Episode 286: Laugh and the World Laughs With You

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] Does the brain control you or are you controlling the brain? I don't know if I'm in charge, you mind? They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have, anybody can have a brain? Very bad man! I'm a very good man, just a very bad wizard.

[00:01:16] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, I just got back from a trip to Japan a couple days ago. You were in South Korea recently.

[00:01:26] I know both of us were converts to the Asian style toilets with all the extra features, you know? Yeah, hip to date. The various little jets that they have. But how long can you have that thing spraying your butt and kind of working your ass

[00:01:45] before you become technically gay? I feel like I'm pushing up against that. If that makes me gay, I'm a queen. I'm the gayest that you can possibly get. You're Liberace. Exactly. Upon my toto throne, I sit. I think you probably immediately liked it, right? Well, here's the thing.

[00:02:10] So I grew up going to South America ever since I was really little and South America always has bidets too. But like they're separate, right? Yeah, you have to make a special trip. Yeah, exactly. You gotta scooch over.

[00:02:24] And I remember the first time I realized I was old enough to know what to do, I leaned over and turned it on and got sprayed in the face with possible butt water, you know?

[00:02:36] And I could never figure out, like I was like, okay, you could use this. But like, what the fuck do people dry themselves with, you know? I was like, how do you get your ass dry?

[00:02:46] And then going to South Korea and sitting with those little, like the air dryer, you know? I was like, okay, I could get behind this for sure. They've thought of everything, you know? And it's, I can understand why people from bidet countries think that we're nasty.

[00:03:01] Like I remember people telling me like, you guys, you just get dry paper and just like... Yeah, you just move the shit around like your ass. Like you kind of spread it around your ass. But that's why I use wipes.

[00:03:15] Like I have to have wipes in my bathroom. Oh, really? See, I'm not even a germ freak. And I think because of that, like it just never appealed to me. Like, no, I don't want to fucking enema. Like after I take a shit.

[00:03:28] And I don't know what it was about this particular time. You know, I've been to Asia a couple of times before and never used it. Always was just, I just want to flush the toilet. That's all. Like which button is that, you know?

[00:03:41] And then this time, like my wife's like, no, just try it. And I was like, all right, I'll just try it. And it was, oh. And I got it. It's like, it just cleans your whole ass. Like, of course she would want that.

[00:03:54] It's a kiss from an angel. And it should have been obvious in retrospect, the virtues of that. But it never was until this one, this chat. So we're both like in our new recording spaces and we both have like fairly new bathrooms or... Did you look into prices?

[00:04:16] I did. They were like, fucking ridiculous. And you don't want to get a bad one probably. No, it might chop your balls off by mistake. Yeah, exactly. It's a vulnerable region. Like in modern times. All right. All right.

[00:04:31] Well, speaking of Asians and of South Korea in particular, in the second segment, we are going to dive into just a fantastic movie. And this is just one of my favorites. This is a long time coming for me. I've always wanted to do this movie.

[00:04:46] It is Park Chan-wook's Old Boy, the second and probably most famous of the films in his Vengeance trilogy. Yeah. Most famous of his films, right? Just in general or no? The Handmaiden is probably pushing it. You know, like it's one of those two. Yeah.

[00:05:05] I thought his last one was like unbelievable. Maybe the best if not, but certainly the top three decision to leave. Which was respected, but kind of neglected also. Right. But first I saw this tweet and the tweet was by somebody named Alex Godofsky.

[00:05:22] And it was a response to somebody who had dared say the following, I love men because they have different information. My main turnoff is when a man has only female information because I already have that. Trying to see something new that I never could otherwise.

[00:05:38] And so Alex Godofsky replied and said, you know, this tweet is getting dunked on. But, and he posted this graph. Now I think I've kept you in the dark about this graph, right? Like I put it in the Slack, but you haven't. I haven't really, yeah. By design.

[00:05:54] It's a, and by constitution. It's not a graph, it's a table. So here's what it is. It is from a paper, a linguistics paper called word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas.

[00:06:10] I guess lemma in linguistics is just the word in its form that you would find in the dictionary, like not a stem or anything. And it has on one column, it has the words known better by males than by females.

[00:06:25] And then on the right, it has the opposite. And I guess these are like the top ones that distinguish between the sexes. So we're going to find out whether you're a girl or a boy right now. Well, okay. Couple of things just to get me up to speed.

[00:06:40] So first of all, it was the woman or that posted the original tweet, right? Yeah. It was a woman who posted the original tweet. The idea being like, you need more information. Like the goal of life is to acquire the most information.

[00:06:55] And if I'm with a guy, then I get male information. But if I'm with a woman, I'm only going to get female information, which I already have. That was the spirit of it. That was the spirit of it.

