Films are often touted as the ultimate medium, allowing for a more immersive experience than, say, reading a book. Some films even deliberately break their own immersion, transcending their own medium. This is colloquially known as “breaking the fourth wall”, said wall being the final barrier protecting the narrative, the bubble that sustains it. When it is punctured, the viewer is reminded that what they are experiencing is a fabrication, an illusion. To break the fourth wall is to build a bridge to critical distance.
Most often, breaking the fourth wall is used for comedic effect, the protagonist looking directly at the camera to give us a coy wink, or an aside. But not always.
Memories of Murder
I’ve recently rewatched one of my favorite films, Bong Joon-Ho’s Memories of Murder, a 2003 South Korean Crime thriller. The film takes place in the late 80s in Hwaesong, a small town in the northwest of the country. It follows Park Doo-man, a local detective, and Seo Tae-yoon, a detective from Seoul, as they investigate a killer that has been targeting women and terrorizing the rural countryside. The former is a rough-neck, rather goofy imitation of the detective shows he watches, thinking himself able to find out if people are guilty just by his discerning eyes; the latter is just as much of a cliché, the lone-wolf, edgy, brooding eye from the big city.
Staying vague about the details of the plot, the brilliance of the film—besides its fantastic cinematography (containing some of my favorite scenes ever), and razor sharp script—is the way it depicts an incompetent police force that sabotages any chance of finding the killer that it can—an issue that plagues police investigations to this day—and the way it captures the madness, the senselessness, of crimes of this nature.
Through unfortunate blunders, some the detectives’ own faults, others not, we see their desperation rise to a boil, leading to one of the most stunning confrontations—and endings—I’ve ever seen in a film.
I highly recommend watching it—run, don’t walk. Spoiler warning going forward.
True Crime
I suspect that most western viewers would not be aware that the killings depicted in Memories of Murder are based on true events: South Korea’s first confirmed serial killer.
The killings took place between 1986 and 1994, claiming the lives of over a dozen women and young girls. By the time Memories of Murder came out (2003), the killer still hadn’t been caught, inspiring the film’s iconic final scene.
The use of “breaking the fourth wall” is jarring here, catching the viewer off guard. In this one small moment, the horrific crimes become real, the victims reified, the fictional elements dissolving before our very eyes.
Knowing that serial killers are enamored with their own infamy, Bong Joon-Ho imagined the killer seated for his film, and wanted to look him directly in the eyes. He wanted to confront the person responsible for all the pain and terror, to inspire guilt and fear—if they were capable of it. It seems to say “just because you are free, just because the police have given up, doesn’t mean we have forgotten you. We remember.”
There is somewhat of a hint of guilt that arises in my gut as Park Doo-man looks into my eyes, as if rebuked for laughing along with the film’s comedic scenes, for being caught up, enraptured in its spectacle. I think there’s something to be said about the phenomenon of “true crime” here, about how we have the tendency to fade into narratives, stripping the humanity, the reality, from victims when consuming this type of media. The degree of separation that film, TV, books, podcasts, etc. grant us from the actual crimes somehow dilutes them, makes real people seem not so real. You see the same phenomenon occur with celebrities; they become like objects, superficial projections, distilled to only a few aspects of their existence. The film seems to be aware of this, the final scene refusing to let you separate yourself from the crimes, the victims, their pain. It severs the fiction, and makes us culpable—active participants instead of passive observers.
Jordan Peele’s Nope is another film that explores this idea, though it accomplishes this through metaphor as opposed to Memories of Murder’s opaque approach. Both films are intimately fascinated with the idea of spectacle—how it manifests, and how it enthralls society. More specifically, both films are interested in how media participates in spectacle, particularly its ability to desensitize its audience, and fetishize violence and hate. In Nope, spectacle is a hungry beast; in Memories of Murder, it’s a faceless killer.
Revelations
In 2020, Lee Choon-jae confessed to the serial murders and sexual assaults after DNA linked him to some of the crimes, meaning after over 30 years, Korea’s first serial killer had finally been caught. Furthermore, the man was already serving life in prison when he confessed, having been sentenced in 1994 for the murder of his sister-in-law. Who knows how many more lives he would have taken if he hadn’t been apprehended.
Though Hwaesong’s serial killer was already behind bars when Memories of Murder came out, it still stands as a truly singular film, and under the recently revealed context the ending decouples from a singular killer, and expands to everyone, implicating all in a society of violence.