By Karthik Amarnath
Unpacking the centerfold of Park Chan-Wook’s “Decision to Leave”
At a bit of previous the midway level in Park Chan Wook’s moody new movie Decision to Leave, there’s a 3 minute scene that unfolds at a market. We hear muffled sounds of buyers however we don’t see them; we’re watching a bunch of purple snappers. The fish are laid out on a mattress of ice, and their lifeless eyes are staring proper again at us. A hand is stretched out and a finger begins poking every eye. Suddenly our perspective switches, and one of many fish eyes turns into our personal. We get a misty view of a lady in a purple coat who’s doing the poking. She attracts her hand again, smells her finger, and we see the person beside her. He’s there, however probably not there, his thoughts’s elsewhere. Its no gimmick that we see all this via a useless fish’s eye. The man is a police detective, and he friends into eyes of the useless on a regular basis.
The girl is his spouse, and he or she reaches out and touches his coat, she checks his pockets. Our perspective switches once more. We’re now seeing the detective’s again. The sudden cuts and perspective shifts are not any gimmicks both. A detective’s work requires seeing issues from all angles, and the movie retains giving us totally different, typically bizarre vantages. It’s disorienting nevertheless it slowly builds in direction of one thing. We see the detective stretch his coat out, and his spouse drops her hand into his breast pocket. It’s playful and he or she smiles, however the detective is unmoved. He turns his face away, and our view shifts to elsewhere out there. We see the opposite girl.
We know this different girl. From the very first second she had arrived, ten minutes into the movie, draped in a dizzying purple robe, we knew what this girl means to this film, what she means to this man. Like Judy Barton in Vertigo, Evelyn Mulwray in Chinatown, Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct, this different girl is the muse, an obsession, an incredible unsolved thriller for the grasp detective. In this scene although, she’s with one other man. When she first appears to be like up, she’s on the heart of the body, totally masking the person. She sees the detective, then strikes over to disclose the person. Its her husband. We minimize to the detective, and his eyes are large open, he’s in disbelief. The girl is aware of that the detective’s seen her, and he or she locks her arm into her husband’s, and so they sluggish stroll hand in hand. Its a tease. The dance begins.
At first, the detective and his spouse are on the heart of the body splitting this different girl and her husband. The detective, nonetheless in shock, half asks “What are you..” and checks himself. Quickly, the attitude switches, and its the detective and his spouse who’re cut up, pushed to the periphery, and the lady and her husband are collectively heart body. “I moved here,” the lady says, with a coy smile. Now we see each the {couples} going through one another, and the temper is tense.
Its no coincidence that at this second, occupying the middle of the body between the {couples}, is the array of purple snappers. The sea connects these {couples} in additional methods than one. The detective and the opposite girl had first met within the coastal metropolis of Busan and now each of them, via seeming serendipity, have moved to Ipo, one other seaside city. The detective asks the lady why she moved to Ipo. “I like the mist,” the lady replies, and the detective’s gaze turns pensive. His relationship with the lady is just like the mist, a dreamy haze, veiled in thriller, a willful blur of what lies forward.
“Honey, this is the man who suspected me,” we hear this girl say to her husband, the main target nonetheless on the detective who had investigated the loss of life of the lady’s former husband in Busan. The different man she’s with now in Ipo appears to know all about that, and so he introduces himself as “the next husband.” There’s a sly glint in his eye when he asks the detective why he moved to Ipo. The detective doesnt reply. The dance continues.
The digital camera first reveals the the opposite girl within the heart of the body splitting the detective and his spouse. The digital camera pans, and now we see the spouse within the heart, she’s reclaimed her floor. She checks the detective’s pocket, finds what she was in search of, a tissue to wipe her fingers. This harks us again to an earlier scene in Busan, the place the opposite girl had checked the detective’s pockets too. The spouse’s act was useful, however the different girl’s was forceful. The means she had rifled via all his pockets, pulled out his lip balm, utilized it on her personal lips, then compelled the balm on his, it was eroticism with out the least trace of intercourse. And that’s as a result of intercourse for the detective is simply useful. He’d say to his spouse that even once they hate one another they ”ought to simply do it as soon as per week.” With this different girl, there’s no intercourse, however there’s smoldering sexual pressure. And thats what attracts him, the agony of unmet need, the fun of an unsolvable case.