[00:07:05] And it was getting dunked on just for being like gender essentialist. Yeah. The implication that there is like, you know, something. Yes. Okay. So now am I in terms of what my task is right now?

[00:07:20] Am I trying to just say whether I know the word or am I trying to guess whether I'm going to give you a word and you tell me whether you know it. And the original paper that this is from is a study where they looked at data from

[00:07:35] over 220,000 people. And basically, they were like, look, when we use words in studies, like suppose you want to use, you're doing an experiment and you want to use words in two different experimental conditions, but you want to make sure that all the words that you have like are

[00:07:52] matched. And like people will match them in terms of like the length of the word, the similarity, the frequency of the word in the language. But they were saying like, we don't really know well how familiar words are for people.

[00:08:07] So knowing the definition and your familiarity with the word can be two different things. So they just got scores on familiarity. Meaning that you're aware that it's a word, but you might be a little hazy on what it is. Exactly.

[00:08:21] Which I feel like is a lot of big words in English for me. So these are a set of words that distinguish male and female responses. So I'm going to ask you just if you're familiar at all with the word.

[00:08:35] If you know the definition, you can say so. But can I also just predict whether I think that's a male or female coded word? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Verbina. Verbina. Yeah. V-E-R-B-I-N-A? B-E-N-A. I'm not familiar with that word. Okay.

[00:08:54] And I think, well, actually I don't have a real intuition about male or female, but I'm going to probably say female. Okay. Yakuza. Male. I mean, yes, I know it and I read it's male. Servo. I feel like I'm familiar with servo as a thing.

[00:09:15] But I'm not, like as a prefix or something. Okay. Male or female? I'll say female. Satine. S-A-T-E-E-N. Don't know it. Female. Right. Bushido. Familiar. Guess that it's male coded. All right. Aileron. Not familiar. No idea. Okay. Azimuth. Azimuth. I'm not familiar. I'm going to say guy. All right.

[00:09:52] Dula. D-U-L-A? Yeah. No, sorry. D-O-U-L-A. D-O-U-L-A. So I just know no words, period. Whether they're male or female. This is hard. It's a hard guess. No, I don't know Dula. I have no idea. I've never... Chignon. C-H-I-N-Y-O-N. You know the French. Male or female? Female. Okay.

[00:10:15] I don't even know how to pronounce some of these. Pessary. Pessary? S-S-A-R-Y. Not familiar. Female? I don't know. All right. So these are all kind of hard words, but okay. We're going to go... Let's see what I said.

[00:10:30] I hope the listeners are also like taking this along with them. Oh, here's one. Katana. C-A-T-A-N-A? K-A. K-O-Katana. I can't say I'm familiar. Fuck. Okay. I'm surprised actually by a couple of these. Yeah. Yeah. Some would have been like that one I feel like I should know.

[00:10:49] And have a vague reference to it. Right. I'm going to go down the list now of what the male words are. I obviously didn't ask you all of them. Just see how many of these you know. And then howitzer. That's the top. I know that one. Yeah. Okay.

[00:11:05] Thermistor. Azimuth. That's... What is that? Do you know that one? Yeah, yeah. That's like... It has to do with like... You know those little gauges on airplanes that tell you where the horizon is relative to where you are?

[00:11:19] Like to make sure like you can read where you are based on the horizon. I think the azimuth is the horizon line, I think. Femtosecond. A lot of these are measurements for guys. So they're very like the kind of guy that you probably don't care for. Yeah.

[00:11:33] Kind of... I didn't even know that word. Femtosecond. Milliamp. No. Did you know that? Yeah. Like battery, you know, like batteries has milliamp hours. They should have a separate one for Jewish meals because we don't know about like the mechanical stuff. Yeah, aileron. Servo, degauss. Oh, servo's guy.

[00:11:54] Servo's guy. Degauss, boson, checksum. Yeah, all right. Piezoelectricity, gauss, katana, which is a Japanese sword. I mean, it's just the Japanese word. That's right. This one is hilarious. She-male. Well, I knew that one. Well, I'm surprised that women wouldn't at least know what that is.

[00:12:19] Neodymium, yakuza, of course. Yeah. Teraflop, strafe, parsec, and bushido. Yeah. Bushido is the honor code in Japan. Shame on you for not knowing that one. I did say I knew it. You said you didn't. No, I said it's familiar.

[00:12:36] I knew it was some kind of code, but I didn't know like specifically. All right. So these are all the... These are a bunch of female words. Like I said, I can't even pronounce some of these. Literally, I knew all but three of the male words.

