Amen: Kim Ki-duk’s
Experimental Journey Through Europe
In 2011, Kim Ki-duk returned with two unconventional works: Arirang, a documentary processing his personal and artistic crisis, and Amen, a low-budget, independent drama.
There is likely no director who doesn't wish to experiment or at least strive to hold the entire spectrum of filmmaking in their hands. In Amen, Kim Ki-duk fully indulged this desire. While it is natural for him to work from his own screenplay, in this instance, he also took on the roles of cinematographer and editor, and even stepped into the shoes of the male protagonist himself.
The film deviates from his previous body of work in several respects. The story is set in Europe, with its distinct cultural environment. Although there is no shortage of beautifully composed visuals, the painterly quality of his earlier films is present only in traces. Amen is permeated in every fiber by a spirit of cinematic experimentation, and somehow it is this resolve—paired with a "cinephile" enthusiasm—that makes the film watchable, though no one should expect a lasting, monumental experience.
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| Kim Ki-duk and Kim Ye-na during the presentation of the film at the San Sebastian Film Festival |
The protagonist is a Korean girl who arrives in Paris. She is presumably looking for her lover, whom she cannot find at the given address. From that point on, following information gathered through intercoms, she sets off on the trail of a male street painter, traveling across several iconic European tourist destinations (Venice, Avignon). The search itself—though a primary motif—becomes almost secondary; the focus is much more on the girl’s solitary journey and isolated struggle. It is very difficult to determine whether the events are real or merely projections of her internal fears. The story, which begins as a romantic drama or a study of isolation in a foreign culture, soon reveals itself as a crime story when the girl, sleeping in a train carriage, is robbed and raped by a strange man wearing a gas mask. Her reaction—or rather, a reaction that does not follow the logic of real life—pushes the narrative into an irrational plane. The "silent" protagonist is not unusual in Kim Ki-duk’s films, and we encounter one here as well. The girl can clearly speak, as she cries out her lover's name several times into the un-echoing spaces of the cities, and we hear her speak in multiple languages during intercom conversations. The renunciation of communication is part of the directorial concept, exacerbated here by the fact that, aside from her mysterious follower, the girl interacts with almost no one throughout the film. There is also a strong reflection on certain cinematic precursors, such as Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, built almost exclusively on close-ups.
Her gas-masked attacker, however, follows in her footsteps, and the camera becomes subjective; from then on, we see the girl mostly through the eyes—or rather, the "peeping"—of the gas-masked man. A bit of playfulness fits into this voyeuristic observation through the intentionally "amateurish" use of a handheld camera, evoking moods typical of horror films. At the same time, the attacker transforms from a frightening figure into a protective one, smoothing the girl’s path toward her final decision. We circle through several stations of this journey, occasionally with self-repeating sequences, and finally, European Catholicism appears as a terminal element, leading our heroes to a statue of the Virgin Mary and Child. The film, which until this point worked only with ambient soundscapes, receives a powerful musical score from here on. The symbolism of the story is difficult to follow, not because of its complexity, but because of its lack of refinement; like the film as a whole, it is characterized mostly by inconsistency. The movie gets stuck somewhere on the border between the rational and the irrational. Its characters are annoyingly unrealistic in the real world, yet not abstract enough to be interpreted within a purely symbolic field. Consequently, the film often turns into self-indulgent "artistry" and irritating navel-gazing, remaining the director's private affair.
Although the lead actress tries to realize the director’s visions with great sensitivity—and without Kim Ye-na’s tension-filled performance, the film would be simply unwatchable—even she cannot quite handle the problematic interpretations of love and motherhood presented in the story. It remains on the side of the contrived and the fabricated, much like the film itself.
Overall, I recommend Amen to those who wish to fully possess the entire Kim Ki-duk filmography, or to "insiders" who are intrigued by how a brilliant director consciously takes the risk of making "professionally amateur" steps into territories he wishes to explore, creating the "student film" of his life.
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