bok-nam just walks after her. Also, the camera moves rather slowly along with them, framing them with the beautiful natural environment of the island in long shots.
Although Bok-nam's life on the island is filled with horrors of various kinds of abuse, the villagers think them as normal everyday activities. Even the death of Yeon-Hee, the daughter of Bok-nam and the only child on the island, isn't considered that dramatic in their lives. Just like how all the cruelties that Bok-nam experienced are carried out as casual incidents, the horror and suspense of the movie is built by the casualness of the murders.
Bedeviled by Chang Ch’ol-su portrays women suffrage through Hae-won’s grotesque and disturbing story where she suffers from the consequences of living in a sexist society.
ReplyDeleteThe director takes an interesting route to lead his audience to the main theme of the film. For instance, at the beginning of the film there is the use of sound bridge of the radio while the credits appear on screen. The reason to why sound bridge is utilized in this particular scene is to introduce the ambience of where the protagonist, Kim Bok-nam, is living in. After the credits are over, there is a sudden cut to the follow-up shot of the streets. In this scene the audience still hears the sound bridge sound of the radio, but now the visual is the people walking on the streets. In these shots of the streets, the camera pans around the people as if the camera were a car. Also, another important factor is the blurriness of the camera. The people walking in the street are not visible to the audience, because the director is trying to impart that the extras are unimportance to the protagonist. Suddenly there is a close-up to Kim Bok-nam’s back head that makes the audience realized that all the shots that they have seen and heard since the beginning of the film is actually what Kim is experiencing. All up to now, the viewer can conclude that Kim is a person that ignores everything in her surrounding.
However, Kim’s ignorance to other people’s problem comes visible at the scene where the camera moves to the women being abuse by a group of guys. There is a close-up to her hand lowering the radio. This shot shows that Kim is preoccupied by the problem; nonetheless, her actions demonstrate the opposite. The following shot, where the women approaches Kim for help, Kim instead of helping protect the women decides to roll up the window and act as if nothing happened. Throughout this scene the director demonstrates the point of view from the inside of the car. This illustrates that Kim tries to isolate herself from the problems of the others. This is clearly seen when she closes the window as the women pleads for help. In conclusion, the introduction to this film has created Kim’s ignorant and chaotic ambience.
Angela Rivera
The movie “Bedeviled” addresses why a typical figure of woman in Asia is not straightening out as much as in western culture. The interesting points at issue in this movie show that there are many close-shots of hands and feet. The hands of the men characters do not have an obligation or any restriction to explode their angers. At the beginning of a movie, two men slapping a girl’s cheek and no one around that place tells them to not to do that. Also, Man-Jong and Chul-Jong always do not have any hesitation to use their hands over women to make the violence or the sexual violence. The camera director succeeds to capture and emphasize those points of view through the close shots of their hands. For example, the close-shot of skull ring on a hand from one of two men who terrorized the unknown young woman, the scene of Man-Jong hugging and petting Yeon-hee with his hands underneath Yeon-hee’s bottom, and the other close shots of hands in the scene of men forcefully make the violence over the women. In contrast to these, the old ladies yelling at Bok-nam and insist that a woman is unacceptable to grips a stone at back of her husband when she holds the stone in order to stop Man-jong hitting her daughter. Because deteriorated Confucianism causes the segregation of women and tells that doing what men do is unsuitable to a woman, the malice of Bok-nam is capable of reason. The turning point of Bok-nam, the camera captures closely to sunlight and Bok-nam’s eyes in back and forth for several times. Perhaps the sunlight symbolized Bok-nam’s mental faculties, which is blind to revenge as she cannot bear in mind anything except the revenge. Therefore, she follows a message from the sun and notices what she urges. After the turning point, she dramatically shifts her hands to perform her revenge to people without any hesitation. In addition to these, Bok-nam also gets rid of the old ladies who neglect her as they curse and abuse the word fury over her. Also, she tries in vain, to kill Hae-won because she remains in silence about what Bok-nam struggled and abused. At the end of the movie, Hae-won lies down on the floor, and this scene dissolves to a scene of Mu-do Island. The connection between Hae-won and Mu-do Island significance that Hae-won also contribute the Bok-nam’s malice to be occurred. Through this film, the director clearly delivers that a reason of Bok-nam’s revenge is not only comes from the men, but also from the women who restricted or silenced to her. Furthermore, it exaggerated pointing out to a reality of Korean female’s reputation in society. The female in Korea restricted from both of the men and women who believe in Confucianism. In a fact, women restricted and limited themselves, so that woman’s right does not change for the better.
ReplyDeleteHannah Choi
Saewon Kim
ReplyDeleteThe film, "Bedevilled" is full of violence and sexual assualts. The film depicts how Bok-nam, the victim of the movie, turned into avenger. However, the movie does not criticize Bok-nam's brutal revenge. Instead, the movie presents what made Bok-nam commited acts of revenge and justifies Bok-nam's vengeance on islanders and Hae-won. I think the director wanted to point out and criticize two things: patriarchal society and bystander attitude toward the victim.
To emphasize that there is no innocent bystander, the film starts with the scenes which show Hae-won's bystander attitudes and depicts Hae-won as a cold-hearted woman. In the beginning of the movie, Hae-won witnessed a young woman beaten by bullies. The police officers asked for eyewitness testimony and victim's father asked her for help but she just ignored them. At her work, an old lady asked for a loan but Hae-won disregarded the old lady. Lastly, she even disregarded Yeon-hee's death even though she witnessed and knew that Yeon-hee died due to Man-jong. Hae-won's bystander attitudes triggered Bok-nam's revenge.
In the end of the movie, Bok-nam said to Hae-won, "You're unkind." I think this line clearly reflects director's criticism on unkindness, indifference, and bystander attitudes. If Hae-won standed up for Bok-nam and told the truth, things could have changed. Also, in the middle of the movie, Hae-won was almost raped by Chul-jong. If Bok-nam didn't stop Chul-jong, Hae-won would have become a victim like Bok-nam. Overall the film delivers that anyone, even a bystander, can become a victim.
The film also criticizes misogyny and patriarchal society. There are 9 people in the island. The island is isolated from the mainland and islanders rely on men. They call Bok-nam "Damn pig." or "Dumb bitch". The local elders even say that "Women's work is nothing to compare men's work" "Stones should only be used to punish women". or "Girls don't need schooling." These shows that islanders have misogynistic attitudes.
I think director's intention is well conveyed to the audiences. However, I can't understand some of the scenes. For example, the old man and Chul-jong keep chewing on bozo-leaf and bozo-leaf often appears in the movie but I can't understand what the bozo-leaf implies.
Bedeviled differs from many movies because it does not have a clear protagonist. Some may argue that we should root for Boknam because she was clearly the victim of ridicule and abuse. In addition, her lack of power in their island community makes her a wonderful candidate for an underdog. However it becomes challenging to be on her side once she begins her killing spree. People empathize other people because they feel similar and can relate to their situation, but it’s gets harder to sympathize for Boknam after she goes crazy because it doesn’t feel like she’s human anymore. Her animalistic behavior transforms the audience’s vision of her into something more like a wild creature. It’s also just difficult to cheer for the character murdering everyone.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, others may argue that Haewon is the protagonist because she seems like nothing more than an innocent bystander. However, her lack of negative actions doesn’t make her the character to cheer for. She continually tries to keep herself out of conflict, as seen with her telling the police she doesn’t know who killed the girl and her telling the doctor she was sleeping when Yeonhee died. The character the audience wants to side with would get involved when called upon and stand for victims when they can’t stand for themselves. Although she calls out the men who murdered the girl at the end, her lies about not seeing Manjong kill Yeonhee trumps her good deed. Moreover, the audience can’t side with Haewon because of the way she treated Boknam. Since childhood, she let accepted Boknam’s help but never returned the favor.
There are undoubtedly many characters I hated—Manjong, the main old lady, the rest of the old ladies, and Cheoljong—but there is no particular character in Bedeviled that I empathized with or wanted to be the last one standing in the end. I felt sorry for Yeonhee because of her youth and the horrible childhood she had but didn’t deserve, but there was not enough depth to her character to feel anything more than pity.
Caitlin Omai
Christine Kim
ReplyDeleteThe movie Bedeviled is a prime example of a true Korean movie. There are numerous examples of Korean cultural specificity. Ddak chi is a Korean game played by people of all ages. There was a brief scene of when Yeon Hee and Hae Won fold up textbooks and play ddak chi together. Casual group bathes is also very prominent in Korea. In other countries, it is considered “weird” and “uncomfortable” to bathe together. However, in Korea, it’s quite normal and very casual. Even though Haewon and Boknam are both fully-grown women, they bathe together just because. Another Korean element that has been mentioned throughout the movie is bean paste. Bean paste is an essential ingredient to any Korean dishes. Throughout the movie, Manjong would always tell his wife to put bean paste on her wounds. These are just a few of the many Korean culture elements present in the movie.
Bedeviled is also a great example of social transformation and gender troubles. Yeon Hee is not allowed to go to school just because she’s a girl. It wasn’t against the law, but against her father and grandma’s will. The first half of the movie also shows that men are powerful and that women are powerless. The movie begins with a girl ruthlessly murdered by two guys. In Moodoo Island, Boknam is constantly abused and raped by Manjong and Chanjong. Both times the females didn’t fight back; they helplessly let it happen. Many would say that in that time period and in Asian culture, this is normal. However, the social transformation begins when Boknam snaps. The death of her daughter and constant abuse ignited the inner beast within her and she became crazy. She viciously kills everybody on the island, except for the old and silent grandpa. When she killed everybody, she didn’t really struggle to kill them, except for Manjong. He fought her, but this time she didn’t let him get away with it. This is when the gender troubles occur. It is unusual for a woman to kill a man.
The setting of the film “Bedeviled” takes place on an island called ‘Moo-do’. The movie’s theme is revenge of a woman who had been a good wife, a good mother, and a good friend. There are a lot of distance shots when anticipation is at climax. These distance shots can be found when Man Jong, the husband, is coming for Bok Nam and her daughter. Also, same type of distance shot with same settings but different character can be found later in the film when Bok Nam is coming for Hae Won. The similar type of distance shot is used as well during flashback of Yon Hee’s death. When Haewon is sleeping in the office she dreams about Also, pan movement of camera was used to maximize visual effect of Man Jong's blood trail. Also, during all killing scenes, diegetic sounds were maximized to give vivid description of what is happening.