[00:12:50] I was familiar with all but three of the male words. And I think I knew two of the female words. All right. Peplum. No. Tull, T-U-L-L-E. Well, that's a wordle. So I knew it. T-U-L-L-E. Every once in a while. Yeah. You know, like an octurtle or whatever. Right.

[00:13:09] Yeah. Chenille, B-A-N-D-E-A-U. Yeah. Freesia, F-R-E-E-S-I-A. Chenille, which I feel like is some kind of cloth maybe. Maybe. Cole, K-O-H-L. Verbena, I know that one because it's T. Dula is the woman who helps you give birth. Ruche, R-U-C-H-E. Espadrille, Damask. Jacquard. Jesus, they live in a different world.

[00:13:42] It's completely different. Whipstitch, Boucle. Taffeta. Whipstitch? Whipstitch. W-H-I-P-E. Dude, it must be a stitch. Like, I don't know. Taffeta, Satine, Chambre, Passerie, Voile. Voile. Voile. Like, yeah. Can I just point out that most of these are like Frenchy, which is like, you know.

[00:14:09] Yeah, I think like, you know, you got to give the evolutionary psychologist this one. The differences run very deep into our DNA. Yeah, I had no shot of any of these female words, man.

[00:14:23] And I really do think that a lot of these are about like either cloth or fucking sewing or makeup. I don't talk about like, they don't talk to me. Maybe it's just because I like ignore it or I shut off or something.

[00:14:38] Like, I don't feel like Jen and Eliza are that into like various types of cloth. But so I gave this list to Bella. Yeah. And she, you know, she's only 19. So of course she doesn't know like a lot of these. But zero on the male column. And like.

[00:14:58] She male? She didn't know she male? Oh, maybe she did. Yeah, I'm sure she did actually. But like a real handful, like a decent amount in the female column. I feel like what's going on is they just don't talk to us about it. Yeah. Like, it really is.

[00:15:14] I think probably because we give signals like we haven't been supportive of that kind of conversation because we don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Like maybe like a bunch of times, you know, our wives have said,

[00:15:25] I'm going to go get a bandeau and put some freesia on it. And we just. Maybe stop by the chignon store on the way home. My doula needs a ruche. Yeah, but the male words are definitely like, I feel like engineering, spectrumy words. Yeah.

[00:15:48] And like katana and bushida, you know, that kind of dudes who collect swords. Yeah. The bushida was a good example of one where it's like, yes, but also just a sign of like my decaying brain. Yeah. No, for sure.

[00:16:03] Like we were literally just in museums where they were like, I learned the history of them over 600 years. Right. And we've been watching show. We've both been watching Shogun. Yeah. It's a problem. Yeah. So maybe there should be a third column for just like staging.

[00:16:21] So what's the upshot of the study? Like separate from what it says about me, which is mostly that I know no words. The study was, it wasn't trying to get into anything deep.

[00:16:32] It was just like, look, are we using words that people have a fair shot of knowing in our studies? Like that's it. And I kind of like studies like this where they're not making any sort of claim. Yeah. Right. It's like fun fact.

[00:16:47] These are like, there should be more fun facts, observational studies like that. Exactly. But like for the practical use, it's not like they're using those terms in scenarios or something, are they? Like a lot of.

[00:17:00] No, I think that what happened is they used 62,000 words across 200 plus thousand people. And they were just like, here's the interesting, like here's the interesting, like the ones that most are likely to distinguish between men and women. And that's it.

[00:17:17] Because I think these are certainly not among the more recognized words at all. And I bet you it just does seem that the kind of internet people who are like, especially the guys, the kind of guys who take these tests online, like it's going to capture them.

[00:17:32] This is not capturing like the kind of shit, like some, you know, working class, like blacksmith or something. That's your like. It's what came to mind. Actually, blacksmiths are. Like a working class guy in America right now, a blacksmith. The guy that makes the horseshoes.

[00:17:50] We're back in feudal times. The local cooper who makes our barrels. The fishmonger. Yeah, I mean, you learn something, you learn something new. But I agree we should do more just random shit like this and not have any theories. No theories, nothing. We're just, hey, look at this.

[00:18:14] But now I totally am going to ask people if they know what azimuth is. And if they say no, I'll tell them they're gay and they probably want a Japanese toilet. Nice bringing it around full circle.

[00:18:25] All right, so let's take a break and then we will come back to talk about Park Jan Luke's old boy. Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the time of the podcast where we always like to take a moment and thank all the people

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[00:23:13] All right, let's get to Oldboy. All right, let's dive into Park Chan-wook's just phenomenal movie, Oldboy from 2003. It's a South Korean film. It's a loose adaptation of a Japanese manga that's also called Oldboy. And the film follows the story of Oh Dae-su, who's kind of like,

[00:23:39] a, you know, early middle-aged drunk deadbeat who ends up in a drunk tank on his four-year-old daughter's birthday and then is kidnapped and imprisoned in some kind of private hotel prison for 15 years without knowing who did it and why they did it. And 15 years later, he's released.

