Fresh off of his international and critical success, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring, Kim Ki-duk continues on his arguably ‘tamer’ path with the fairy-tale esque 3-Iron—a film that seems self-conscious of its director’s past works and works all the better for it. Kim’s latest is still decidedly art-house and contains many of the auteur’s common traits of violence, possible misogyny, and interplay of reality and dreams, but the elements are twisted in such a way that the near-flawless film can be fascinating to long-time Kim fans and new viewers alike.
3-Iron tells the story of Tae-suk, a motorcycle driving, flyer-delivering drifter that breaks into people’s homes while they are away on vacation. He lives his life barely speaking and moving around often, treating himself to only the necessities (food, shelter) and ‘paying’ for his break-ins by doing house chores for the vacationing occupants. One day, he enters a house that he believes to be empty, when he discovers a quiet, timid and torn woman (the result of her husband’s abuse) and begins a relationship with her.
The strengths of the film lie primarily in the wordless script and the performances of the main couple—played by Jae Hee and Lee Seung-yeon. Kim finds creative, understated ways of developing a strong relationship between the two as they run away and continue the drifter way of life together. The subtlety of it all is what makes the film so refreshing, poignant and honest. Instead of relying on characters to tell each other (and in turn the audience) of their love, Kim manages to establish character development simply through the way one character’s actions slowly mirrors the other’s, or the manner in which someone might scrub their clothing. Kim turns around his characters’ muteness from representing some sort of alienation from the rest of society into a romantic link, essential to their bonding.
For those previous acquainted with the director’s work, it is a sort of funny experience to see him twist around his other common themes. The film is nearly devoid of the blood, gore and fishhooks that caused viewers to vomit or pass out at screenings of his earlier works, but there is plenty of implied domestic violence off-screen and a brutal scene involving golf balls being hit at a character from point-blank range by the titular club. These decisions call into question the weight and impact of painful yet bloodless violence, and the differences between seeing something on-screen and understanding an allusion.
Kim also takes a turn into the magical with his dream-like third act that seems to recall Last Life in the Universe and Tsai Ming Liang’s The Hole in their bittersweet juxtapositions of dreams and reality. Is the ending a happy one or a tragic one? Is he treating his female lead with the same sort of cruelty that has been called into question in his other films? Or is this film a direct response to it?
And regardless of the interesting questions elicited by Kim’s directorial choices, the film, at its core, is a beautiful examination of a love triangle with characters you care about and a well-structured narrative that does not go too astray. While some people may be put off by the shift in the third act, it still fits together poetically. This was quite possibly my favorite film of 2004 and favorite of Kim Ki-duk’s oeuvre, so if newcomers ever need a place in his filmography to start, this would be the place to do it.
Reviewed by Tarun