ReplyDeleteThe characters in Moo do are really strange. They neglect all of women's hardships and only care for men. Such patriarchy resembles that of early 1900's or even before that period. Moo do's society show total patriarchy. Even after Yon Hee's death, the old women who call themselves ‘grandmothers’ of Yon Hee takes side of Man Jong. Also, no one dares to correct Man Jong when he has sex with a prostitute in front of his wife, and Cheol Jong has sex with his sister in law, Bok Nam. Throughout the film the old female characters often says that they need man for the island to do hard works. This seems like the reason why they all advocate Man Jong constantly.
This film reveals inner strength of a woman, or a mother, when Bok Nam harvests the whole potato cite previous to start the killing of all residents of Moo do. The harvest scene is consisted of shots that become shorter and shorter as the film progresses.
The death of helpless woman in the beginning of the film was a forecast of what will happen at the end of the film. If Hae Won had helped the innocent girl, she wouldn't have been beaten to death. Even when she is called in at police station, she still refuses to help other because she doesn't want to get involved in a bad situation. The blooded face of innocent girl in the evidence photo resembles final moments of Bok Nam which was also caused by Hae Won's negligence. Later in the film, Bok Nam tells Hae Won that she is too unkind; this also can be noticed in the beginning of the film where she yells at a helpless old lady who she could've helped.
The movie, "Bedeviled" seems to be a typical violent, thriller movie. However, there is a deeper meaning into it as the film centers around the general theme of revenge and how one's attitude and behaviors can change according to his or her surroundings. It begins with several short takes on the street of Seoul, showing its crowdedness and sense of urbanity. The film contained various camera techniques to build up the tension throughout the movie. In the beginning, it was particularly interesting to see how the camera pointed from the bottom to the top when taking a shot of Boknam and up to bottom when taking a shot of Haewon. It suggested a sense of hierarchy in which it helped portray Haewon as being more superior and well off than Boknam. Also, there was one scene where both characters laid down on the wide bench. This single shot included both Boknam and Haewon, which helped show the clear contrast between them in skin color and clothing. Towards the end, in the scene where the man and Haewon attempt to leave the island by getting on the ship, the camera points at the two characters through the grass in order to show that it is seen in the perspective of Boknam. All of these various camera techniques help in building up the tension and in developing the characters.
ReplyDeleteThe movie also contained various symbolic objects such as bean paste and pipe. These objects do not only appear more than once in the movie but they also each has special meaning. Bean paste represents both cure and resentment while the pipe represents past memory that includes sense of longing and friendship. In the scenes where Boknam gets stung by the bees and even when she kills her husband, bean paste appears. The former case represents cure while the latter scene showed that bean paste represented resentment as it illustrated how it cannot cure everything. It cannot make the pain of death less nor cure one's wounded heart. Even when Boknam comes to Seoul, she brings the pipe with her, which means that it is something important and valuable. She even asks her friend to blow the pipe before she tries to kill her as she longed the past that she spent with her friend. Pipe represents a sense of nostalgia and longing past.
The movie overall incorporates various camera techniques and symbolic objects to convey the major theme of the film, revenge. Boknam was not a person who was innately born as a violent individual. Her surrounding people, loneliness, and harsh life all led to her change.
(Julie) Jiong Yi Huang
ReplyDeleteJang Chul-soo's "Bedevilled" depicts the distinct lives of two childhood friends named Hae-won, a woman living in the busy city of Seoul, and Kim Bok-nam, a woman living on an island called Mudo and their ultimate meeting after years of separation.
From the beginning of the film, the differences between Bok-nam and Hae-won become transparent: one lives the life of a city girl and the other in the countryside. One of the most remarkable differences is shown in the skin color that both characters have: one pale and one tan; Hae-won, being the city girl, lives a life that allows her to remain indoors while Bok-nam lives a life where she is often outdoors working. Though this may be easily overlooked, Bok-nam constantly makes comments and gestures regarding the beauty and admiration for the transparent skin Hae-won possesses (it is commonly believed in South Korean culture that paler skin is more desirable). Another notable difference between the two characters are the clothes that they both wear. When Hae-won first arrives at Mudo, she is wearing a white dress that accentuates her pale skin whereas Bok-nam wears clothing covered in dirt due to the fact that she has been working in the fields all day. Even throughout the film, characters that come in from Seoul is often wearing much more revealing clothing with pure colors while characters from Mudo wear dark, often muddy colors.
At a very prominent point in the film, Bok-nam makes the ultimate decision to leave Mudo and take Yeon-Hee, her daughter, along with her. While on her way to the boat to leave the island, the audience sees a still extreme long-shot of the island with the light sea in the background and Bok-nam and Yeon-Hee walking towards what would be thought of as salvation. This "heaven" is short-lived the moment Bok-nam decides to kill everyone after her failure to bring her child to salvation. Here, Bok-nam is seen in a close up where the sun is blazing in the background. Rather than showing the light as salvation, it is seen as the fire that burns along with her hatred of everyone on the island. After her first round of murders, the island is filled with darkness and many extreme close-up shots to present the darkness that has taken over Bok-nam and the loss of hope and confusion felt in all those in Mudo.
Despite the fact that Bok-nam murders those on Mudo and finally makes it to Seoul, she will never be able to feel the freedom she desired. This is seen in the final scenes of the film where Bok-nam is dying in Hae-won's arms where the audience sees them from outside of the jail cell they are in. This, in turn, represents the inability for either women to escape the fate that has fallen upon them.
The movie "Bedeviled" delivers various reflections and messages to the Korean society. Firstly, the old, biased Korean traditional belief in the male-dominant society is depicted in the film's setting of a small, isolated island. It is absolutely unacceptable and utterly disgusting that BokNam has been raped by different guys in the island since her childhood, yet the entire community denies the truth and acts as if nothing happened; the people seem to think that the guys were just "being men" and that women need to understand men's such natural instinct. BokNam not only suffers from the sexual aspect, but she is also constantly beaten up by her husband and ignored and treated like a pig by the community. The risk she senses for her daughter as her husband grows more interested in the daughter's body pushes BokNam to try escaping from the island with her daughter to protect her daughter and not let anything happen to her daughter that she had experienced in this uneducated, immoral island. This, the mother's willingness to sacrifice for her daughter, is a true example of mother love (모성애) which is another powerful Korean traditional idea. However, when the escape fails and the daughter gets killed by being pushed by her husband, BokNam becomes insane as the death of one's child is the most cruel, helpless thing that can happen to a mother.
ReplyDeleteThe second main theme in the movie is the ignorance. Throughout the movie, HaeWon is continously acting as a witness of different situations where her testimoy can bring a huge influence. Especially, when the officer comes to the island and investigates BokNam's daughter's death, BokNam has no one on her side but HaeWon, as every neighbor conceals the accident in the favor of men and the elderly of the community. Neverthelss, just as she remains silent in the opening scene at the police station, HaeWon does not want to get into a complicated situation and, therefore, claims that she did not see anything. This decision and her ignorance, topped with the feeling of being betrayed by the best friend, is the last button to bring BokNam's madness, where she is so angry and hopeless that she decides to kill everyone involved in the situation, including HaeWon. After all the killings and death, Haewon returns to Seoul and heads to the police station to do what she chose to ignore at the beginning. By doing so, she hopes to release some guilt over BokNam, but as anyone can imagine, it will never go away..
Bok-nam is constantly referred to as "pig" and "dog," especially by the elderly aunt and her husband, and their attitude and treatment towards her are horrendous. There is a complete absence of respect and human decency towards Bok-nam and she is merely regarded with the same kindness that is shown towards a "useless animal." After the death of her daughter she transforms into the animal that everyone believes her to be, unleashing the vicious primal instinct that only a threatened mother could be capable of. Overcome with grief and anger, she exacts her revenge on all those who have wronged her. Just as a lioness would attack any animal that have threatened her cubs, she savagely murders everyone on the island without empathy. This depicts the gender roles in Korean society, according to Confucian values a wife was expected to be submissive and dutiful to their husband. Regardless of the beatings she endured, the village elders always sided with her husband even in the instance of her child's death. However Bok-nam breaks free of the traditions created by ancient tradition and serves justice on her own terms.
ReplyDeleteOne of the camera techniques used extensively was how the view of the camera changes as Bok-nam transformed from a submissive slave to a terrifying killer. In the beginning of the film, whenever she is being beaten or disrespected the camera is aimed at a downward angle looking down at her, as if we are viewing her through the eyes of her attacker. She looks meek, docile, and weak causing the audience to feel sympathy for her. When she begins her vengeance spree the camera angle switches to an upward angle when the murders are taking place, as if we are looking at her through the eyes of her victims. In a sense, the audience either cheers her on as her rids this earth of horrible human beings, or shivers in fear as she enacts her gruesome murders. This represents the frightening power she has over the inhabitants of the island, and the terror she has forcibly instilled inside them. Since they viewed her as an animal she has revealed to them the savage beast they have unleashed.
Julia Wong
ReplyDeleteBedeviled
In “Bedeviled” there seems to be a theme woven throughout the film of sexism, animal references, of light, bitter revenge, and speaking out. The film opens up with the camera panning through crowds in each shot, setting up the area and there is the sound of a radio in the background. The sound allows the viewers to be naturally placed into Hae-won’s car in which she ignored the assault on a woman occurring outside on the streets. Even when brought into questioning as a witness, she refuses to tell all that she knows even though it would bring justice for the woman who was assaulted. The director clearly shows the maltreatment of women that exists in Seoul even though it is supposed to be a better-off place to be (or at least seen that way in the countryside/Moo-do). When Hae-won visits Moo-do and sees Bok-dam, it is soon evident the sexism and maltreatment of women that occurs across this island as Bok-dam is immediately seen being raped. She is referenced as a dog by her husband, left unprotected by the old women in her village, and forced into a lowly position for most of her life.
