Quark Cognition: Two Korean Movies - The Snare and Say Yes

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Two Korean Movies - The Snare and Say Yes

     Youtube is a great place to find out what movies to watch. In my particular case, I like to watch Korean movies, and there are plenty of such lists on Youtube, even genre lists. I found a video that listed the top 69 (!) R-rated Korean movies and I had watched 22 of them. The #1 movie on that list was The Hole. I found the list credible since all 22 of the movies I had seen were indeed quite good. However, I had never seen the #1 movie, so I watched it last Saturday night. It was easy to find because it was already contained in my physical collection.
   Before I proceed, I have to talk about the title of the movie. The original Korean title is 올가미, which does not mean "the hole" in English. I looked up 올가미 in my Korean-English dictionary and here is the definition: a noose; a snare; a lasso; a rope; a trick; a cheat; a trap. I couldn't find The Hole listed at Han Cinema or Asian DB, but I did find The Snare listed as Asian DB. Asian Media Wiki decided to use the title on the DVD case and here is their entry. Take note that IMDB also lists it as The Hole. I have decided to officially call it The Snare, since Asian DB uses that title, plus that is the correct meaning of the Korean word.
     Anyway, I have posted the DVD front and back covers, so you can see for yourself.

The Snare (1997)

DVD Front Cover

DVD Back Cover

I can understand why someone would rate this as the best R-rated Korean movie. It ventures into taboo territory in the form of perverse emotional desire, which makes the viewer feel rather uncomfortable. I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't mention the exact nature of the emotional abnormalities. I was constantly surprised and I would call this "original". I very, very, very seriously doubt this will ever be remade by Hollywood, due to the uncomfortable nature of the content.

As for the picture quality of the DVD, it varies between low and high resolution. Some scenes look like VHS quality and others are clearly DVD quality. I don't know how that works, but it doesn't in any way alter the viewing experience. The movie is shocking enough that it could be in black and white and it wouldn't make a difference. There is an oddity to report about the DVD. The soundtrack is actually available through the on-screen menu. I have never seen anything like that before.

The second movie I feel compelled to blog about is called 세이 예스 in Korean, which is a spelling of the English "Say Yes". So the title is rather straightforward and means the same thing in both languages. Why am I mentioning this movie in the same blog post as the above movie? They were both made by the same director. I had seen Say Yes several years ago and something happened that was not supposed to happen. In other words, I was thoroughly shocked.

Say Yes (2001)

DVD Front Cover

DVD Back Cover

Besides the thing that was not supposed to happen, there was something else that shocked me. 박중훈 (Park Joong-Hoon) plays a psychologically demented and manifestly violent character that torments the lives of others. He is normally a comedian. Consider for a moment watching Jim Carrey playing a violent hard-edged murderer that stops at nothing to make his human prey suffer. Wouldn't it be strange to watch the jovial Carrey kill people?

The main theme in this movie, as in The Snare, is torment. Someone, for a reason they consider rational, has decided to torment other people. The torment is far more physical than psychological and there is no concern for the comfort of the victims.

These are both "hard-hitting" movies and I would recommend them if you enjoy being shocked.

2 comments:

thornnnnJuly 28, 2014 at 6:43 AM
please where can i watch and or buy this movie. i have been looking for it over a year.. it is out of print on amazon!
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thornnnnJuly 28, 2014 at 6:44 AM
(the snare)
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About Me

I am made of particles, known as quarks and electrons, that are at least 13.72 billion years old. Although my body is very young, the constituents are very old and come and go as they please. It's astonishing that individuality exists when each one of us are made of the same basic parts. It's even more astonishing that self-awareness exists, since even objects as simple as paper clips are made of the same parts as human beings.

My body was here before I was born and it will be here after I die.

So while I am in this brief configuration known as life I try to learn as much as possible, since my personality enjoys it. My first fascination in this short life was dinosaurs; I won a Dinosaur Expert Award in kindergarten. For most of my childhood, I read about the Animal Kingdom. I also read more than 100 Choose Your Own Adventure books and numerous other young adult fiction from my school library. Since age 5, I have been reading at a sometimes voracious pace. I didn't start seriously reading science fiction until age 19, though.

My interest in politics is as great as my interest in professional sports and I drink alcohol as often as I get lung surgery. I am heterosexual, but I rarely date women and prefer to read a tale, rather than chase some tail.

Qool Quotes

"The brain, knowing that a person can't live forever in this world, rationalizes a future, or other-dimensional, world in which immortality is possible. In other words, religion is the earliest form of science fiction."
-Philip Jose Farmer (1977)

"Forget Jesus, the stars died so you could be born."
-Lawrence M. Krauss (2009)

"When you ask what are protons and electrons I ought to answer that this question is not a profitable one to ask and does not really have a meaning. The important thing about electrons and protons is not what they are but how they behave - how they move. I can describe the situation by comparing it to a game of chess. In chess, we have various chessmen, kings, knights, pawns and so on. If you ask what a chessmen is, the answer would be that it is a piece of wood, or a piece of ivory, or perhaps just a sign written on a paper, or anything whatever. It does not matter. Each chessmen has a characteristic way of moving and this is all that matters about it. The whole game of chess follows from this way of moving the various chessmen."
-Paul Dirac, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1933

"You will be astonished when I tell you what this curious play of carbon amounts to. A candle will burn some four, five, six, or seven hours. What, then, must be the daily amount of carbon going up into the air in the way of carbonic acid! What a quantity of carbon must go from each of us in respiration! What a wonderful change of carbon must take place under these circumstances of combustion or respiration! A man in twenty-four hours converts as much as seven ounces of carbon into carbonic acid; a milch cow will convert seventy ounces, and a horse seventy-nine ounces, solely by the act of respiration. That is, the horse in twenty-four hours burns seventy-nine ounces of charcoal, or carbon, in his organs of respiration to supply his natural warmth in this way, by the conversion of carbon, not in a free state, but in a state of combination. And what an extraordinary notion this gives us of the alterations going on in our atmosphere. As much as 5,000,000 pounds, or 548 tons, of carbonic acid is formed by respiration in London alone in twenty-four hours. And where does all this go? Up into the air."
-Michael Faraday (1860)

"In modern war, one individual can cause the destruction of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. He could do so by pushing a button; he may not feel the emotional impact of what he is doing, since he does not see, does not know the people whom he kills; it is almost as if his act of pushing the button and their death had no real connection. The same man would probably be incapable of even slapping, not to speak of killing, a helpless person."
-Eric Fromm (1955)

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that people don’t have to experience it."
-Max Frisch

Quark Cognition

I may not seem like it, but I am a human.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Two Korean Movies - The Snare and Say Yes

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