The 13th Pusan Film Festival concluded last Friday after seven full days of screenings. Both William Empey and myself attended and between us we saw around two dozen of this year’s offerings. Instead of giving two separate overviews of this year’s PIFF, we felt it may be more useful to have a conversation discussing each of our experiences. So instead of the usual monologue, here is a dialogue on both the festival itself as an event and the various films we each encountered.

MARC: I’d thought I would start this discussion by talking about the experience at PIFF itself, and then we can move on to the films. Being from Seoul and travelling to another city for this festival, the obvious comparison I made was with the Jeonju festival, which I have attended twice. In terms of quality of films, especially the new releases, Busan is clearly superior. And even in terms of retrospectives it is competitive with Jeonju because of its size. But I enjoyed the experience of Jeonju more. Being smaller in size (both festival and city), it has more of a festival feel, of people being there for the films. The audience seemed more enthusiastic at Jeonju, and that continued outside the movie theatre as well. And, most importantly, all the films are centrally located, with one small exception of the screenings at the university 20 minutes away. In Busan, there are really two separate festivals going on, one in Haeundae/Centrum City and one in Nampo-dong.

This leads to the issue of not allowing people late for the screenings. In principle, I tend to favour this over the policy this year at the Chungmuro festival in Seoul, where people were allowed to enter late. In one case, a huge group of students on a field trip entered in the middle of THE THIRD MAN. So I understand the policy. The problem is the festival is so spread out it leads to access problems and to either being late for screenings and for not booking them at all because you know you won’t be able to make it in time. I’m not sure if there is a solution to this problem, and some frustration at a festival this size is inevitable. Maybe by making this policy clearer and making the amount of time it takes between theatres emphasized, it will reduce the problems for first-timers.

In the end, I saw 14 films this year at Busan and 13 last year at Jeonju, despite being in Busan a day longer and having a press pass. Jeonju is simply more user-friendly. They have the same “no late” policy, but it was never an issue because accessibility is so easy.

WILLIAM: This was my third time at PIFF, but the first time that I tried to see films at both Nampo-dong and Haeundae. It wasn’t altogether that bad considering the travel time between the two was consistently 50 mins or less, as advertised, and the subway system in Busan is easy to navigate as a tourist. But I disagree with you about the “no late entry rule” especially for press.

Certainly throngs of students bursting into the theater in the middle of a film disturbs the audience but surely one or two is not too much of a distraction. If people are allowed to come and go from the washroom, what is the difference? Having experience working at the film festival in Toronto, where empty seats are given away to people in the “rush line” I can tell you that no matter what rules or policies are laid out by the festival there will be late comers. In my opinion, the rule at PIFF, where there is no rush line and usually plenty of empty seats, should be that late comers must wait for an usher to tell them when it is appropriate to enter the theatre and late patrons should be allowed in two at a time at a point in the film when that the usher feels is not a peek moment. Press should be allowed in at any time, one at a time if need be.

I was ten minutes late to a screening as a result of bad info from PIFF coordinators and I can tell you that the PIFF staff were very unforgiving. It took me fifteen minutes of arguing with the ushers and managers at the door (with the help of one very understanding American journalist who came to my defense) to let me in the theater. As I explained to them, members of the press have a job to do, and that job is directly connected to the promotion of the festival. Is it really in everyone’s interest to keep the media out for being late? Most press pass holders at the fest see three to four films a day and should be given a little leeway given what they do for the festival. Arbitrarily keeping everyone out is just absurd. Ushers at PIFF should be given the power of discretion as they are at Toronto, to fill empty seats in a way that doesn’t disturb the audience.

MARC: Your solution sounds like a good compromise, and yes, perhaps the press should be given more leeway, especially given the nature of the job (trying to get to four films a day is quite difficult). But just because people can leave early or for washrooms doesn’t mean the policy is wrong, since any reduction of distractions is positive, in my mind. And how many latecomers would there be if this policy wasn’t in place? But basically I concede your point and agree that PIFF is too strict in enforcing this.