To Bok-dam, Seoul is a place of hope and future for herself and her daughter. Whenever she things of Seoul, the camera tilts slightly upward and the light around her is brighter. When she attempts to run away from Moo-do with her daughter, Yeon-hee, the camera stays still as Bok-dam and Yeon-hee run further to the background and I think that the director purposely made the far off scene beautiful, with lots of light, to show this theme of light and a turning point of someone’s life. The director uses close-ups to show the frantic-ness and anxiety that Bok-dam feels as she attempts to escape when she realizes her husband, Man-jong is gaining on them. After Yeon-hee’s death, Bok-dam seems a little insane and when she looks up at the sun in the potato field, her whole body seems enraptured by the light. After the scene she goes in a crazed attempt to murder everyone who brought injustice onto her and her daughter. The scene where she looks up at the light, is also another occurrence of a turning point in her life. Though the director may not have meant for the light to have that meaning, I personally thought that the use of taking far-shots and close-ups with the light shining on the person was an impactful motif. Even at the ending scene where Bok-dam dies in Hae-won’s arms, the camera tilts upward from where Hae-won and Bok-dam are sitting which is in the dark jail cell room, up towards where Hae-won is looking into the light. This time, it’s Hae-won’s turning point as she goes to the police station and immediately puts in a statement against the men that assaulted the woman in the beginning of the film. I felt that the director was successful in showing the sexism and maltreatment of women, as well as the power that people have to change and speak up to save another person’s life.
Bedeviled is a dark, psychological film about two women whose lives are intertwined from the time they spend their childhood on Moodo Island. One is named Haewon, a callous woman who lives a dreary life in Seoul, while the other is Boknam, who never managed to escape the island and is being severely abused by the people around her. At first the protagonist seems to be Haewon since the movie starts off with her as the focus, but after she goes to visit her friend on the island, Boknam slowly takes the center for the first stage of the movie. This is consistent with Haewon’s unlikable tendency to stand aside as an indifferent bystander, which she has shown to do time and again. For instance, the film introduces Haewon’s character by portraying how she first refuses to help a woman that is about to be raped, and then refuses to testify against her rapists. Similarly at Moodo, Haewon becomes a silent witness to the heinous acts of abuse directed at Boknam and her daughter, even turning away her cries for help. This cold lack of empathy from her friend is what finally pushes Boknam off the edge in the light of a tragic event.
ReplyDeleteThe island is only populated by two men and a handful of elders, yet Boknam is treated as nothing better than a slave. All the elders hold on to old-fashioned ideas of women being subservient to men and do not even allow Boknam the freedom to talk back to them or leave Moodo as she wishes. Boknam is essentially a prisoner at Moodo and has been all her life. The film portrays how woman are undervalued and abused, even by other women, and how an individual can only take so much before they succumb to their primitive rage. The first half of the movie is a slow, disturbing descent to the second half of the movie, in which Boknam finally snaps and goes on a killing spree of all those who have wronged her. With the buildup of abuse all throughout the movie, Boknam’s massacre works as a kind of sick catharsis to finish off at the climax.
It was interesting how light was used as one of the motifs of the film. Murders and other terrifying acts usually are seen to take place at night, but in Bedeviled, many events happened in broad daylight. When Boknam finally broke and killed all the elderly women, she stated, “I stared at the sun for so long, and it spoke to me.” Even at the end, when Boknam attempted to kill Haewon and ultimately died in her arms, the film cuts to the sight of daylight pouring through the bars of the jail window.
The recorder was another motif commonly used in the movie, first seen when the girls were both young and innocent, and first broken when Boknam was assaulted while Haewon hung back and watched. At the end, Haewon uses the broken end to stab Boknam in the neck and kill her. Still, in her dying moments, Boknam’s last request was for Haewon to play the song of their childhood for her.
Rather than a growth of character, at the end, Haewon has to acknowledge the consequences of her actions. The realization of what she has done hits her, cold and hard, and the final scene is of her lying down on the floor of her apartment while the camera pans out and changes to the image of an island of her likeness. She hasn’t become a better person. Haewon simply realizes what kind of person she has been all along, and must live with the knowledge the rest of her life.
Karen Lam
ReplyDeleteI think 'Bedeviled' has a lot of contrasting elements present. For example, in the scene in which Haewon arrives onto the island, her white dress, clean and styled hair, and pale skin clearly shows that she is a city girl. In contrast, Boknam, Haewon’s childhood friend, has dark skin, messy hair, and loose baggy clothes, which shows that she is clearly a country girl. Also, in the scenes after Boknam gruesomely killed her aunts, there was a storm. After the storm, the skies were sunny and perfect, a stark contrast from the bloody horrors that had occurred on that island.
The director of this movie used sounds to emphasize emotions and actions. To be honest, I did not watch many of the gruesome scenes in the second half of the movie because it was too bloody for me, but I was still able to get the general gist of what was going on because of the sounds in the movie. Louder sounds were used to build suspense, and the audience’s reaction sounds reflected what was happening in the movie as well.
I think a recurring theme in this movie is childhood. There were many flashbacks and references to Boknam’s and Haewon’s childhood, in which we learned about their past friendship, and see a focus on a recorder that Haewon was teaching Boknam how to play. I think these scenes were used to show how Boknam longed for the past, when she wasn’t raped by boys, and when she wasn’t abused by her husband and his family. Even in the end, Boknam gestures to Haewon to play the broken recorder that she has kept all these years. I felt like there was another contrast in the scene in which Boknam dies, because her dress is soaked from her own blood and the blood of the policeman, but Boknam and Haewon move their fingers in harmony, as if they are playing the recorder. To me, this moment felt like a moment of peace after all of the killings that had occurred, which was a big contrast.
Bedevilled was definitely not what I was expecting. When you preluded our screening of the movie by saying that it was a horror movie, I was expecting a lot more 'horror' from the very beginning. However, the disturbing but not quite horrifying build up preceding the slasher-esque second half almost made me believe that you had been joking with the class, and we weren't in for any guts and gore for today. But the slow construction of the background story is what I think makes Bedevilled one of the most provocative films I've watched to date.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the movie brought up a lot of questions about the human condition. No other species on our planet does as much harm to its fellow members as humans do. The inexplicable pain that Boknam has to go through had most of the class gasping or tearing up at some point. This unfortunate character has had to endure so much that even when she goes on her bloody rampage, I never once thought, "kill that bitch," like I did at points of the Housemaid. This made me question, what deems an act of violence justifiable? We have the laws of our countries but are there no codes beyond what civilization has marked as righteous that we as humans sometimes feel allow for exceptions for our actions?
When people talk about Korea, sexuality and sexual crimes are not things normally talked about in public discourse. I was extremely surprised to find so many blatantly sexual scenes throughout the movie. In fact, most of Boknam's pain is centered around sex. We see her being exploited by brother-in-law, realize her husband is using her daughter, her daughter was even a product of rape, not consensual love. We also see how these perverted acts of sex have shaped her when she kills her husband by sexually seducing him in the most unconventional of ways. Seeing as this film came out in 2010, I think a central message that I took away from the sexuality of the movie was the start of Korea finally opening up about sex. Sexual topics have always been kept hush-hush in Korea, I would say ever since the comfort women of the colonial period. But now that movies such as Bedevilled are coming out with fairly positive audience reception, I think that Korea can start to work on addressing sexuality through constructive means.
There was also an unusual similarity between Bedevilled and Castaway on the moon. In both movies, we have characters who are trying to run away from the problems they face in civilized hellholes and end up on remote islands. At the end of both of their journeys, our initial characters find salvation through others. Of course, their salvations were found via very different means, but I found it interesting how both of these recently produced movies ended up chasing what I saw to be similar messages.
In Bedevilled, I felt that the director focused on getting many more close ups of the characters than medium or long shots. There were of course examples of all three, and because of a mixture of shots we know the action takes place on an island, that it is quite rural, the houses are old, etc. But unlike in Castaway on the Moon where the island itself could be considered its own character, Bedevilled's cinematography helps us focus solely on the characters and their actions.
Jasmine Tat
ReplyDeleteThe movie “Bedeviled” tells the story of a community that lives on an isolated island. The subtle cinematic features and characters present in this film contribute to the morally disturbing and horrific aspects of the story. To begin, the characters were all dirty looking and yellow-toned, which was logically drawn to the amount of rural work they do and their exposure to the sun. However, yellow tones are present throughout the whole film. In the beginning, I thought the yellow lighting was to give a horror feel to the movie, but yellow objects began to appear continuously. In the beginning, Haewon is trapped in a bathroom stalls with yellow walls, Bok-nam wears a yellow sweater for a long part of the movie, the bean paste is yellow, the bowl and table during most scenes are yellow, and the lights seeping through the old-fashioned paper doors are yellow-ish; yellow objects that appear throughout lead to Boknam’s realization scene when she stares at the sun, which powerfully emanates yellow. In my opinion, the yellow represents challenge as well as optimism and life—a contradiction that is present in Boknam’s life. Boknam is constantly being oppressed physically and psychologically from the people on the island and encounters neverending hardships. She dreams to live in Seoul, even if she might be a prostitute. Another contradiction that is present in the film is how Boknam has to kill almost everyone in order for her to truly live her own life. She repeats the hurtful phrases her husband says to her while she is killing and burying him. Going back to the significance of yellow, during the scene when she looks at the bright yellow sun, the shots change from looking up at her from the ground to her perspective looking at the sun. The audience can see Boknam’s realization that she has the ability to have power over the others and chase the new life she has always dreamt of.
Haewon’s character throughout the movie barely changes. From the beginning to the end, she is always a bystander who does not help others or speak up. As domestic violence appears in the beginning scene and is a big issue on the island as well, Haewon can be seen to symbolize “bystander” problem in the Korean culture. As domestic violence and male dominance is an ongoing part of Korean culture, little change has occurred . Whether it be a modern and dreamy place like Seoul or an isolated and conservative island, the same issues are still present with little improvement., referring to the modernizing yet still conservative duality in Korea. Furthermore, the friendship between Haewon and Boknam does not change. Haewon has always ignored Boknam. Whenever something horrible happens to Boknam (even if Haewon plays a role in her suffering), she still goes back to her and Haewon accepts her back. The ending scene when Haewon stabs Boknam with the broken recorder represents their love-hate friendship. Even though they were trying to kill each other, they spend Boknam’s last painful moments together; the recorder was put back together easily like their friendship.
