THE HOST at Socrates Sculpture Park
Bong Joon-ho’s THE HOST is playing at sunset on Wednesday, July 30 at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens. (Here’s full info on the screening and on the park itself)
I used to live with Godzilla. He was three feet tall, made of gray/silver plastic, and sat at the foot of my son’s bed. Because of my son’s obsession, I sat through hours of Godzilla films and developed a fondness for the over grown lizard. But while watching THE HOST, a Korean monster flick, I felt no empathy for the amphibious villain. Complete with a long slick tongue and a bulimic approach to eating, the monster makes you cringe and shiver in all the right places. Using the stretch of the Han River, the director shot beautiful pans of the murky, swirling waters against the steel skyline of Seoul.
The loveliest aspects of the film are the peculiar characters that make up the Park family who own a concession stand by the Han River. The Parks come together to battle the monster and recover their lost daughter. Everyone has their favorite member of the Park family, mine being the young aunt who is an archer with a quiet mean streak and doe-like eyes played by Bae Doo-Na, best known to New York audiences as the Korean exchange student in LINDA, LINDA, LINDA and much-absent from Korean screens these days.
The creature’s ravenous rampage is a catalyst for the larger story of the family that is held together by their mutual love for the young girl. I found myself rooting for the father, Gang-du (Song Kang-Ho), whose clumsy miscalculations and narcoleptic tendencies lead to one tragedy after another. The Parks collectively band together and contribute their talents to her rescue: the uncle’s intelligence, the aunt’s archery skills, the grandfather’s devotion, and the father’s absolute love.
You find yourself laughing and crying at inappropriate times. After the monster’s first run for human takeout, people gather in a large hall to grieve the lost victims. Sounds of wailing and sobbing accompany the wall of images of the dead. I almost wet my pants during this somber moment as the family convenes over the sweet portrait of the little girl, they become hysterical, violent, and start wrestling each other to the ground. The director, Bong Joon-Ho (who’s currently working on another family genre film, this time about a mother trying to prove her son’s innocence) has a knack for doing this, taking the unsuspecting viewer to the extremities of bipolar emotions.
The bad guy in this movie isn’t the monster, it’s America personified here as a gang of benignly idiotic occupiers and military goons, and their sidekick is control (with a capital C) as they try to keep a city plagued by a monster under wraps. It’s eerily reminiscent of news footage from the Bird Flu scare showing the streets of Seoul filled with people wearing protective masks, fearful of each other and of possible contamination. The threat of the virus which the Americans claim the creature is spreading keeps the masses in check and distracted from the real danger of the monster chowing down citizens. Ironically enough, the only solution for the virus and the monster’s end is a chemical that is dubbed “Agent Yellow.” Yellow powder fills the screen with alarming toxic clouds that fall on masses of rioting citizens. As Gang-Du escapes the binds of the military enforced hospitals again and again to search for his daughter, you get the feeling that he is not only trying to save his daughter but himself. Called a loser and dismissed as a moron he has a need to redeem himself in her eyes and in the eyes of his family.
THE HOST is a heady, mind-bending blend of monster thriller, family narrative and social commentary that keeps you grossed out, queasy and thoroughly entertained. The director, Bong Joon-Ho, co-wrote the screenplay with Baek Chul-Hyun and his previous film, MEMORIES OF MURDER, won many accolades and was, until THE HOST came along, one of Korea’s top-grossing films. In South Korea, THE HOST played in a record number of theaters and broke box office numbers throughout its domestic run.
What better way to take it in than to sit outside in Long Island City and enjoy this al fresco screening? And if you see something swimming through the East River during the movie, and if it looks big and hungry, don’t stop to warn anyone and don’t stay through the end of the film. Just run. (-SYL)