[00:24:04] He goes out on a quest to find out why he was kidnapped and to get revenge. Along the way, he meets a young 19-year-old sushi chef and romance and adventure ensue. It's a deeply fucked up film in so many ways, but it's also just it's so good.

[00:24:29] So it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and it won the Grand Prix Prize, which is like their second or third prize. It's not the Palme d'Or. But Quentin Tarantino was on the jury and famously championed the movie.

[00:24:43] Even so, it didn't get much of a release in the United States afterwards. And the way I saw it, I saw it like in 2004. So like a year after it had come out, because my friend who lives in L.A. got like a bootleg copy of this movie.

[00:24:59] And he's like, you gotta see this. And so I watched it and I was like, holy shit, this is incredible. Obviously, the first time you see it, your stomach is ripped apart in all sorts of different

[00:25:13] ways and you're just kind of you don't know what you just witnessed. But then also just how good it is, just how propulsive it is, how well made it is. I thought it was incredible.

[00:25:25] And so right after that, I moved to Morris, Minnesota, which is a really small town. That's where my first job was. And I had a friend, so I gave him the old boy. I was like, you gotta watch this. This is amazing.

[00:25:38] And then he would give the DVD to other people. And it just went around this small town in Morris, Minnesota, this bootleg copy. And I remember like a year later, like a student who I didn't even know said,

[00:25:53] hey, I think I have your old boy DVD if you want it back. Like I had no idea who he was. That's funny. So can I ask you how many times do you think you've seen this movie? So I've probably seen it like five times, I would guess.

[00:26:08] Like, you know, it's not one I go back to every year. It's a little hard to go back. Like, yeah. To rewatch. Yeah, because especially when you know. Yeah. It's just it's a little different. No, for sure. I remember vividly, like I only heard a bit from you.

[00:26:23] Yeah. Like for sure. And I don't remember when it was that I watched it, but. It was into the podcast, I remember, because I had always been talking about it. You were putting it off because you just didn't want to give me the satisfaction. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:26:37] Really just about resentment. Yeah. And I think I had even started it. Like I had a copy. So this is the days when I was still pirating, because when I went to look like I hadn't bought

[00:26:47] it and I had a copy and I had started watching it, but like the wrong time, like I was falling asleep or something. And so I just put it off. And I remember actually sitting and watching it and people were like, holy shit, this is fucked up.

[00:27:00] Because when you're watching the whole thing through the first time and you don't know the twist, it's more of a just like a straightforward kind of action. Mystery. Yeah, exactly. Psychological. Exactly. You're just like, oh, cool. I wonder why. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:14] But I just think top to bottom, it's so well made. Like everything is so perfectly thought out. Every shot, every line, like every pose that the actors are doing. And it was big for me because I think when I first saw it, I didn't pay attention to

[00:27:34] that stuff as much as I started to. And I think this is a movie that got me into like just the craft of filmmaking and the color schemes and the way the sound and the music is working.

[00:27:47] For all the just iconic, you know, eating the octopus or the hallway fight scene, it's also just like beat to beat. Just so well done. So well thought out. Yeah, totally. This is just a rare gem of a movie that punches way above its grade somehow.

[00:28:06] Like you go into it because it's like this, you hear that it's a cool revenge story. Maybe you hear it's kind of fucked up. Yeah. And then you're just hit with like these amazing shots, right? Like you said, the craft that went into this.

[00:28:21] I didn't read enough to know whether it was heavily storyboarded, but it had to have been. You know, it just feels like this was a storyboard movie. And the colors, like the saturation, the color palette. I think I'm pretty sure it was shot on film in pre-digital days.

[00:28:37] Like I think there is like a look that's not easy to come by. Yeah, with the greens that kind of faded sickly greens and the like really rich purple velvet. And the purples. Yeah, reds and greens. Yeah, no, totally. And the editing is so seamless and good throughout.

[00:29:00] There's a lot of really complicated stuff going on that like other people, like if it was like an Edgar Wright movie, it would be really flashy and you'd be really aware of it.

[00:29:09] And the way he just does it, it's like, oh yeah, you're in two different timelines and it's the adult version and the child. But you don't think it's just so integrated into the story that you don't even notice it

[00:29:22] until you're kind of watching it again and looking out for that kind of stuff. Yeah. And the pacing, like you were saying, the pacing is really good. Like you don't feel, you don't check your watch on this one. I was going to say something about the shots.