Jae Young Lee
ReplyDeleteThe film, Bedeviled, depicts vividly two main characters between childhood and adulthood, because Hae-won is completely changed from childhood. She loved Man-bok more than Man-bok loved her before. Since Hae-won taught Man-bok to play the recorder, Man-bok began to love her, but Hae-won left to Seoul and Man-bok has been missing her over the time. In Moodo Island, the movie shows very different environment with outside of Moodo Island. People in Moodo Island have still old-fashioned tradition that defines male chauvinism. Man-bok has been raped by several men and people do not care about this happening at all. This happening can not be understood and can be critic thesedays. Also, I can understand Man-bok’s mind during watching the movie, because she only needs one person to be nice to her or to care of her. In the final, when Man-bok’s daughter got killed, she was so outraged to all people in Moodo Island and began murdering people viciously.
I can say that the movie also wants to tell about people’s ignorance. In the beginning of the movie, Hae-won was the witness who saw the site of the murder but she told the police that she doesn’t know murderer at all due to worrisomeness. Hae-won also saw Man-bok’s daughter got killed by her father, but she lied again. As a result of her all ignorance, she has gotten unfortunate over the time. Therefore, I think that the moive’s second theme is “ignorance.” If people
Stacey Hahn
ReplyDeleteThroughout Bedeviled, Director Cheol-Soo Jang explores the objectification of women, whether it be in Seoul or Moodo Island. Jang successfully fleshes out this issue through repetitive shots of high heels. The sequence of scenes focuses first on Haewon and then the prostitute, the only two women on Moodo Island that have ever experienced life in Seoul. Towards the end of the film, the camera focuses on Haewon’s heels on the dock, where Bok-Nam left them after wearing Haewon’s clothes to the mainland. The significance of the heels stems from the perceived sophistication and power it gives them. While women in Seoul are portrayed as independent, successful, and sexy, the women on Moodo Island exist solely as a commodity to men. However, considering the opening scene where a women is brutally assaulted in Seoul, along with the scene where the prostitute is dragged away by the brother, we see that the women of Seoul, even with this perceived symbol of independence and strength, are still subject to the same sexual abuse and subordination as the women on the island.
In addition to the focus on high heels, Jang further illuminates the issue of women’s subordination through repeated close-ups on breasts. Now, the Director may just be a horn dog, but I’m pretty sure that he chose these types of shots to fulfill some sort of purpose. In this case, the breasts are always a source of sexual tension. Sounds pretty obvious, right? But upon further reflection, the breasts not only provide an outlet for the carnal desires of the men on the island, but they also produce desire in other women, specifically Bok-Nam and her daughter. Throughout the film, we see how the men simply grope women’s breasts and sex follows seamlessly, most often against the will of women, which further solidifies men’s superiority and power over women. But in another scene, we see Bok-Nam grope Haewon while bathing in the outdoor pools. In addition to this, we also observe Yeonhee’s fascination with Haewon’s breasts because they “make you loved by men”. Through this, it is evident that breasts are not only sexually sought after by men, but also coveted by women. Although these specific female characters are not trying to subordinate one another, their own desires confirm the preexisting social standards that objectify women through the emphasis on the importance of sexual appeal.
Gloria Lee
ReplyDeleteThe film "Bedeviled" is definitely a violent and cruel thriller movie that explicitly depicts the ignorant attitudes of people towards the inferiors in our society and shows a corresponding dreadful result at the end. Since there were many horrific murdering and bleeding scenes, I could not watch those scenes and closed my eyes most of the time. The dreadful result and ending of the film is resulted by Bok-nam who is just weak and subordinate and endures violence, sweated labor, abuse, sexual harrasment, and incest throughout her life at moo-do island. A life in moo-do island seems really abnormal and gloomy. I believe there is a couple of scenes that foreshadows the dreadful results in the island. The very first scene of the film where a woman gets harrassed by the bullies and finally gets killed describes what a part of Bok-nam's life has been going through by the men in the island. Also, when the main character, Hae-won arrives in the island, she notices the men in the island are all chewing a bozo leaf, which is a weed. The men chew the bozo leaf throughout the whole film and I think it foreshadows the stupidity, malice and cowardice of the people in the island.
After Bok-nam lost her daughter and got no help from Hae-won, she suddenly stares the sun and gets an answer of killing everyone in the island. When she decides that, the weather turns into darkness, implying the beginning of the dreadful murders. The murders happened since Bok-nam was so bedeviled by the brutal crimes of the men, ignorant attitudes from the people of the island including Hae-won, and her inferiority.
Maybe it was the only choice for her to kill everyone in the island to be free and express her resentment. Moo-do island might seemed at first very beautiful and peaceful island. However, it turned out to be the island that is full of crimes, strong patriarchal thoughts, ignorance, lies and secrets. I think these hidden characteristics of Moo-do island is what the director of the film tried to describe our society today. Finally, the one who kills Bok-nam is Hae-won. Hae-won came to the island to avoid from the busy, worldly life and ignored Bok-nam's request to avoid from the cruel crimes. However, she committed murder and became a part of the crimes by killing Bok-nam. I noticed that the last scene which Hae-won lied down in her house gets overlapped with the scene of the Moo-do island. I think this is another purpose of the director to imply that it's the island or our society who killed Bok-nam at last. Even though this film is very violent and contains some irritating scenes, I think the director well depicted the problems of our society such as many crimes and ignorance to inferiors using the Moo-do island and its inhabitants.
"Bedeviled" begins with a shot that accompanies no sound. Soon after, short takes of streets come in and they alternate with shots taken from inside a car or from Haewon's perspective. These alternating shots engage Haewon and what will develop as a murder case. Nonetheless, Haewon is not directly shown in any of these shots, adding a sense of apathy as audience only observe the victim and thus there is little room for understanding Haewon. Short takes also appear after Haewon is threatened by a murderer. Haewon feels insecure and at the same time, a sense of guilt. Short takes convey a message that she is at mental instability.
ReplyDeleteHaewon demonstrates hostility to several people throughout the movie. Meanwhile, she wears a white dress, which gives a sense of purity. Her behavior and her attire are in an ironic match. The white dress further plays its role as conveying irony when Boknam comes to the mainland and tries to kill Haewon wearing the white dress. The white dress makes a contrast with what Boknam is wearing. Boknam is wearing a shirt that looks too big for her. This further helps the film construct Boknam as a pathetic character.
The gender discrimination theme is run throughout the film. A lot of gender discrimination, however, come from old women. The line, "We need a man at time like this" is repetitively used, even when Boknam's mother-in-law is at risk of death. Many close-up shots are taken after Boknam starts to kill people. These close-up shots are effective in conveying character's emotions. Starting from the shot of the Sun, the amount of light projected changes (I am not sure about the technique used here), implying the inner change of Boknam.
The main environment, Moo-do island, is a place where there is no effective law. Everything can be sealed by people in the same interest. Boknam and Haewon try to escape from islands. They constantly fail. At the moment of their failure, long shots are often taken. The long shots makes characters look relatively small, further emphasizing their incapability.
The recorder also works as a substance to convey several meanings. First of all, Boknam cannot play the recorder, thus it becomes her dream and hope. Furthermore, the recorder is a substance that connects Boknam and Haewon. Haewon used to wipe the recorder, thinking it was dirty. Nevertheless, she does not wipe the recorder later on. It even works as a tool to eventually kill Boknam, yet Boknam tries to re-fix the recorder, her dream and hope.
The shot in which Man-jong gets stabbed and spiked by Boknam, the low angle shot puts audience into Man-jong's perspective. This makes audience to feel the pain in an effective way. In addition, it further effectively constructs the cruelty constantly shown by Boknam.
The film ‘Bedeviled’ is a based on a true story that addresses about the gender discrimination in Korea. The movie looks like it is reflecting the issue of gender discrimination; however, mainly what the movie depicts is that people today is somewhat ‘unkind’. In the beginning when there was a girl being slapped by group of men, no one around them gives a glimpse or reach for help. Hae-won herself was one of the witnesses to the girl getting beaten up to death, but denies to testify and walks away. This scene is the beginning of the film that indicates suppressing and covering up what really happened. People in Seoul and Moo-do are not so different in terms of this selfishness for the good of their own beings. Hae-won’s second denial of the truth after watching Yeon-hee’s death triggers Bok-nam to murder everyone on the island. Bok-nam constantly reached for help to her childhood best friend Hae-won as she is her last hope to escape from madness of Moo-do’s life, but Hae-won again her selfishness and ignorance was the answer to Bok-nam’s signal for rescue. Bok-nam had no voice or opinion as she was assaulted and sexually harassed from her husband Man-jong and his brother. Simply like one of the grandmothers on the island said, everywhere there is law and one who resides inside such property should obey with no question. Bok-nam therefore lived in silence going through inhumane life in Moo-do in order to survive. Extreme gender discrimination on the island divided the role and lifestyle of men and women, and every men in Moo-do was a godlike figure in which women must obey and support at all times. Whatever happens inside the community was covered up and concealed, and whoever witnessed remains silent as well. The dead silence and ignorance to cover up the truth does not only create innocent victims but also triggers a desire for vengeance in today’s society.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the movie we raise a question of whether the story is a fiction or not due to its sensational storyline and violence. The fact that people even question about the story’s credibility reflects that people’s ignorance toward the society and being ‘unkind’ to the people in need of desperate help does really exist and the fear of the consequences to come in the years ahead should not be underestimated.
Harin Chung
After watching Chang Ch’ol-su’s Bedeviled, two popular American movies come to mind, Cinderella and the Saw series. In Bedeviled Bok-nam’s relative abuse her similar to the way Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters abuse her. Bok-nam’s relatives force her to carry out all of the hard and demanding physical labor in addition to commenting on how she is lazy and ungrateful. It seems director Chang Cho’l-su is trying to create sympathy from the audience in order to justify her mental breakdown where she kills everyone. In addition Chang Ch’ol-su creates even more sympathy for Bok-nam by giving her a husband who beats and abuses her and a stepbrother who rapes her. However the point of creating this situation is not so much a way of gaining sympathy from the audience for Bok-nam as it is to gain sympathy for Hae-won. Because of all the times Hae-won refused to help Bok-nam, she is left with the guilt of the deaths of all the island people.
