On-set directing image of director Ryu Seung-Wan, who directed the film ‘Humint’. Photo NEW
Judging from the interview with director Ryu Seung-Wan, he was truly a happy filmmaker. For anyone, following the inspirations one is drawn to and giving them full rein is next to impossible in commercial art. Yet Ryu has had the experience of doing everything he wanted while seizing, all at once, the era-defining style, artistry, and box-office success. That happy director now stands before a great turning point.
Ryu said that in ‘Humint’, which opened on the 11th, he truly tried everything he wanted to do. He drove the action he loves almost without a break for the final hour, and to capture the desolate, shabby feel of Vladivostok in Russia, he stayed more than four months in Latvia. On top of that, he felt he fully explored the melodramatic emotions long thought lacking in his films through the relationship between Park Jung-Min and Shin Se-Kyung.
“As always, what mattered was how to balance the familiar and the new. I tried changing the setting and the characters, as I always have. This time as well, I decided to try a different approach. Rather than putting viewers on a roller coaster, I wanted them to be able to find the emotions of the characters step by step. So that, thinking ‘Are we already at the climax?’, they could fall into a rhythm they cannot control.”
On-set directing image of director Ryu Seung-Wan, who directed the film ‘Humint’. Photo NEW
Because it is a spy action film featuring a National Intelligence Service agent, with a North Korean operative who has a backstory, and because it is a location-driven piece where twists of mutual deception pile up, his 2013 work ‘Berlin’ naturally comes to mind. In fact, a brief coda about Pyo Jong-Seong (Ha Jung-Woo), a character from ‘Berlin’, even appears. But Ryu said ‘Humint’ is a different film. It was his first film built around the mood of parting.
“There are people who part ways. Perhaps because I am getting older, I have become interested in stories about things that change, separate, or fade away. About the loneliness of those who remain, too. ‘Berlin’ was not without this feeling, but it did not come to the fore.”
After writing the first draft of ‘Humint’ based on stories he obtained while researching ‘Berlin’, Ryu endured quite a long wait until release. Time passed in the meantime, and the film industry was hit by a deep freeze with COVID-19. Various projects also passed through his hands, including ‘Veteran’, ‘Gunhamdo’, ‘Mogadishu’, and ‘Milsu’. As his film speaks of ‘farewell’, director Ryu Seung-Wan is also resolving to make another ‘farewell’ through this work.
A scene from the film ‘Humint’ by director Ryu Seung-Wan. Photo NEW
“Whenever there is a genre I like to watch, I think I always want to try including its elements. This work also has elements of ‘Cheophyeolsokjip(1992·directed by John Woo), ’A Spy Who Came from a Cold Country(1965·based on a novel by John le Carre, directed by Martin Ritt)‘, and the like. ’Samurai‘(1967·directed by Jean-Pierre Melville) was one I did not want to be caught referencing, though. (laughs) After making this film, I found that the lingering attachment was gone. Shall I say there is no lingering regret? I really tried everything I genuinely wanted to do. Now it feels like I have passed a kind of childhood and can move on lightly to my next film.”
The film was a feast laid out with everything Ryu Seung-Wan could serve, and the timely surge in popular affection for Park Jung-Min, who plays Park Geon and has become a ‘melo artisan’, also gave rise to good omens, yet in its second week after release it still stands at around 1.6 million admissions. On top of that, negative issues continued rather than tailwinds, including debate over an ‘exploitative gaze’ toward abducted North Korean women depicted in the film, the presence of a full glass enclosure as an action device, and back-and-forth disputes over various espionage-action setting errors. Even so, he coolly congratulated director Jang Hang-Jun, who is enjoying success around the same time, and offered a smile.
A scene from the film ‘Humint’ by director Ryu Seung-Wan. Photo NEW
“I had never had that happen when unveiling a film, but my hand holding the microphone was so sweaty I even feared getting an electric shock. Still, seeing a theater packed with audiences for the first time in a while made me choke up. It felt like going to ‘Bugok Hawaii’, which had declined and then people began to come again. So I am grateful to be able to present a work. My original purpose was not the box office, and I have experienced both success and failure, but what worries me are the juniors. I do want to pass down a good playground for them to play in.”
Now roughly 30 years into directing, he also recently published an interview collection, ‘The Conditions of Fun’. Changes in the media environment, the onslaught of global OTT services, above all today’s audiences who do not want to sit in a theater for 2~3 hours, the incursion of AI (artificial intelligence). The future of film is full of ‘hurdles’. Even so, he kept running toward what draws him, and during this shoot he immersed himself, enduring pain to the point that two stones the size of a thumb emerged from his gallbladder.
On-set directing image of director Ryu Seung-Wan, who directed the film ‘Humint’. Photo NEW
“Director Lee Chang-Dong told me, ‘Do not try too hard. No one recognizes it.’ In the end, a film does not exist without an audience, so I find myself thinking about whom I should be making it for. In a movie theater, what is the fun that only cinema can give? I think I should gradually scale down and make things simpler. Ah, as for director Jang Hang-Jun’s ‘Wang-gwa Saneun Namja’, I am offering congratulations without reserve in that sense. I even sent a coffee truck to the set. If it does well, I will receive a coffee truck for my next film, too. (laughs)”
