Woman on the Beach

Yes, I do think he’s aware of the paradox, which is one reason I think he’s so quick to deflect (or at the very least not elaborate upon) autobiographical readings of his films, even though his work is so clearing rooted in personal experience. He’s often spoken of the significance of casting, and how using the right actor for that moment in his life is of utmost importance. In the same way that he utilizes the long take, Hong draws upon his own life in an effort to facilitate those real moments that for most filmmakers rarely if ever transpire. I’m not sure if one theme can sum up his oeuvre, but I do think it’s telling that all of his themes tend to revolve around the folly of the human condition.

Of all the comparisons lobbed at Hong (Ozu, Bresson, etc.), I still think it’s Rohmer that hold the most weight, even if Hong himself has spoken more directly of other artists and filmmakers. Thus while Woman on the Beach (2006) would seem to readily lend itself to Renoir comparisons, it does feel like the film where he really settled into the Rohmeresque mode we still see him operating in today. (In addition to their elemental styles, there’s also the seasonal motif that plays a big part in both their filmographies; I touched on this briefly in the previously mentioned Cinema Scope article.) Hong once wrote (in Cahiers du Cinéma) that for him Rohmer’s films “contain what I like in Cézanne. Cézanne stands in front of something concrete, a mountain, trees or a carafe, and he uses this raw material to move towards abstraction.” I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the natural world has played a significant part in Hong’s work—most clearly in his use of beaches, which we see most prominently in Woman on the Beach, In Another Country (2012), and On the Beach at Night Alone (2017), among others. For me this is still a subject for further research, but as you mention, Hong characters also often flee the city for the country: we often find his characters at temples or remote towns, far from major cities. (Both Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, 2013, and Hotel by the River, 2018, spring to mind, though there are multiple examples.) At a very basic level I think Hong uses these locations as conduits for his characters to explore their spiritual and emotional selves, much in the way any of us might decamp to a far-off locale to psychologically reset. Clearly Hong has a deep reverence for these sorts of settings. I’m reminded of the title of his second film, from 1998: The Power of Kangwon Province.

1) Like most people, I have tough time choosing a favorite Hong film. For years I answered On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (2002), since that was the first of his films that I saw. But many things I now prize in Hong’s work (namely his focus on female protagonists, but also his signature stylistic devices and scathing self-reflexive streak) weren’t yet in evidence in that film. Nowadays I’m more likely to single out one of his Kim Min-hee collaborations (Right Now, Wrong Then, 2015; On the Beach at Night Alone, 2017), or split the difference and go with The Day He Arrives (2011), which balances the whole of his preoccupations to an impressive degree.

2) Stylistically, his long takes and zooms are probably what I recall most frequently. But emotionally, it’s the increasingly melancholy sensibility of his work that sticks with me most vividly.

3) I’ve long thought that more filmmakers should adopt some of the elemental characteristics of Hong’s films. Especially now, that seems like a wise and practical approach. That said, what we don’t need are more Hong copycats. I struggle to think of many films made in Hong’s style that evince anything other than his most superficial traits.

The zoom presents an interesting case study in Hong’s work. In a 2007 essay for Artforum, James Quandt traced the first use of the zoom in Hong’s work to the film-within-the-film in Tale of Cinema (2005). “On the moral or ethical continuum for shots,” he writes, “the zoom stands opposite to the fixed, long (preferably distant) take, which has been assigned qualities of integrity, even purity, in its noninterventionist, ‘whole’ recording of reality. The zoom, an intrusive visual punctuation to emphasize emotion, direct attention, and isolate detail, is conversely assigned qualities of artificiality, expedience, and coercion.” As for its curious place in Hong’s cinema, Quandt concedes that “the issue remains unresolved.” Thirteen years later I’m not sure we’re any closer to parsing its “meaning.”

When I asked Hong if the zoom was a purely functional consideration, his response was brief but fascinating: “They’re functional, but when they function well, I guess they become something else,” he said. In my view, Hong’s zooms have worked to streamline not only his style and storytelling (gone are the early films’ more elaborate setups and angles), but also the more practical aspects of his production process. With no cross-cutting, reverse shots, or coverage to take into consideration, Hong can work much more efficiently on set—perhaps even, as you mention, eliciting more natural performances from his actors in the process. But this also expedites the editing process: his productivity since Tale of Cinema has become one of his calling cards. In that same interview you mention, Hong says of Claire’s Camera (2017): “It took nine days of shooting, and I finished the initial editing within a day after the final shooting.”

In Hong’s films of the late 2000s, his use of the zoom can seem spontaneous, even random. But as it’s grown into a signature of sorts, I think Hong has grown increasingly adept at deploying the zoom for dramatic and comedic punctuation. In a 2017 interview in Séquences, he mentioned that he shoots the way he does because he doesn’t “want to cut and shoot again from different angles… When I shoot like this, each scene can create things that we didn’t anticipate.” There’s a scene in Hong’s new film The Woman Who Ran in which something spontaneous occurs (presumably something unexpected for even the cast and crew), and instead of simply holding on the moment, Hong zooms in to create probably the funniest moment in his entire filmography. Only a process this intuitive and open to chance could elicit something so rapturously cinematic.

Hong’s use of music is something I’ve never seen seriously parsed. (If anyone has any suggested reading, I’m all ears.) For many years he worked with musician Jeong Yong-jin, and in recent years has been composing his scores himself. (Other credited composers include Ok Gil-seong, We Zong-Yun, and Dalpalan.) What’s interesting is that the tone and tenor of the music has stayed fairly consistent. For lack of better descriptors, his scores are bright and jaunty, providing semi-ironic counterpart to his emotionally turbulent narratives. It seems to me that Hong likes to work with these musical motifs in a way not dissimilar to his theme-and-variation style of storytelling. And this extends to his use of diegetic music as well: in an article I wrote for Cinema Scope on Nobody’s Daughter Haewon and Our Sunhi (both 2013), I mention that “each film features diegetic uses of music which work almost as theme songs.” The comparison might be crude, but I like to think of Hong’s use of music like that of the theme song to Curb Your Enthusiasm: as an entryway into a world of seriocomic parables and perpetual miscommunication.

I should reiterate as we begin that these questions are for Jordan Cronk, not Hong Sangsoo. But if you do have questions along these lines I’ll do my best to answer.

As for making a film in the U.S., Hong answered a similar question during a Q&A at the 2017 New York Film Festival. His response:

“Yesterday [cinematographer] Kim Hyung-koo asked me if I wanted to shoot something in the United States and I said yes. Because I have some experience living here. I might have some material for my future films—to shoot something here.”