ReplyDeleteChang Ch’ol-su’s Bedeviled is also similar to the Saw series because of the theme of punishing people who have not necessarily done something wrong, but punishing those who may have played apart in wronging someone. Hae-won is presented as a woman who does not care about anyone except herself, she is never willing to provide help to anyone (which can be seen in the scene where she denies the old lady a loan). However after witnessing Bok-nam’s mental breakdown and even being chased by Bok-nam she realizes her faults and finally feels guilt. All the times she refused to offer a hand to Bok-nam led to the death of all the people on the island.
I think the message the director hopes the audience carries away from the film is that whenever possible help those who are in a worse situation than you because it is better than having the guilt if something happened to that person. Also I think he implicitly implies how when you do something simple for someone but receiver of the help believes its more, they will do as much as they can for you (in childhood Hae-won gave Bok-nam a recorder and from then on Bok-nam tried to protect Hae-won from everything).
Seung Hyun Koh (2013841663)
ReplyDeleteThe film, Bedeviled, portrays a gory story of revenge that leaves the viewer with discomforting sentiments until the very end. Through establishing the main character, Kim Bong-nam as a victim of incomprehensible torture, the director attempts to capture one of Korea’s most dire social issues, gender inequality. The end result of this gruesome, hyperbolized illustration of male dominance is the feeling of emptiness and despondency that lingers in the viewer’s head.
One of the most important elements of the film is its exploration of mistreatment against the weak. On the Moodo Island, gender inequality is prevalent. The women in the village consider themselves to be sub-par, saying that males should be the ones dominating the women. The people on the island believe it to be perfectly normal for a wife to withstand her husband’s heinous acts of physical and sexual abuse. Such maliciously twisted interpretations of Confucian belief of women obeying their husband illustrates, albeit to the point of hyperbole, the gender inequality issues that are still present in Korean society. A research conducted by OECD shows that Korea is still unable to narrow down the gap between men and women. Even on TV dramas, gender inequality is one of the most common recurring themes. While it is true that the inexplicably sadistic crimes committed by the men of the island are hyperbolized, the film’s portrayal of gender equality issues is laudable in the sense that it explicitly encourages people to become aware of the issue.
It is interesting to note a film effect which sets up the final mood of the film. In order to accentuate the feelings of emptiness and despondency, the film utilizes a dissolve effect in which a shape of an image is dissolved to that of another image of the very next scene. Through this effect, the two scenes are able to conjure up conspicuously similar sentiments and atmosphere. For instance, near the end of the film, the image of Haewon lying down on the ground is transited to the next scene by being dissolved to form an image of the island. Through this effect, the director’s intention of drawing similarities between the two scenes is rather apparent. First, the image of Haewon emits gloomy sentiments stemming from the voidness present in the character’s visage. The hollow eyes that do not seem to have focused vision can be interpreted as her feelings of loss and internal pain. Although Haewon is no longer under physical threat, she is subject to profound discomfort, arguably haunted by regrets and culpability for the murders of her friend, Kim Bong Nam. Had she admitted witnessing the heinous killing of her friend’s daughter, the ‘vengeful massacre’ would not have happened. Similarly, the island is now void, with not a single survivor. The emptiness of the island brings about a sense of melancholy and sadness. While the gruesome murders have come to an end, discomforting feelings linger on, never being able to be resolved or alleviated.
On a final note, the word 무도, which is roughly equivalent to the English word chivalry, is a rather ironic name for the island. Perhaps it is an implicit allusion to our society. Though our society claims to uphold morally upright values, misdeeds never cease to exist.
June Wie
ReplyDeleteThe film Bedeviled is a story that revolves around two women; Bok-nam and Hae-won. The majority of the movie is about their lives on Moodo Island and the relationship they share as well as the relationships they have with the other people on the island. This was a very grotesque yet sad movie that illustrates how women are treated on this island as well as the way the women treat each other.
The movie had lots of foreshadowing. For example, the first scene when Hae-won acts as though she does not know who killed the woman foreshadows her reaction towards Yeon-hee's death. She tells the doctor that she was asleep when she witnessed everything. Although Hae-won was the protagonist, it was hard to find her likeable due to her negative personality and her lack of action.
The film was also filled with symbolism. For example, the recorder is a symbol of the innocence of childhood as well as the relationship between Hae-won and Bok-nam. When they show them playing the flute, they take turns evenly. However, once the boys come, Hae-won runs away and Bok-nam is left alone to face the group of boys. In the process, the flute is broken which shows the beginning of the imbalance of their friendship. At the end, Bok-nam hands Hae-won the recorder asking her to play it for her and eventually Hae-won stabs her with it. The potatoes were also symbolic. The auntie is always telling them to dig them up before they rain. I think the rain was symbolic of Bok-nam's wrath and revenge. When she begins to kill everyone, the rain pours.
At the end of the movie, Hae-won is seen lying down on the floor. The camera zooms out and you see that Moodo Island is in the shape of a woman . This is ironic because of the way that women were treated on the island. Women do not go to school and their work is 'not as hard' in comparison to the work that men do. Bok-nam is always abused by her husband, his brother and the other women who live on the village.
Although this movie focused on the lives of Hae-won and Bok-nam, it was hard for me to understand either character fully. However, it was a bit easier to understand why Bok-nam acted in the way she did at the end. On the other hand, Hae-won was a difficult character for me to understand because ever since her childhood she was always a bystander.
Dayeon Hyeon
ReplyDeleteMain theme of this movie is bystanders’ guilt. The first-person point-of-view makes audience to be bystander themselves and let them think about what they may do in that case. Are we brave enough to speak out the truth? Or will we be silent as Hyewon? This angle of camera makes people to reflect and more honest to themselves. The very last scene of this movie was really impressive. When Hyewon lies on the floor, Hyewon and Mu-island is overlapped. Hyewon is an individual who refused to speak out the truth, but if everyone becomes a bystander as Hyewon our society will be like Mu-island. Being a silent individual will cause a corrupt society. Guilt will not be punished and justice will be blurred. At the end, camera moves far away from the Mu-island and shakes as sea wave. It seems like Hyewon and the island are swept away like truth is disappearing by silence. This last scene implies the whole theme of "bedevilled".
In this movie, Boknam's face is often extremely closed up. When Boknam finally decides to murder everyone, sunshine and Boknam’s eyes are extremely closed up. Boknam stares sun and being lost in thought. Boknam’s eye shakes and she makes a decision. Close-up of a variety of Boknam’s emotion shows her anxiety, anger and fear. In addition, when Boknam kills Manjong, her husband, her cruel and evil face is closed up. This cut shows a person’s degradation in a corrupt society. It is very grievous and pitiful.
This movie was very cruel and uncomfortable to watch. However very deep and made me a moment to reflect myself.
Tae Kyu Kim
ReplyDeleteWhen the film was screening today, I thought to myself, there is no way it is going to be more disturbing than The Housemaid. I was wrong; the film has all the violence and gory scenes it needs. Even the beginning of the film, the director Jang Cheol-Soo, immediately shows an incident of a murder of a woman. In my personal opinion, I think Korean horror films are more gory and detailed in scenes than in American films; I just haven’t seen such scenes in American films that are so detailed like the one scene where Bok-Nam is being raped by her husband’s brother; who can think such twisted plot? Nonetheless, the detailed scenes are the reason why I think Korean films are more emotionally capturing to the audience than the American films; while screening today, I could also hear the audience grieving whenever it showed an unpleasant scene. Although it is quite difficult to determine the main protagonists of the film, I feel like the director intentionally differentiated two groups of people; people from Seoul and people from the island.
Jang Cheol-Soo does an excellent job in creating his two groups of characters. He makes it very obvious that the islanders are naïve, dark-skinned, and messy. On the contrast, Seoul People are described as pale-skinned, busy and complex. Almost all the characters from the island are crudely brutal, with the sex-driven males and the pitiless old ladies. They all treat Bok-Nam as a slave, or even more closely, an animal. She is abused sexually, physically and also psychologically. Haewon, on the other hand, is described as a frustrated single lady. Once the film was over, it is clear that Haewon is an indifferent person; she does not want to get involved in any situations, even when it involves her friend. Although she changes in the end, throughout the film, there are numerous cases where she just ignores the truth. In the beginning when she is brought in the police station, she tells the police that she is not interested in cooperating any longer. Also as a customer service providing occupation, she bluntly and rudely tells the old lady that she cannot do anything about her issues, in other words similar to saying “you are screwed, so go away”. The most shocking case is obviously when Haewon is a suspect when Bok-Nam’s daughter’s death and she denies being a suspect. I think Haewon just grew up to be indifferent and cowardly. There is also one scene when Haewon and Bok-Nam are young and they are attacked by the males and Haewon runs away leaving Bok-Nam being sexually assaulted.
There are many impressive camera works that was considered into the film. When the male islanders are shot for the first time, the camera focuses on all the males together but when it focuses on the old females, there are many scenes where the supreme Halmoni is shot alone away from the crowd of other Halmonies. I guess it was intended to show her power as the leader of the Halmonies. Another interesting camera work is when Bok-Nam receives her sort of “salvation” from the sun. The camera starts off tilted or angled below and behind Bok-Nam and then changes towards the sun, making it seem like we are looking through her eyes towards the sun. Then the camera changes back and forth from the angle of Bok-Nam’s perception towards the sun, to the sun looking at her or in other words the camera zoomed in to her face. In the end, the camera again is angled below and behind her and then a quick transition is made and the camera angled in front of her. This camera work feels like the director wanted to really emphasize the power or salvation transmitted to Bok-Nam via the sun.
Ultimately, Jang Cheol-Soo did an outstanding job in disturbing the audience. What was so brilliant about the film is that the director made the audience think Bok-Nam as a merciful character, instead of a crazy psychopath on a killing spree. While watching the film, we definitely feel the pain that drives Bok-Nam into a serial killer looking for vengeance.
