Quotes

[speaking about Burning (2018) at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival] I saw a huge mystery in this short story by Murakami and I believed that it could turn into a whole series of mysteries and that there could be different layers to the mystery in a film. To begin with, I wanted to give the opportunity to a young director and just produce the film, but that's not how it worked out. Then a screenwriter adapted the short story; I was a bit hesitant, but in fact the mystery in this very short story proved very good for a film.

[press conference for Burning (2018) at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, asked about the themes of anger and violence in the film] This is a universal phenomenon - it's independent of religion, nationality or social status; all sorts of different people can experience anger, typically young people - they live in an oppressing world, and this feeling of anger is quite urgent. Young people are angry, but sometimes we don't know why or towards whom - that's the problem. In the past you knew why you were angry, you knew what your anger was directed at, but this is no longer the case - the world has improved, it seems to work very well, but young people have no real answer to how they'll be able to make a living. So young people experience a fairly tragic situation; young people don't know towards whom they should direct their anger.

[Cannes press conference for Burning (2018)] You find a lot of hothouses in Korea, a bit all over the place - they're a common sight. When Jong Su sees these greenhouses burn, it's as though he was on fire as well. Of course, it's a kind of feeling of power that he attains in this way because he can't get the same feeling in reality. Then of course you have the case of the Great Gatsby. To sum up, the greenhouses represent Jong Su himself; also they are a target for anger. The film addresses social, cultural, economic aspects - art, the cinema - there are a lot of things hidden away, tucked into the film, and I didn't want to explain everything. I simply wanted to show things in a very cinematographic fashion - allude to them - I want the spectator to look at the film like a simple thriller.

[Cannes press conference for Burning (2018)] When you first see the film, it seems to show great rivalry between the young people; there's one fairly apathetic young man who has the impression that he is fairly helpless. On the other hand, you then have a young man who seems very kind, he's very rich, he has everything he needs and he thinks he's a kind of a god - he's very mysterious - you don't really know what he's like. You have these two young men therefore, and then there's the young woman who's searching for meaning in her life. This scene, dancing at sunset, this scene danced by Hae-mi shows that she's looking for life against the backdrop of the mystery of nature - that's what I wanted to show in the scene.

[Cannes press conference for Burning (2018)] Part of the film was shot in the outskirts of Seoul where tourists usually go when they reach Seoul. There are a lot of foreigners who visit the area. It's a place that's very symbolical. The female character has a tiny little room with a ray of sunlight maybe just once a day. So that's very symbolical too - you have this contrast between this place in Seoul where lots of tourists go and a very poor area. So, Hae-mi's room, that's where the characters make love - it's a very poor kind of love - and Jong Su tends to masturbate, like a lot of young people today. I don't know really how this should be construed - it's up to you to decide.

When I used to write novels, I always wrote for one person, for this person who thought and felt the same way as I do. It almost felt like I was writing a love letter to this very specific person who would understand what I'm writing and share the same feelings and thoughts. A film audience is much higher in number and it's much less specific, but I still create films for that certain audience - that certain person who I can communicate with and who would understand these films. If you ask me how many people are in that group and where they are, I honestly can't answer that. Sometimes I feel like I'm creating films for audiences that are not of this time period but maybe some time in the future. While I don't have a very specific group in mind, I'm always making films for that person, or that group of people, who I can communicate with.

It's very difficult to explain what stories I see fit to become a film or not. I have several people I regularly work with - producers, actors, crew members - and it's always very difficult to explain why this story can or can't be a film. It often puts me in trouble, as well. I can find it hard to explain myself. Whether the story is fun or moving or might receive good reviews is honestly not that important to me. It's a very intuitive feeling that I have - mainly about whether the story is worth reaching out to the audience to communicate with them at this point in time. Is the story worth the effort of bringing it to the audience? It's sort of a very sensitive and intuitive decision-making process that happens within me.

[press conference for Poetry (2010) at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival] It's true that this is a film about poetry but poetry here is more than simply a literary genre - poetry refers to art and to the cinema because I wanted to talk about the cinema, and going still further, perhaps I wanted to talk about all the invisible aspects of life - things that can't be calculated or particularly can't be given monetary value. Showing poetry in a film is of course a problem. Poetry is not just like a bouquet of flowers which is beautiful in itself, for me it's the world, it's life, and that means that despite the dirt and ugliness of the world there is always something beautiful to be found inside - that's what I wanted to show. And of course it was a problem right from the start - during the writing of the screenplay, during the shooting, through the editing, right through to the end of my work - this was a preoccupation. The film is the result of all my thinking on poetry. I don't know whether the spectators have discovered the poetry and the beauty in the film, but the questions that they ask themselves after seeing the film are my way of communicating with them.

My characters are always waging a fight, but it's a fight that comes both from outside and from within - a fight against injustice, prejudice, and problems linked to violence in one form or another. My characters are fighting a battle they will never win: that's the basis of all my stories. As Aristotle said: man is always waging a war he cannot win. That means we are always fighting, be it against God, our own destiny, or against time or societal restrictions. They continue to fight, not because they will win one day, but because they have no choice.