Let’s move on to the actual films. I saw nine new films at the festival. In order of my preference, they were:

THE WHITE RIBBON (5/5 stars)
FACE (5)
DOGTOOTH (4.5)
THE DUST OF TIME (4)
PERSECUTION (3.5)
NIGHT AND FOG (3.5)
HIERRO (3)
WHERE ARE YOU? (2)
DUST (1)

I mention this in list form because the top two films, which are also my two favorites so far this year overall, were from directors I knew previously, Michael Haneke and Tsai Ming-Liang. The films in the middle were from filmmakers I had heard of previously: Theo Angelopoulos, Patrice Chereau, and Ann Hui. The three worst films were from unknown directors to me, and WHERE ARE YOU? and DUST may be the two worst films I will see all year (mind you, I tend to ignore the bad Hollywood stuff). The only exception to this was DOGTOOTH, a Greek film from director Giorgos Lanthimos, which is his third feature but the first I had heard of him. And even this film I did not enter cold, since it was recommended by a fellow critic who sold me on the film by noting the connection to Haneke. I have to say I feel somewhat bad about this, like I should be exploring a greater variety of films and filmmakers that a festival like this allows instead of sticking to the auteurs, which are the equivalent of genres in art cinema terms. But when I do this, both here at Busan and at Jeonju, the results have been terrible.

Thinking about this reminded me of a distinction I once heard on the “Battleship Pretension” podcast between “film geeks” and “film snobs”. These terms are meant to be descriptive and tongue-in-cheek, but the basic difference is that film geeks see everything they can, devouring cinema in large quantities and discovering new films and directors, while film snobs stick with exploring and analyzing films and filmmakers that have at least a marginal amount of canonical status. I’m quite obviously a film snob, not a geek, and should probably just embrace this, since I don’t think I’d make a good geek anyways. I’m generally pretty selective with mainstream fare, relying on critical word of mouth, so how I approach festivals should be roughly the same. And since many festival films are new, what other barometer is there besides director name and occasional critical buzz?

I’m curious about your experience at the festival, since I believe we did not see any of the same films besides DOGTOOTH. In your opinion, what was the quality of this year’s PIFF, and did any overall trends or impressions strike you?

WILLIAM: A final word on the late policy. I think that it should stay in place and be enforced but with some discretion and common sense. Although, culturally, following the rules to a tee is seen as the best way to avoid problems for the most part so I don’t have high hopes that it could work here.

In terms of the festival this year. I was a little disappointed in the lack of films from big name auteurs. Last year the fest had a lot more. Mostly I was disappointed that the new films from Werner Herzog, Harmony Korine, Lars von Trier didn’t make it. You make a great point about director’s names being the only barometer when making your selection but I find that there are some other criteria that work for me. I try to pick films from countries that either consistently produce great films, like Iran, or countries that I have never seen films from. A festival is a great place to see the world, albeit through the filmmaker’s lens, and it’s always interesting get a look into the lives of people in countries you know little about. It’s not a foolproof plan, this year’s “Power of the Poor” being a good example of that.

In terms of organization there wasn’t much difference except that the online reservation system seemed to work this time and there were fewer screenings conspicuously empty. The films I saw this year:

Kinatay
Fish Tank
Thanks Maa
Leningrad
The Good Heart
Power of the Poor
IVUL
Of Love and Other Demons
Dog Tooth
The Famous and The Dead

Of these only “Power of the Poor” was no good. Its directed at an audience that is already primed with knowledge of Mali’s cultural landscape and the narrative was poorly constructed, making it very difficult to follow. My favorites were IVUL, Fish Tank and Dogtooth with a special mention to Kinatay. Kinatay is one of those films that is both brilliant and unwatchable. It is so relentlessly bleak and filled with horribly graphic violence that its hard to recommend. My advice would be see it once, in the right mood. IVUL is at the top of my list because it does what, in my opinion, films ought to do more often: revel in their filmness. IVUL privileges metonymic play within the frame and in how it relates images to each other and to the sound. IVUL is as contained in its own unique world as its lead Alex, who spends the best part of the film swinging from trees trying not to touch ground. Despite what the character’s parents seem to think this is not a cry for attention. The audience sees what they can’t and that is Alex follows the rules of his own game with absolute determination and, most importantly, does it when no one else is watching. Ours is not to question why, as the film exists in what it does and not what it means. The film also doesn’t abandon narrative completely, a temptation most filmmakers seem to give into. Instead Kotting balances narrative with filmic play and uses it as counterpoint without ever letting it take over the film.