[00:29:35] Like, and this isn't really a criticism because it is what it is. You could tell that it's like an early aughts style. There's a little bit of a stylistic thing that like some camera moves and a little bit of showoffiness. The Tarantino kind of- Exactly.

[00:29:53] Yeah, with the hammer. Like the little line. The red lines to the hammer. Yeah, it's still cool. It's like the best version of that. But yeah, one of the things that I think, especially if I haven't watched it for a long time, it's very funny.

[00:30:06] It is kind of a brilliant dark comedy. It's like overtly comic. Like there's many shots that are like played for the comedy of it, even if it's, you know, really pitch black, dark comedy.

[00:30:20] I've noticed that you find comedy in stuff that like I always, it always takes me longer to find it in. Maybe it's just your more familiarity. Well, so for example, the shot of him at the beginning walking out of the apartment and

[00:30:34] then right behind him, the guy jumps off the roof and hits the, after he's stolen the sunglasses. With his dog. Yeah, exactly. Like that's like a comic shot, you know? Yeah, yeah.

[00:30:48] I mean, I was really touched by the death of the dog, but I guess you don't like dogs that much. Not that kind. But yeah, no, there's a couple other things. Like even the, well, we'll get into it, but I'll highlight them.

[00:31:03] I think, you know, parts of the hallway fight are funny. Especially towards the end. In that same way that everything's exaggerated in a tragedy, he does that, but brings out the comic aspects of like a classic tragedy. I think really well. He often does that. Yeah.

[00:31:22] And I actually, upon thinking about it, I can think of a few other scenes where, yeah, it's just the dark does sort of overwhelm. And the last 20, 25 minutes, all the comedy is gone and you're in a black hole of just,

[00:31:36] it keeps getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And you think you're finally at the end and nope, there's something just like by another order of magnitude more fucked up that you're about to learn. Totally.

[00:31:48] Yeah, but you're right early on, I'll just mention one that popped in my head. Like when he, when the reveal of his like crazy hair in the prison and it shows the painting that's hanging in his room as a sort of reflection of him. Yeah.

[00:32:01] It's kind of grotesque, that kind of, uh, what's the thing like a committee or Delarte or, uh, I don't know. Something smart sounding. Azimuth. It's the total azimuth of it. The chignon.

[00:32:18] I just want to say like, before we get into like themes and stuff that like this isn't even my favorite of the Vengeance trilogy, although it's one a as like, I liked the first one, Sympathy of Mr. Vengeance maybe a tiny bit better, but it's just so good.

[00:32:35] And like pretty much all of his movies are so great. And I think he is so talented and still underrated compared to like Bong Joon-ho, uh, and like some of these other Asian directors that are maybe a little more celebrated. I mean, he gets his due.

[00:32:52] It's not like people don't know who he is, but I think he just has more great movies than like Bong Joon-ho does. And I love Bong Joon-ho, but like Park Chan-wook should be in that category if not like a little bit beyond. Like what have you seen? Nothing.

[00:33:08] Just this. Really? Okay. I didn't know that was not even the Handmaiden. No, no. Is the Vengeance trilogy only connected as a trilogy because they're about vengeance or is there like some? Yeah, there's a couple like Easter egg-y like connections, but they're completely disconnected in terms of plot.

[00:33:28] Yeah. They just have revenge and not even the same kind of revenge as their central theme. All right. Should we jump into themes or? Yeah. Revenge. Really? Interesting. I think I see that. Yeah. Only the trained eye. Oh, God, man.

[00:33:54] You start because like I'm working through, it's very dark, but like there's hints at redemption. There's the stuff about identity. Yeah. There's a lot to unpack and I have to admit like I'm looking forward to talking through it because yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:12] It's a really complicated movie once you start digging into it in ways that I think it's hard to appreciate even the first couple of times. Like there's a lot of threads you could pick up on and I think a lot of weirder, it's more

[00:34:27] open to interpretation, I think, than I previously thought it was. But I think loneliness is a big theme in it, you know, explicitly tied with the ants. But just the idea of being in prison for 15 years or the idea of being Wu Jin and you've

[00:34:46] been imprisoned by this mission, you know. Yeah. By the way, we should say this right now. We are going to spoil Oldboy. Yeah. We haven't yet. This is not a movie that you should see spoiled.

[00:35:00] Like just watch the movie and if you want to come back to listen to us talk about it, then do it. But main thing, watch the movie. This one would really, like in so many ways, it would change your experience in a way that

[00:35:12] I don't think is good. Yeah. You have to see it like everybody sees it the first time and get the, and suffer like we suffered. Exactly. You know, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about, which was there was a very

[00:35:26] clear difference to me each time I watched it. The first time I watched it, I had like a lot more sympathy for Odesu. Yeah. And then when I watched them back to back today, I was like, he's not a good guy.