Janet Tang
ReplyDeleteIn Bedeviled, one of the major recurring themes had to do with unequal gender roles. On Moo-do Island the woman’s place is to be obedient towards her husband and work without complaint. Bok-nam has to continuously work hard on the fields as well as tend to the bees for their honey, all of which is sold off for a profit that goes solely to her husband. Despite how hard she works, Bok-nam is frequently brought down both physically and verbally by her husband and the grannies. One of the most striking line’s was said by the granny when she says something like ‘a woman is happiest when her husband’s dick is in her mouth.’ As a woman, it’s surprising how engrained into her it is that a woman should be so obedient and filial to her husband. On the island, Bok-nam has no power to bring those that have wronged her to justice. Even when her husband causes the death of her child, everyone on the island, despite having witnessed everything, still sided with Man-jong, Bok-nam’s husband, because he was more important to the island for it’s survival, so important that it didn’t matter that a child died because of him. Throughout the entire film, Bok-nam had no power to defend herself or even her own child. It isn’t until Yeon-hee’s death, that Bok-nam reaches a point where she realizes there’s no way she can continue on just being as she was before, on an island with a murderer and those who would only bring her down every chance they get. The shot where she stares up into the sun, which starts off being so bright it hurts your eyes, slowly gets a bit darker. It seems representative of the change that occurs inside Bok-nam. Bok-nam was originally a bright, cheerful woman, and it seemed despite the conditions she was living in, she could still be happy. This was probably due to her sole source of happiness, Yeon-hee, but after she dies, something in Bok-nam dies too, and that’s also represented by how the clouds begin to cover the sun, just like something dark grows inside Bok-nam that takes over. When Bok-nam begins her killing spree, it’s symbolic of how she’s taking back the power that every single person on that island took from her. The only person she spared, being the old man who never did anything to her. The last person on the island she kills is her husband. As the final as well as the most important murder, Bok-nam viciously killed her husband. For the women on the island, Bok-nam killed them quickly with the sickle. It wasn’t until she killed the men that she got more violent. The more pain and suffering they put her through, the more gruesome their deaths were. It seemed that once Bok-nam killed everyone on the island that hurt her, she somehow regained the power over her life that she lost.
Miwon Kim
ReplyDeleteKorean Cinema
Bedeviled
Bedeviled centers around the typical roles of women in both old and modern Korean society. Haewon portrays the contemporary life of a typical city woman whereas Boknam, who was raised and lived in Moodo Island for her entire lifetime, illustrates hardships of being a woman as she is treated poorly in the village as a laborer, a punching bag, and a prostitute. This film highlights the specific gender roles of men and women, as men are acclaimed as kings and women as maids. However, for Boknam’s case, she is not even considered as a maid. Rather, she is treated like an animal, which later in the film reveals her animalism through preying on the village people as if she is a predator. Constantly, the eldest halmeoni emphasizes how Boknam should respect her husband and his family. When Boknam calls her husband by his name, the halmeoni scolds her for not respecting him. Instead of her being the center of her life, Boknam is consistently forced to do the labors. She has no control of her life whatsoever. This is how a typical woman lived in old Korean society. Women had no power and had to follow the husband’s order whether it is harsh or not. Being absolute to the husband was considered as respecting. The film demonstrates numerous examples of powerless women. The opening scene starts with an unknown girl getting ruthlessly slapped by two gangs, and in the middle, the three halmeonis ask Boknam’s husband to fix their houses, which underscores the fact that the roles for women and men are vastly different.
The movie can be separated into two parts: peace and violence. The setting in the beginning is fairly peaceful for the villagers (not Boknam) until Yeon-hee’s death. With different point of view shots, the movie effectively informs intensity of Boknam’s revenge on the people. Before Boknam was powerless, many of the shots were her husband abusing or the halmeonis criticizing her, representing Boknam’s inability to fight back. However, with the sickle, she is not afraid of anything. The sickle dramatically turns Boknam’s weakness to strength. The dramatic and fast-paced killing gives great intensity for audience. After glaring at the sun, she suddenly determines to kill the halmeonis who had no idea that she was planning on murdering them. When Boknam encounters with her husband, she ruthlessly swings her sickly with no hesitation. During the horrific slaughter, Man-jong’s point of view intensifies the horror as the audience can imagine as if we are getting killed. The blood is splattered all over the screen, and we can vividly see Boknam’s face engrossed with hatred and enthrallment.
Myoung Su Ko
ReplyDeleteKorean Cinema
Bedeviled
People often ignore a scene of crime even if they have witnessed a crime scene, because they do not want to get caught into a big issue. For example, people often store up problems of bullying or sexual assault. Although they know that it is wrong, they keep their silence. The film, “Bedeviled” directed by Chul-soo Jang, is a thriller movie that illustrates how this ignorance has bad influence to our society. Hae-won, a single women who works at a bank in the Seoul city, visits the Moodo, an island that she used to live during her childhood. When Hae-won is staying in Moodo, she notices that her friend, Bok-nam, is struggling from her husband’s violence and other villagers’ mistreatment. However, in spite of Bok-nam’s earnest request, Hae-won ignores Bok-nam and consequently, Bok-nam feels betrayed by Hae-won’s apathetic behavior. At the end, after her only daughter was killed by her husband, vengeful Bok-nam ends of killing all villagers including her husband by brandishing sickle. The two main female characters Bok-nam and Hae-won are the metaphors of the two different groups of people, people who are neglected from the social safety nets and people who are in social safety nets, remaining spectators nonchalantly. The director intentionally emphasizes that ignorance and silence could be sin. The tragic ending of this movie shows why we all have to help each other.
Amanda Kim
ReplyDeleteThe two social atmospheres of Jang Cheol-soo’s Bedeviled starkly contrast each other. The viewer is first transported into the setting of Seoul. The first scene is a tracking shot of people walking on the streets of highly industrialized Seoul. The next scene occurs in Hae-Won’s workplace. Hae-Won is shown having a conversation with an older lady about a loan. The older woman clearly is of a lower status than Hae-Won as she seems unconfident and pleads to Hae-Won for a loan. In contrast, Mudo Island is an undeveloped environment. The dynamic between families is of almost a pre-modern era. Men lie at the top of the hierarchical pyramid, while elders support the men, and lastly women and children lie at the bottom of the pyramid—having little to no power. This dynamic starkly compares to the dynamic shown previously in the movie, where Hae-Won, a woman, works in a position of power, and can decide whether or not to give a loan. Furthermore, the law enforcement of the island is investigated shortly and careless by a detective, who is easily manipulated by the inhabitants of the island. This primitive way of investigating a crime contrasts the organized and secure questioning of Hae-Won in Seoul. Because of the primative, insecure way of questioning in Mudo Island, men are free to abuse women, while in Seoul, men will freely taunt women, but not always abuse them. Lastly, through contrasting imagery of Seoul and Mudo Island, Cheol-Soo suggests that the social atmosphere of Seoul lies in favor of women, while Mudo Island prefers men.
As Seoul promises a better lifestyle for women, Cheol-soo uses cinematic techniques to depict Kim Bok-nam’s desires visually. A long take of Kim Bok-nam and her daughter walking into the sunrise as they talk of Seoul suggests to the viewer of their hope. Both characters are placed in the middle of the frame, with a lot of empty space to their left and right, creating visual symmetry and harmony. This harmony adds to the light and bright feeling of the scene. In addition, the camera does not zoom or take a close shot of the mother and daughter to view their facial expressions, but the viewer knows their mood through the cinematic significance of the moment. Furthermore, the long length of the scene adds to the suspense of the moment. The viewer hopes that Bom-nam and her daughter will make it to Seoul and have a better life. However, the perfect harmony of the scene leaves the viewer knowing that something must disrupt the harmony to further the plot.
Woo Yeon Park
ReplyDeleteThe movie "Bedevilled" by Jang Chul-soo reflects the ugly truth of Korea's traditional idea of male and female through heart-breaking gruesome story of a female islander in Moo-do. The movie focuses on the ignorance of human rights which female members of society went through. Placing the setting of the movie in an isolated and uneducated community amplifies the level of crudeness in Korea's conventional hierarchy system which puts the male on the top, elders and then female and animals being at the bottom. Repetition of female elders saying "this is why we need men" confirms the audience their strong respect towards men and reveals that they are not only physically isolated but also mentally limiting themselves. Also, in the flash back to BokNam and Heawon's childhood, when the boys in the island appears on the screen, the camera shows the girls through the legs of Manjong, which indicates the empowerment of the boys and foreshadows the danger of sexual assault. As the movie proceeds, in a lot of scenes, the camera is often in BokNam's perspective, so that Manjong is always looked up from lower eye level. Manjong is always enlarged and threatening, resulting that the audiences perceive Manjong as a powerful evil figure and sympathise Boknam.
One eminent theme in the movie is the sexual desire of the male characters. Many scenes of sexual intercorse in the movie presents violence. Boys poking BokNam's shirts with a branch of tree, Chuljong raping BokNam and Manjong having sex with a prostitutes; all of these scenes presents hitting or hurting of female characters and none of the scene portrays pleasure. Such a violence attitude towards the intercorse illustrates that the male characters are only looking for release of their primitive desire of sex instead of having a connection with female characters. In addition, the male characters feel empowered during the activity. Perhaps, as Manjong reveals in the end that he felt ignored and not beloved, sex is only way he actually feels powerful over BokNam. So, purposely having sex with another woman in front of her is his nasty way of expressing his weakness. Lastly, the movie conveys that sexual activity symbolises the opposition of love. When Yeon-hee's perception of father's love becomes the sexual relationship with her dad, the movie marks its climax point where it maximizes the corruption of Manjong.
Along with the relationship of male and female, the movie conveys its second theme of ignorance in the society. The ignorance of Hyewon, supposedly BokNam's best friend results in BokNam's absolute breakdown to insanity. BokNam's murder is not Hyewon's fault or responsibility, but she is the only one who could stop BokNam's misery and prevent the murder. The contrast of their skin tones not only differentiate their fate, but also their personality. After the death of BokNam, she adopts bits of BokNam's characteristics and bravely points the men in the police station.
The movie Bedevilled shows the unfortunate sequence of the matter of cause and effect. One of the major causes being Hae-won’s selfishness and disability to feel sympathetic for others. The opening scene is the first example of this discern of others. The view from the inside of Hae-won’s car when she rolls up the window acts as a screen similar to that of a television’s. Although the suffering and the desperate need for help was greatly shown in the girl’s action, she was simply an onlooker and had no role in what was going on the other side. The same went on with the other minor events that occurred where the police officers and fellow co-worker tried their hardest to resolve problems that Hae-won did not want to involve herself in.