Dogtooth, another film about self-imposed rules, does the opposite. Dogtooth throws us into a world where elaborate rules of the game have already been created and have been rigidly followed for the entire lives of some of the characters.  We imagine that the patriarch, who has never let his three adult children out of the house, has devoted his life to constructing an self-constructed narrative to his world right down to the core, language. But more than simply wanting to control his family, his unwavering dedication, like Alex in IVUL, leads us to believe that he gets something more out of the game that he has constructed. Control is the desired result but the pleasure of the game is what keeps him going. In Dogtooth we enter this world at the end rather than the beginning as we do with IVUL, so we immediately see the results of his game on his children who all suffer from arrested development as a result. In IVUL, we see Alex constantly renegotiating the terms of his game and suffering from his adherence to them specifically because the purpose is clear, never touch ground. The father in Dogtooth has spent years at his game and the terms are clear but the purpose is not, at least to us, but also it seems to him. What does he hope his children will benefit from the game?

The Good Heart takes another look at lives lived on self-imposed terms. Paul Dano plays Lucus, who is homeless by choice. Brian Cox plays Jaques who runs a dive bar by a set of counter-intuitive rules like “no new customers.” The Good Heart is much more conventional in its approach and does hint at the “true” motives of its characters. Lucus feels like an outsider in the world and has failed to find a way to live his life on his own terms. When we met him it is clear that he would rather die than try to live life according to society’s rules. Jaques on the other hand has been much more successful at playing his own game even if it is not ideal. Jaques, on his fifth heart attack, is struggling to stay alive and find a way to keep the game going after his death. The Good Heart tells the story about of how Jaques tries to teach Lucus how to live by the rules of his game and how Lucus, at first, is happy to find a new way to live life as an “outsider” even if the terms aren’t his. The result is that Jaques winds up showing Lucus that real success lies in making the game work for you, finding pleasure in playing by the rules for its own sake. But “The Good Heart” does not have the faith in the game that “IVUL” or “Dogtooth” do. The Good Heart seems to want to show us how the game destroys them. It is metaphoric, its heart lies outside the frame, and it seeks meaning and truth behind the rules instead of celebrating them along with its characters. Ultimately, in the end, both character and film betray the game altogether.

MARC: It’s interesting to see a few films with this theme at one festival. The whole notion of self-imposed rules is a nice metaphor for the world of festival filmmaking; there are usually no outside commercial restrictions like in mainstream movies, so you can theoretically do almost anything. There are extreme exceptions, of course, such as child porn, but even those limits get tested (for example, Larry Clark). Thus, in a way, all filmmakers impose their own rules for their particular narrative worlds, and thus wonder if these characters are director surrogates of some kind.

I can’t comment on IVUL and THE GOOD HEART, but I don’t think DOGTOOTH is as uncritical of its lead character as you seem to imply. I read it as a very dark comic satire on the need for control and the desire to create the world as a blank slate, a desire that is of course not only totalitarian but also foolish. One critic compared this to Bunuel, and I think the comparison is very apt. There is a feel similar to Bunuel’s later works, such as THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, a very black and pessimistic view of how society functions according to rules that are fundamentally non-sensical. The children in the family act in very bizarre ways and yet those actions are both believable and, here is the key, not unlike the way many people in our own society act. They are not completely alien to us and our world, which is the key to all great satire.

Perhaps it is my own taste, but I think the line-up of auteurs was actually very strong, since it featured three directors among my current favorites: Hong, Haneke and Tsai. I’m not the hugest fan of Von Trier, Herzog or Korine so their exclusion did not really bother me, although of course it would have be nice if they were included. The retrospective program was good, but Jeonju has been better. Finally seeing AN AIMLESS BULLET was a highlight, and seeing THE ASCENSION OF HAN-NE and reading about Ha Kil-Chong was something new to my film education. Still, a Johnnie To retrospective didn’t really excite me, and the New American Cinema program was too small and canonical and could have been much more intriguing.

Any final thoughts about this year’s films?

WILLIAM: I like your reading of “Dogtooth” as a satire. I do think the film was critical of the father but it also chose to focus on the rules of the games more than the results which is what I meant by it “having faith.” The director seems to believe that the how is as interesting as the why.

As for Larry Clark testing the limits of child porn, I think that would be a great discussion. Maybe he will make another film next year that comes to PIFF.

All in, I’d say that the films I saw this year were, with one exception, outstanding. I didn’t see any films that I knew would get a big release so I’m looking forward to seeing films like “White Ribbon” on DVD. The only film I won’t be going out of my way to see is “Bright Star” as, in my opinion, Jane Campion is one of the most overrated filmmakers working today. Perhaps this is fodder for another discussion as well.

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