Along with the seaside, sea life connects these folks too. The detective, like these snappers we noticed, simply cant shut his eyes. He’s an insomniac, ideas and pictures from his circumstances always occupy him. Back in Busan, it was the opposite girl who had taught him to go to sleep, informed him that he wanted to shut his eyes and think about a jellyfish. Later in Ipo, when he visits a sleep specialist together with his spouse, there’s an enormous display with floating jellyfish. Its a kind of meditatively luminescent visuals; the pillow-like softness and soothing translucence makes the creature look naturally soporific. But its greater than that. As sea fans will let you know, jellyfish have neither coronary heart nor mind. And that, for the detective, is the important thing to good sleep, to cease pondering or feeling. To suppose and to really feel— to be human— is to be awake.
But does being awake equate to being alive? The detective’s spouse didn’t appear to suppose so. Ever for the reason that detective’s transfer from Busan to Ipo, though he’s at all times awake, she thinks he’s withering away. To make him really feel extra alive, she brings up one other sea creature— turtle juice, she says, can be good for his testosterone.
But proper right here, out there, the detective doesn’t want any turtle juice. The girl who likes the mist has simply woke up one thing in him. And his spouse’s seen that. She tells off the opposite girl that no one involves Ipo for the mist, they “only leave because of the fog.” She warns the lady that she’s going to quickly need to take care of the mildew, a veiled reference to her personal marriage. Or perhaps simply marriage, for that’s what grows out of a relationship as soon as the dreamy haze of infatuation has disappeared.
“What brings you to Ipo?” the lady’s husband asks the detective as soon as extra, this time cracking his knuckles. Now there’s an echo of the digital camera motion from earlier. We first see the opposite girl within the heart along with her husband by her aspect. The digital camera pans, and the detective is now within the heart splitting the lady and her husband. The detective says he moved for his spouse. She works for the nuclear energy plant in Ipo. We then get one other mildew and mist distinction between the 2 girls. The different girl’s work additionally has to do with the nuclear reactor, besides she doesnt work for the plant. Instead she’s a tour information for followers of a fictional TV present concerning the plant. The spouse, unsurprisingly, is not any fan of the present.
We additionally get a distinction between the 2 males right here. The detective, in an try and diffuse pressure, makes a joke about cleaner nuclear. At first, he’s the one one laughing. But then, the opposite girl’s husband follows, with an obnoxiously faux snigger, and he goes on to crack a tasteless joke about being a inventory analyst. Now this man is the one one laughing.
Its not simply this scene, however the whole movie is rife with echos and contrasts and mirror photos. There’s two {couples}, two cities, two lieutenants, two nations, two languages. This market scene is the centerfold between two homicide investigations. There’s additionally mirrors utilized in a myriad of how. Like the scenes in an investigation room, when it feels just like the detective and his suspect are at instances speaking to one another, at instances speaking with one another, at instances speaking previous one another. Subjects within the mirror are typically nearer than they seem, typically farther. The movie retains throwing at us such uncommon, unnerving angles, and it additionally toys a lot with chronology, that decoding our responses is way extra confounding than the investigations that unfold.
And but, like a puzzle has in some way been pieced collectively inside us, we discover ourselves drawn into the surreal mindscape of the principle characters— the detective and the opposite girl. Now on the finish of the three minute market scene, when the strain dissipates, our focus totally shifts to the 2 of them. Their spouses recede to the background, the noise of the gang begins fading, and hauntingly sluggish notes of a piano seep into the soundscape. We see traded glances, stolen smiles. We sense a wistful longing, unmet need. The girl reveals him her sleeve, he acknowledges the colour. Is it blue or is it inexperienced? It doesn’t matter. He can lastly really feel, he’s there, within the mist, their mist.
Two scenes later, we see the detective in his kitchen. He’s awake, alive, and armed with a knife. The purple snapper, with its head lopped off, lays in entrance of him. We hear a telephone ring, and his spouse says its his dream come true.
There’s been a homicide.