Bakjwi / Thirst (2009) – 4/5

Redeemed by the blood

„Bakjwi“ or „Thirst“ is a co-production between South Korea and the United States of America from 2009, so this movie is already comfortably over a decade old now and this got shown today and a few days ago on the occasion of an Asian-themed film series. I was not sure if I should go to check this one out, but after deciding to go today, I am really glad I took the opportunity because I think this was a very entertaining watch from beginning to end and definitely a positive surprise for me. I did not expect the film to be this good. But you can see from my rating already how much I liked this one. Let’s look at the basics first: The director is Park Chan-wook, one of Koreas most successful and most influential filmmakers for a long time now. I have seen other films from him that received an even better reception than this one here despite the strong reception it received, but I think this is my favorite from the man at this point. Of course, he was also in charge of the screenplay and, as always, he collaborated with Jeong Seo-kyeong once again. Interestingly enough, the film is based on a novel in the French language written by Émile Zola who died over a century before this film here was made, namely in the very early 20th century. I will not go too much into detail about the cast because I am not an expert on Korean actors, but Song Kang-ho has been really adored also by international audiences in recent years mostly because of „Parasite“ of course, but in Korea he has been a star for much, much longer for sure. He carries the film nicely. The female lead is Kim Ok-bin here and she was in her mid-20s when this movie was made. It is not clear from the beginning that she is a co-lead, but when she is on the screen for the first time, it is fairly obvious. She does not only have great looks, but also really good screen presence.

I said very early on that this is an American co-production, but this is not reflected in the film at all. Feels like full-on Korea. This movie scored almost 20 awards wins and another almost 20 nominations, but it was not selected to represent Korea at the Oscars that year. It is an honor that was given, however, to Park Chan-wook’s new movie and I think it has a good shot at a nomination, something that did not happen often at all in the past for South Korea. We should not forget this despite recent glories. We will see. In any case, „Decision to Leave“ has once again a female actress in the lead that is as attractive as it gets and we know her from previous movies, from working with Ang Lee for example. Today we will talk about this one here though: It is a very long movie at almost 135 minutes, but I enjoyed it for sure from beginning to end. The focus is on vampires here and the revelation is pretty much exactly how you would expect it from a Korean vampire movie. There are no gruesome horror scenes, no massive gore, but it is all handled in a very tasteful manner. And yes, I also mean the flute scene with that. The protagonist is a priest who agrees to participate in a bizarre experiment where everybody is pretty much destined to die for the service they do to science and he is also about to die or even dies you can say, but he comes back to life immediately afterwards. His transformation may have had to do with the blood units he received. He also did not turn into a blind killing machine. His (previous) profession still stays relevant, so he ends up sucking the blood from a man at the hospital where he knew this man wanted to do good and help people. It may not sound so funny, but this inclusion was a bit of a running gag almost and one of the funniest moments when he drank there and on one occasion even treated the blood as if it was a refreshment and he put it in a can to drink later.

The male protagonist was very focused, very restrained. The female protagonist is the opposite. When she finds out about the man’s vampirism, she is shocked and scared initially, but immediately afterwards also impressed and attracted and she asks if she can be a vampire too. That was maybe a bit too fast for changing one’s mind I guess, but it fit the character. This revelation happened immediately after she had sex with the man inside the hospital and once again next to the guy who is the happy blood donor if you wanna call him that in his coma. More situational comedy. But what I actually wanted to say is that I really liked the sex scene in this film. It was the most sensual and tasteful depiction of such a scene I have seen in quite some time. Really well done by everybody involved, the director as well as the actors. This is not credited as a romance movie on imdb, but you can see it as such too. It is also not credited as a comedy, but there were so many funny moments of situational comedy like every five minutes or even more often that I would surely call it that, even if it is not the defining genre for sure. There are so many examples I could mention. Just a few: The key elements of being a vampire were included in a pretty creative fashion. Not in a sense as if the audience would not know about them, but on the contrary in a really witty manner. Look at the inclusion of characters being inside a coffin or look at how the male protagonist really hangs up there like a bat when he reveals himself.

The literal translation of the original title is also linked to these amazing animals. In contrast to its international title. The idea that vampires cannot deal with the sun was used at the very end then, not necessarily in a comedic manner, but obviously rather dramatic with how she is trying to hide in the trunk or especially how she is hiding under the car and he just pulls it away and we see her down there like an insect was also kinda funny. Or take the old lady who had a stroke or something and cannot talk anymore. What she does with her eyes (almost like the old man from „Breaking Bad“ pushing the button in such a panic-fueled manner) and also how she reacts when the truth comes out about who killed the mentally disabled boy. Or of course, there is some really bizarre comedy when we see the imagination of said young man physically right between the two leads when they have sex. The woman may be merciless and really wanted him dead, but this does not mean that she is not in a way haunted by him. As for the priest, it felt interesting when he tells us that he has always tried not to hurt anybody, but we find out the woman lied to him to use him as an accomplice to murder. There is also some fighting between the two later on, but we find out that all they have now is each other, so one would not kill the other. The sweet and passionate romance element from before that is still quickly gone. In the end, the final scene, they felt more like brother and sister to me than lovers. Nice makeup/set effects there with how we see their cooked bodies or parts of those at least. A permanent inner conflict for the main character is how much his previous profession still impacts him in the now after all that happened. He says on several occasions that he is no longer a priest, but his actions beg to differ eventually. The fact that he decides to kill himself as well as the woman is full of compassion because he knows he cannot control her at least and maybe it will also become increasingly more difficult to control himself, so he chooses suicide as the only option. This was an interesting reference back to the beginning when we hear that suicide is even worse than homicide. Also he saves the one woman there when everybody else is killed after realizing that the couple are the ones who murdered the mentally disabled man.

Before the main character eventually kills himself, he also goes to visit a group of people who saw something divine in him before that, who came to him to ask him if he would pray or maybe even touch family members suffering from serious cancer illnesses. I did not fully understand this scene, but I guess he did what he did (or pretended to) because it was important to him that people would see him as a monster and what he really was and that they instead should let go of their wrong idols and maybe return to science. There are probably other ways to interpret this scene. It almost felt a bit rushed. Of course, this is a gruesome movie on many occasions. We see killings in a graphic fashions, but I would have been disappointed if it had been different. Just take the scene when the female protagonist poses as a helpless woman on the street, but it is all a trick and she kills the one who stops his car to come and look what is up with her. People in the audience yesterday were also especially disgusted by the depiction of the symptoms the main character has (and also his girl towards the end). What his skin looks like when he is without fresh blood for a longer period of time. It gets worse quickly, but when he just drank some, you will perceive him as incredible strong physically too like look how high he is able to jump. Impressive stuff! You can almost call it a superpower. Vampire aspects you will not find in here I think are that they don’t show us that vampires have no reflection in the mirror and also no garlic or crosses. It did not need the latter either, the protagonist’s inner conflict with his work and his present form was more than enough from this perspective. There is a lot more I could talk about like the guy who wants the protagonist to drink from him in the first half etc., but I will leave it at that. I have no complaints. Maybe the movie could have ended earlier, for example when he turns her into a vampire, but then there were scenes like how it comes out that the two killed the young man or also the almost apocalyptic ending that make me say that the movie deserved every minute of its comfortably over two hours. There are also many, many other comedic inclusions where all the people in my screening were laughing a lot. This film is a must-see. Don’t miss out!