ReplyDeleteHae-won’s negative attitude towards life is what caused her to arrive to the island ignorant of the abuse occurring to her friend by those living there. The excitement that Bok-nam’s contains at Hae-won’s arrival is seen from the long-shot, helping pull in the small boat and jumping on board before her friend even moved a muscle. By that point she believes that her savior has finally arrived, greeting Hae-won with a clean house, food, and washing her clothes as early gratitude for the unasked favor. A mix of jealously and admiration occurs throughout the stay. Moments such as when the two friends bathe and an overhead view of both individuals is seen compares how Bok-nam’s skin and hair have been mistreated by the abuse and working conditions on the island while Hae-won’s the pale complexion and smooth skin represents what the Korean culture signifies as beautiful.
Even through the suffering, Bok-nam maintained a positive outlook and finally tried to escape the island after a realization that she couldn’t kill her husband. The first time she picked up the sickle after discovering his intentions towards her daughter, temptation was over-come by the concern for her daughter. However, once Hae-won’s selfishness betrayed her after the death of her daughter nothing held her back from the repaying back the island’s dwellers for everything they had done to her. The death of each individual became worse and more graphic by the amount of hatred Bok-nam contained for them. The end was a puzzle for me because it went from a moment of hate to peace as the two girls reflected on their childhood in the final moments of Bok-nam’s life. She had always taken care of Hae-won yet, she did nothing to thank her back. That’s why Hae-won must have felt guilty and returned to the police station to report the men from the opening scene.
Daniel Rhee
ReplyDeleteBedevilled
Just like how every movie starts off with a scene that sets the context for the movie, this movie seems to start off not with a panning image, but with an image that changes scenes rather than having one smooth transition. As we slowly progress through the various images displayed in the scene cuts in the beginning, we soon realize that the film is shot in the perspective of Kim Hae-won. At first, I did not realize that Hae-won was the protagonist, but once the director shows the scene in which Boknam loses her daughter, the exact same scene is played but this time including Hae-won. Even though Hae-won saw the murder, when she was questioned by the police officer, Hae-won was unable to respond. This puzzling scene further helped me realize that the movie was played in Hae-won's perspective because she knew everything that was going on in the movie. Once Hae-won was on the island, she witnessed everything that happened. Because she knew that Boknam had been beaten all her life on the island, Hae-won was afraid of what would happen if she stood up against the island, which ultimately led to the downfall of Boknam, as we find out later that she also knew that Hae-won knew what was going on in the movie. Another scene which led me to believe that Hae-won knew what was going on was the flashback to when she and Boknam were friends. Boknam sacrificed herself to ensure Hae-won's safety and Hae-won knew it, but was unable to do anything about it.
One interesting technical aspect about this film that I have never seen before was that the film never used many moving images like zooms. Other than the one scene near the end where the director zooms out from Hae-won's body as she lies down on her apartment floor to model Mudo Island, no other scene was zoomed in. Any scene that was shot at a distance, the zoom would be a cut scene straight to the intended image. Also, as the movie progressed, the changes in scene picked up, adding that "thrill" effect to the movie. The film became quicker in pace and the faster the plot moved, the characters' actions became more unpredictable. This could be seen in the sequence when Boknam was harvesting the potatoes. The scene changes between Boknam harvesting the potatoes and the grandmas taking their break increased in speed, which created more suspense, ultimately leading up to the tipping point where Boknam begins her revenge. Another symbol of the harvesting of the potatoes can be seen when Boknam is "harvesting" her husband. The speed of the potato harvesting can be mirrored to the speed of her putting the hoe into her husband. The quickness of change in scenes, rather than having the camera move, definitely increased the suspense of the film which in my opinion, made it all the more intense. Aside from the gore and impaling of people, the quickness in scene changes is what made the movie all the more thrilling rather than scary.
Mia Inhwan Choi
ReplyDelete‘Be devilled’ (김복남 살인사건의 전말) by Chang Ch’ol-Su is a great example of representative Korean thriller such as The Man from Nowhere, I Saw the Devil, or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. All of these revenge movies give people understandable reasons for the main character to kill people violently and at the end audience support the main character. Also the cobs in these movies are usually powerless which makes the main character to resolve it by him/herself. ‘Be devilled’ examines the difference in regional development between the big city (Seoul) and extreme suburban areas (Mu-do). While the big cities became modernized, the people who chose to live on in the isolated suburbs were labeled as old fashioned. Bok-nam’s husband and Mother-in-law, both held ridiculously conservative views, such as females should do whatever the male tells her to do and that girls don’t need to study, to abuse her as their slave and infringe upon her human rights. On the other hand, Bok-nam’s old friend, Hae-won is an example of contemporary people, highly educated but hard-hearted and neglecting. Bok-nam sent her many letters so she can run away to Seoul with her daughter but Hae-won simply avoids her pleas and goes on with her life with indifference to the problem. Thus Bok-nam tries to escape with Yeon-hee but gets caught by Man-jong, and while he is beating Bok-nam, ends up killing her daughter. This event combined with everything else going on in her life made, Bok-nam, the victim, lose every hope she had, turning into a monster and start the revenge.
The shots in this film are focused on isolation, the views of an on-looker, victim, and the assaulter. The city, Seoul, is mentioned many times in this movie but it does not really show what the city looks like. It is more dependent to the overly exaggerated description of Mu-do and suburban people about Seoul. However, every time the ship reaches and leaves the island, the view is towards the island. The movie flows horizontally, and the shots were taken also horizontally for the fast rhythm of the story. This adds people to think the island is small and awfully isolated from the outside. Secondly, many of the shots are what Hae-won witnessed. This feels like I am looking through Hae-won’s eye. These events that occur in the past and present are witnessed through Hae-won’s eyes. Next, the shot changes between the victim’s view and the assaulter’s view. For example, when Bok-nam attacks Mother, the camera shows the cliff, and the illusion of Bok-nam standing close to her. Then the shot changes to the face of the mother trying to persuade her. Also when Bok-nam stabs her husband repeatedly, Man-jong’s blood splashes over the camera. Then the view changes to how she is looking down on him. This pattern recurs every time she kills someone.
The thing that I noticed is that when Bok-nam was getting assaulted, the view doesn’t show what she is looking at. This made me feel like I became another on-looker that was looking at a fragile and helpless Bok-nam. This technique helps stir up emotion within the viewer and leaves them to helplessly watch Bok-nam being put through a series of painful events.
Jieun Yoon
ReplyDeleteThe film, "Bedeviled" is filled with violent, disgusting and miserable story. It portrays one lady's life from the most pity one to cruel one.
This film starts with Haewon's ignorance of others. She was a witness of one crime scene, but avoids from it to not get bothered, which I interpreted as a summary of this movie. Haewon visits Woodo, where she spent her childhood and meets her old friend Bok-nam and her family. While Haewon was staying in the island, she got to see her friend, Bok-nam, was sexually abused and beaten by her family, as Haewon saw one crime scene in Seoul she ignored it also. Bok-nam finally decides to escape from Woodo to Seoul, where meant a freedom to Bok-nam, with her daugther. However, they got caught and beaten by Man-jong and the daughter died. The police comes over to check about Yeonhee's death and all the people denies about what they saw, even Haewon denies it as she did in Seoul.
Bok-nam starts her revenge for her daughter and herself. Bok-nam kills all the ones who ignored Yonhee's death, but she failed to kill Haewon. After, Haewon goes to police and tells the truth about the crime scene she saw in Seoul as she wanted to forgiven by Bok-nam.
Gloria Chang
ReplyDeleteBehind the revenge and murders,a theme that runs throughout the movie is that of silence; a feigning of ignorance.
The film starts off with fast pans of the city streets from the viewpoint of a car. There is a sense of carelessness as there is no main focus on the streets. There is also a disconnection with the radio talk show hosts laughing while the lady is assaulted on the streets. She knocks on cars but no one cares; ears are plugged to the radio and the woman’s cries are ignored. This carelessness runs through the entire film culminating in Bok Nam’s eventual revenge.
Right from the start we learn about Hae Won; she doesn’t bother about the assault she witnessed from her car or the old lady getting a loan. She ignores her mom on the phone and throws away letters from Bok Nam. We also see this in the villagers. Bok Nam numbs herself to the extent that she can eat rice outside the room where her husband is with a prostitute. The village aunties ignore Bok Nam and work her to the bone, treating her like the village slave. Even though her husband knows that his brother rapes her, she keeps silent in fear of getting abused further. Hae Won sees Yeon Hee’s murder but would rather keep silent. No one cares about Bok Nam. It all comes together in Bok Nam’s remark that in the village, even if you know, you act like you don’t know (something like this I can’t remember the exact phrase.) Her murder frenzy is a her way of breaking out from the silence and changing her role from oppressed to oppressor (in a sense).
The camera angles work well to represent the important parts of the film. One scene which I felt was extremely well thought of was when Bok Nam stops her frenzy of potato picking and stands facing the sun. The camera captures her from the bottom up giving her a sense of power which she was never given in the entire film. The shot empowers her as we see her against the sun. The same effect is used when she hacks her husband’s body. Rapidly cut scenes of her are shot from below and signifies the power she finally has over her husband. Another shot is of her sharpening the knife but it is rotated (the sharpening block is horizontal to the screen) and represents her state of mind at that moment, she’s not exactly thinking straight anymore. Lastly, in the final scene where we see the island moving further away, the camera seems to be bobbing along with the waves and fades off; it is as though we are on the last boat out leaving behind all that happened on the island to slowly fade away.
Emerson Sosa
ReplyDeleteBedeviled is a thrilling movie in which blood is used in dramatic ways on the screen. It uses the camera in ways in which the viewer feels as though they are encountering the slaughter of Bok-nam in person. It is a voyeuristic film in which the involvement of the viewer in necessary to make the film move in a emotional direction towards Bok-nam; feelings of sympathy, pity, and most of all fear.