[00:35:41] And I'm not sure by the end he's grown morally in any sense, you know? Yeah. He makes some very selfish decisions. He makes some just bad decisions. And yeah, he never shows us, I think he's clearly not a malevolent guy initially, just

[00:36:00] kind of good for nothing, ne'er do well. And yet, it is hard not to be connected with him in terms of what he's trying to do in a way that I think really pays off also at the end.

[00:36:16] The illusion of control, I think is a big theme here. And this is why it reminded me of a Greek tragedy, not just, you know, like, because it has classic themes like incest and revenge and guilt, you know?

[00:36:32] But often, like a person believes that they're acting in ways that will influence their fate, but the gods are actually controlling what they do. And that leads in the end to, you know, unbelievable suffering. But in this case, it's not a god that's doing it.

[00:36:51] It's like a person, like a billionaire, like someone who's the puppeteer. He is a Greek god, you know? He's on his Mount Olympus, and he's pulling all the strings. He's pulling all the strings.

[00:37:05] And so, you know, like in a lot of South Korean movies, class is kind of a part of it, too. You have two different classes with two different sets of resources available to them in this revenge tale.

[00:37:21] And then I guess the biggest theme for me is this duality, you know, like this, the monster versus the real you or the Odyssey and whether there is that dichotomy or not.

[00:37:36] But like, and I don't know if this is related, but this idea of asking the right question is like the kind of clinching thing with this movie, you know? The importance of asking the right question and the tragic consequences of focusing on the wrong question.

[00:37:55] So that's a big one that might relate to this idea of duality, although I'm not sure. And it's interesting, though, because, you know, even though I was joking by saying revenge is a theme, like obviously it's saying something about revenge, although maybe not

[00:38:09] nearly as much as you might think. You might think. It's a very specific, yeah, it's a very specific take on revenge. But it is like there is that theme about like, what are you doing this for? Yes. And what happens when the vengeance is complete? Who are you?

[00:38:24] Can you? Will I have you just become revenge? Yeah. And there's a pivotal moment where he could have just not become vengeance and probably lived out like a happy rest of his life.

[00:38:37] Oh, and on that note, like the last thing is just this idea of these tiny little things in life that you do that can have these momentous consequences and you don't even know it as you're walking through, you know. And so the revenge is tied to that.

[00:38:56] It is a revenge against people who kind of carelessly and non-maliciously maybe cause destruction in their wake. Yeah. And the whole bit about like being punished for something that you don't even remember and having to be sort of forced to remember it and being like, what?

[00:39:15] Like that was nothing to me. It's a really interesting thing that that's the thing, you know, it's the grain of sand sinks just as much as a stone in the water. But like it really is a very small thing that he did to get himself imprisoned for 15 years

[00:39:35] and one of the most, the sickest plans ever devised for him. Well, yeah. And I want to get to some of the like just facts of the matter that I had questions about. Did he even know that that was his sister? I don't think so.

[00:39:48] He can't have, right? Because he didn't know his name, her name. Yeah. He didn't know her name. He was like, I just know she rides a red bicycle. Like he saw her hooking up with somebody. Yeah. Now what is the nature of the rumors that were spread?

[00:40:01] Because if the rumor was an incest rumor, then somebody else put that together. Well, that's his friend, right? Like his friend, whether he knew that she was the sister or not, I'm not clear.

[00:40:12] But I think he then told somebody and it's just a ripple effect, a domino effect of. Yeah. Yeah. I actually think that the rumors were only that she was like loose or whatever, like a slut. And not that they were. Not even that it was. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:28] All right. We'll have to talk about that. Yeah. Okay. It has an awesome opening scene, just propels you right into the story. This propulsive music. And you see Odeisu as a older man holding somebody from falling from their death from a rooftop, holding him by his tie.

[00:40:51] And this is Chekhov's holding someone from falling to their death. This is definitely a bit of foreshadowing, but it's also just like, what the hell is going on? Who is this crazy guy that's holding this person? And they ask, who are you?

[00:41:05] Like a key question in this movie. Like you said, identity. And he says, my name is Odeisu. But just a very cool opening. And then now we're going to go back in time to see what happens.

