I have a complex feeling about genre. I love it, but I hate it at the same time. I have the urge to make audiences thrill with the excitement of a genre, but I also try to betray and destroy the expectations placed on that genre.
Interpretation
This quote expresses a love-hate relationship with genre in filmmaking, highlighting the tension between following and subverting genre expectations.
Bong Joon-Ho articulates a duality in his approach to genre: he appreciates the thrill and excitement that genres can bring to audiences, yet he also feels compelled to challenge and redefine those very expectations. This creative tension allows him to innovate within his work, making it both familiar and surprising for viewers, thus deepening their engagement with the narrative.
In practice
In a film workshop, discussing how to balance genre conventions in storytelling.
I think when one becomes very close to another person, it can mean loving and intimacy, but on the other hand, there's also the danger of one destructing another under the name of love. I think that is the scariest thing for me in various relationships.
People have said, 'Why don't you make your own company like Chan-wook Park has his own company,' but my head is full of writing and directing and I don't feel like I want to run a company. That's not really within my personality as well.
There is a lot of extreme emotion in Korean film. It's because there are a lot of extremes in Korean society.
No matter where I am working, I cannot make a film without 100% creative control and final cut. If there is such a guarantee, I can work anywhere.
The audience will find the artist who matches their interests. If you're not being true to yourself, your audience can't find you, because there's a wall up between who you are and who they're seeing.
In this age of consumerism film criticism all over the world - in America first but also in Europe - has become something that caters for the movie industry instead of being a counterbalance.
The effects of good music are not just because it's new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.
The architect works for so many years building it, and the moment you deliver it to the people is the moment when you are unnecessary.
An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.
I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.
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