What most struck me in this movie was the onslaught that Bok-nam threw upon her island home and of course in the prison. During most of her attacks on her enemies, most of the shots are medium close shots. This allows the viewer to see all the blood spewing from the bodies she is slaying with her favorite weapon of choice, the sickle. (One side-note is the symbolic nature of her choice of weapon: Bok-nam has suffered on the island where her auntie is always telling her to stop being lazy and pick the potatoes before they get wet. The sickle was a source of imprisonment on her island. She then uses the same sickle that she furiously used to dig up multiple bags of potatoes to kill most of the people on the island. She uses the sickle as a source of freedom. She cuts away at all the people that kept her down in island.) Going back to the blood, some scenes are meant to make the viewer gasp and squiggle in their seats. One in particular is when the husband sits down to drink some water with the boat driver. The boat driver sees blood fall in his cup and he instinctively looks up. The husband looks at the fear in the boat driver's eyes and as the husband looks up, the camera looks up in a hurried fashion and focuses on the severed head that looks down upon them. The viewer knows what to expect but the way the camera moves in this scene brings the viewer into the eyes of the husband and it is as if we had never known that a head was in the canopy. The viewer continues to be pulled into the movie as we hear a scream from Hae-won at which point, the camera follows our instincts to look to where the noise is coming from. We are notified by Hae-won that Bak-nam is about to dismember both males in the scene. Since the takes are medium close-ups, we cannot see Bak-nam enter the frame until we direct our attention to Hae-won's finger pointing in the direction in which Bak-nam is coming from.
The trick in the cinematography here is to give the viewer blinders like a horse with carriage. The director intentionally uses these close up shots to bring elements of gore and excitement as seen in the aforementioned scene. And to much applause, this is succeeded in Bedeviled.
Chang Ch’ol-Su's "Be devilled" (김복남 살인사건의 전말) portrays a murderer called, Kim Bok Nam, who lives a miserable and suppressed life in a island, Mu-do, as a victim of the domestic violence as well as the sexual abuse. To justify her murder, more than half of the movie, from the beginning, describes her situation in Mu-Do where all the people including the families ignore and afflict her, resulting in her daughter’s death. However, ironically, the movie itself is not narrated through Kim’s perspective but her friend, Hae-Won’s. The movie starts by Hae-Won seeing a girl beaten by guys and ignoring the girl’s signal for help. And for the first several scenes, her ignorance of other’s and selfishness to get away from a spotlighted life is illustrated.
ReplyDeleteWhen Hae-Won comes back home from the police office in the beginning of the movie, her house is very dark and silent that the house itself shows the loneliness and tiredness of her life. However, contrastingly at the end of the movie, after Hae-Won realizes something from Kim’s death, her house seems to have more bright and yellowish light which makes the whole shot of Hae-Won in the house very comfortable and warm. The movie closes with the dissolving of her relaxed bodyline into the shape of Mu-Do and zoomed out. The shot of the Mu-Do island from the outside appears consistently throughout the movie but for the ending, Mu-Do embraces the yellow sunlight which make it to look very silent but somehow settled; Mu-Do received the peacefulness back like how Hae-Won finds the stableness of her mind finally.
Hae-Nam is a friend of Kim which makes her to be seen as a supporter of the protagonist instead of a foil character. However, everything including the characteristic, the fashion as well as the ideology is so contradicting that it is possible to foreseen the tragedy of their relationship. Also, a lot of symbols appear in the movie including the social studies textbook, the recorder and the soybean paste. Every of the symbol is introduced to be very beautiful and necessary in the beginning of the movie; however, they end showing the disaster. The social textbook represented the fantasy of Seoul and when Hae-Won realizes the desperate truth of Kim’s daughter being sexually abused by her dad, the book is kicked and thrown away to the ocean. The vision of true friendship is also revealed through the recorder, but ended up used to kill the friend. Same with the soybean paste. Everything is all ironically contrasting from its initial meaning, but still it is logically illustrated that it helps to emphasize the impact of the transformation of Kim.
Somin Seong
Bedevilled
ReplyDeleteGayoung Park
"You are too unkind."
Bedevilled is a well-made movie that evolves from an oppression piece to a graphic revenge tale. The movie raises many dark social issues such as domestic violence, sexual assault, and sexism. I was able to see these issues and its symbolism everywhere in the movie. Some of the scenes and techniques used in the movie were very striking as well.
The use of repetition of props in the film was very interesting. When Manjong, the husband, throws a stone at the beehives intentionally, Bee stings Boknam's body. When she comes home and rests, Manjong tells her to have sex with him. As she refuses, Manjong gets mad, so he kicks her out and throws soybean paste (된장) at her body. The use of soybean paste reappear when Boknam kills her husband. After he dies, she ruthlessly throws soybean paste at his dead bodies expressing her heartbreaking grief. Boknam is able to retaliate him by killing him and throwing soybean paste which reflects Boknam's oppression and resentment. Another interesting point was the use of bozo (맹꽁이풀). Many people in the island were chewing bozo including the two brothers and the old man. Bozo is a kind of hallucinogenic drug which drives people insanely. Every time when brothers were chewing a bozo, they tried to rape or actually raped a woman. As this actions are repeating, a viewer can expect that some bad incident will happen at the moment of chewing bozo.
The movement and effect of the camera was also notable. When Boknam stares at the sunlight, the camera closely captures the bright sunlight and her eyes for few times. As the camera highlights this scene, viewers are able to focus at the moment and instinctively know that big incident will happen. With no surprise, Boknam murders people ruthlessly after staring at the sun. In addition, Boknam stabs her husband and his bloods are all over the places. The camera frames an extreme close up shot here. Viewers also see that Manjong's bloods are all over on the camera lens which created more dramatic effect to this tragic scene.
The last scene, which Haewon's body overlays into the shape of the Mudo island, was very striking. Haewon is a typical person in today's society and Mudo is a primitive and isolated place where Boknam is continuously exploited both sexually and physically. In Mudo, a person has to face terrible things every day and a person can hardly escape. I was not quite sure the hidden meaning of the scene; however, I think that this scene try to reveal an inextricable connection between people (Haewon) and the current society we are facing today (Mudo).
Everyone was responsible for Boknam's tragedy after all. No one helped her despite knowing that their help could save and protect her. People should be aware of our selfish set of mind and ignorance could really hurt someone. Overall, Bedevilled greatly captured a self-centered modern life that is shut down from other people’s lives and its use of camera techniques made this film to be very fascinating.
Dong Kyun Lim
ReplyDeleteBefore I watched "Bedeviled," I never understood why so many Korean films are violent. However, I finally recognize that overly violent scenes are necessary to convey major problems in modern society: Increased bystanders of crime, Distorted perspective of justice and lack of care to the weaker people. The director utilizes many cues and symbols to illustrate 해원's development throughout the movie. In the beginning, she was at the dull working environment. Everyday, she returns from her work and spends the night alone in the apartment. She refuses all incoming letters from her old friend Boknam. In her refrigerator, we can only see shelves full of Guinness. We can make a parallel connection between 해원's beer and grandfather's marihuana leaves. The grandfather's unlike other islanders, remains still and watches all the disgusting crime scene. Similarly, 해원 always attempts to escape from the grim working environment and drinks beer alone in a locked apartment living room. It seems like 해원 lost her senses to feel the peer's emotion and interact with the loved ones.
One of the most disturbing scene includes Boknam's transformation into a beast, which takes revenge on "unkind" people. Although murder scenes were quite graphic, they have a strong impact on the viewers. They ring an alarm to all of us that lack of care of the peers (in this case boknam) can result in tragic consequences. Boknam, as we all know, was a normal mother who want to spend happy marriage life with her husband and children. However, ignorance and lack of care from her husband, friends and neighbors turns her into a monster.
After 해원 escapes from the island, she recognizes the importance of justice and care for the weak peers. She confidently stands as a witness of an assault/murder case of a young woman on the street. At the end, she take a shower with her clothes on. Here water resembles rebirth and washing all the sins that she committed to her loved ones.
The film of “Bedeviled” is a full of violence and revenge story of a woman who lives in a small island “moo-do”. The movie director “Jan Cheol-soo” depicts Korean’s society about unfair political power. The movie starts with that a woman “Hae-won” does not verified by witness about a one girl’s murder case. Hae-won’s ignorance gives expectation of another case of murder. Her childhood friend Bok-nam protects Hae-won from young boy’s harassment. However, when Hae-won sees Bok-nam’s husband kills her daughter, Hae-won pretend not to know about it. Bock-not disappointed because she believes that they have hard friendship with purity memory. Also Bok-nam was painful to live in a “Moo-do” island, which can describe as unfair of community. The place of “Moo-do” island has so many crimes and victims but it covers up by powerful people. She tries to be a kind person even though neighbors are mean to her. However, this miserable situation brings Bok nam’s bloody vengeance when “Yeong-hee” killed by them. Finally, Bok-nam kills all people who commit a crime to her and her daughter.
ReplyDeleteI think this film describes that our society is very unfair of community. The director greatly describes how our society might looks like as “Moo-do” island. In many scenes, many problems of our society is contained. Such as Bok-nam cannot do anything even she suffers pain and wrongly accused by neighbors. She attempts an escape from the island but she failed. There is no way to fix unfairness problems in a community so I think Bok-nam have only one way to kill them. It is very cruel that Bok-nam’s murder because she believes it is the way to live her self. When Bok-nam kills her husband, my mind was cleared because she revenges by doing the same way. Furthermore, I realize that our society in reality may crueler than Bok-nam’s murder. Also “Hae-won” also might try to help “Bok-nam”, but she does not want to be one of victims of them. When movie starts with a event of murder, Hae-won rejects to be testimony by witness because she afraid of threats. People might think it is just her character, but this scene contains the mean of that political power is unfair. At the end of story, she tells true as a witness and she takes shower. I think this depicts her wrong attitude are fixed. I believe the movie gives hope of that our society can change positively at the end of story.
Chankyung Jung
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ReplyDeleteThe Bedeviled, as its Korean title(김복남 살인사건의 전말) shows, aims to address Miss Kim's murders and the people involved. The merciless murders for revenges on tormenters who insult, abuse, and torture Miss Kim. would be represented to be roughly planned but ceaselessly executed. This very representation in this film which triggers Boknam to exterminate all the people in town is clearly described by the close-up shots on symbolic objects such as sun, or sickle.
ReplyDeleteIt was uncertain to me whether or not the sun and sickle constitute useful approaches to film at first; however, as I watched the film twice, scene construction of repeated close-up shots on sun and Bok-nam with a sickle clearly foreshadowed the Bok-nam's gradually rising insanity. So, these close-up shots seem to maximize a human being's desperation on the film and in this respect, I think that these skills are very effective to proceed these scenes by showing Boknam's changing emotions and make audience empathize themselves into Boknam.