[00:41:16] It really actually feels like I haven't looked at the manga, but like it feels like such a comic book sort of opening panel. Yeah. 100%. So now you cut to 15 years earlier and you have Odeisu. Which, it confused me to no end the first time I watched it because

[00:41:33] he doesn't look like a younger version of the Odeisu that we see. He just looks like an equally aged, different guy. Yeah. Like he's eight. No, I think that's right. But I think part of that is like, he was a bit like kind of a let himself go,

[00:41:48] kind of like 40 year old or late thirties. Right. You know? And sometimes you don't look that different 15 years later, especially if you've been working out. Punching walls. Punching walls, hardening your body. Yeah. It's a fun scene. It's just Odeisu. He's got thrown in a drunk tank.

[00:42:06] A lot of quick cutting here of him getting really mad and then just getting beaten down. And they're being, they're treating him pretty well, all things considered. There's one kind of, I think, important line because it keeps coming back, that he can't get through the day quietly.

[00:42:20] Like he always has trouble getting through the day quietly. And with this particular day, that's going to be, you know, feels this day will kind of never end for him as we see. Him with his shirt tied in a knot is hilarious. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:42:37] And he has these little, we find out that it's his daughter's fourth birthday and that he bought her these wings, these fur wings that he also- Angel wings. Angel wings that he wears. Yeah, I guess feathered wings more than fur. Yeah.

[00:42:51] He gets bailed out by his friend and then calls his daughter because he's clearly supposed to have been home a long time ago but got drunk instead. And the very cool scene, like he's talking to his daughter drunkenly saying he'll be there and what he got her.

[00:43:05] And then the friend takes the phone because he's just rambling. And then you just see this like, I don't know, this shot that goes kind of around and then all of a sudden you pan back and Odeisu has vanished. Right.

[00:43:18] It's like an overhead shot in the umbrella in the rain. And like his friend is like not sure where he went. Yeah. The friend is running around looking for him, no idea what happened. You see this purple umbrella and you're starting to get introduced

[00:43:31] to the color schemes of the movie. Yeah, I have one first note here that Odeisu is- I don't like him from the first scene, right? Like he's clearly being irresponsible and like you said kind of deadbeat. But he does this thing which he'll do again a couple times.

[00:43:49] And that is say something like to try to ingratiate himself with his- Yeah. Like captor or victimizer or whatever. And then get mad and take it back and just like show his maybe true colors or whatever. And then try to walk it back real quick. Yeah. Right.

[00:44:04] And it's just like you're duplicitous. It's not genuine what you're doing. He's all over the place. Or if he's not duplicitous, he's just not stable. He's just this and that at- Exactly. You know, like he has no stable self at that point, you know? Right.

[00:44:20] Yeah, it's unclear because it could be very genuine both times. Yeah. And it's very staccato the way it's shot too. Like these like jump cuts and you know, like all of a sudden now he's handcuffed to the wall. And he's looking like, fuck me. Totally. Why can't-

[00:44:35] I hate to say it, but that's very Edgar Wrighty, you know? Yeah. But like I just think he does it with more taste. Now we go to Odeisu, right? Like he's in some kind of cell. We just got introduced to the purple. Now you get the green.

[00:44:51] That just nasty green. That's such a big part of the movie that like I think kind of symbolizes being imprisoned. And in this case, literally. Yeah, I think that's right. And he's just like begging to figure out like why it's here. He's been there for two months.

[00:45:08] This movie just like jumps ahead in time. It asks you to keep up with it. But like he's been there for two months. He's just begging the guard, being very obsequious. He has some obsequiousness in him. And the guard just kicks him back into the room, right? Right.

[00:45:25] Yeah, they're like shoving food in the little tray underneath. Dumplings, as we'll see. Now we got a cool just sequence of him in the hotel room and the stages of like him coming to terms with what's happening and then the time that passes.

[00:45:38] But all the emotional extremes that he goes through, like the painting that shot, like you said, and it's funny, like this fucked up painting. And then it pans to him and he just looks like the painting of a monster, like a madman. Right?

[00:45:57] We learn that he gets Valium gassed. Which I was like, oh, that's nice. Give me some of that. How do I get that? Yeah. And then when that happens, at least initially, it seems like they just clean the room, repair

[00:46:12] any wounds if he tried to kill himself, clean him up a little bit, give him some kind of medicine. And I was confused. They bag a glass, like it's evidence. And I was like, wait, what are they doing? Oh, right. And then we'll later find out.

[00:46:25] Because one of the things he's watching on the TV is that his wife was killed and he's regarded as missing and a prime suspect. And this is when ants start to, just one starts. But then when he learns that, the ants attack him.

[00:46:41] It's a very kind of horror kind of scene. Almost body horror. Yeah. A lot of body horror. There would be a lot of body horror in this movie. We get a great scene of him watching Korean pop videos and relieving himself as a man does.

[00:46:58] Jacking off, to use the euphemism. So he says television is both clock and calendar. It's your school, home, church, friend, and lover. And then when he says lover, that's when he jerks off to that K-pop group. Is that the song that she later sings? Yes. Okay. Yeah.

[00:47:21] And you get the sense, well, I didn't get the sense. I read that I should get the sense that this was part of the whole. Yeah, exactly. This is why it really is just he is a mouse in a maze, just getting completely manipulated at every... Totally.

[00:47:41] So he starts getting a better attitude. He starts becoming harder. He starts trying to figure out who are all the people I've... Take an honest look at himself. It seems like all the bad things he's done.

[00:47:52] And then he starts getting in shape and punching the walls, getting those calloused fists. And then in what I think is a good metaphor for his whole journey in this movie, he starts digging a tunnel to escape. And he works on it for 12 years.

[00:48:09] And here's where you get the historical montage, TV historical moments that mark the years passing, like stuff in Korea. You get stuff all around the world, 9-11. He works on that tunnel for 12 years, finally breaks through the wall. And he's like, in a month I'll be free.

[00:48:31] And then just immediately is gassed and hypnotized and released. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like all that was for nothing. Like, I feel like there are a few moments like this where he's in that theme of control.

[00:48:46] Another movie would have this be the way that he got out, right? He gets three chopsticks and he's like, this is my chance. You know? So you think he's pulling a Shawshank Redemption. He thinks he's liberating himself.

[00:48:59] Like one way or the other, whether it's through death or through escape, he is liberating himself. And as it turns out, no, he never is in charge. He does all the work, but it's all like doesn't influence his fate.

[00:49:13] Or if it does, it does it in a bad way for him. Under that theme of not really being under control, there was something that I wanted to mention earlier about the K-pop scene, which is also just in the spirit of mentioning

[00:49:24] the comedic elements that I hadn't thought about. When he's jerking off, the song ends before he finishes. Oh yeah. And so he's like, damn it. And the song isn't long enough. Ends frustrating.

[00:49:37] And then the next cut, quick cut to just them dragging him out because he just tried to kill himself again. So all right, if I can't even jerk off, then fuck it. I'm ending it. Exactly.

[00:49:49] There's just so many things like that that are shot in an almost slapstick way. Yeah. Yeah. So then this hypnotist comes in. This is the first time we've gotten any sense that hypnosis is happening and it's all red.

[00:50:04] Also, this is where you get that music that always comes before the gas, that creepy music. Right? And so the hypnotist, who looks a little bit sinister, tells him he's in a big green field.

[00:50:18] And then all of a sudden he is in a suitcase in a green field or what looks like a green field. But now we realize he's on the roof from the opening scene. So what do you make of the way that's shot?

[00:50:34] Even on this watching, I was like, is he really supposed to have been in a suitcase? I wasn't sure. There's so much in those scenes that you're, like the hypnosis scene, obviously they're bending reality.

[00:50:48] It's a very cool shot, though, of him just all of a sudden in this big red suitcase on this roof, this kind of green overgrown roof. And then he just comes out of it. Yeah, it's funny. And there's like clothes and some shit for him.

[00:51:02] All right, so now you see this guy who's on the roof and he's clearly he's with his little dog, clearly suicidal. We recognize him as the guy from the opening. And I just love the way Odesu, like he hasn't seen anybody in 15 years.

[00:51:18] So like as this guy in this crazy situation where he just happens to be up on the roof while this guy is thinking of jumping. And then all of a sudden Odesu starts like pawing him and smelling him.

[00:51:32] And it looks like he's going to try to make out with him. But yeah, he's not had human contact in so long. And it just really shows that desperation, like another human being. Like I can touch their skin. I can see their face.

[00:51:44] I can look into their eyes. And this is something he's been deprived of for 15 years. And so it gives you the visceral sense of that. Like it reminds you of that. Here's where a recurring line is first said, I believe.

[00:52:01] The guy as he's leaning off the roof says, even though I'm no better than a beast, don't I have the right to live? And then Odesu repeats that. That will be echoed later, I think, a few times.

[00:52:21] And I think your interpretation will depend on what you think of that line. Then the guy tries to jump and he grabs him. And now we're right at the beginning. And he says, I want to tell you my story. Yeah. And again, this is kind of funny.

[00:52:35] So he tells him the whole story. The guy's like, wow, holy shit. And he's like, now let me tell you my story. And then Odesu just gets up and walks away. It's another just asshole move where I was like, oh man. This was a minute ago.

[00:52:49] You were like, you know, pawing at his face because he was the only human contact you had. And now you're just. Just drop him again, like not a good guy. And then in the elevator, again, kind of funny and grotesque.

[00:53:02] Like, you know, now this is a new stage, which is first female contact. And you just see him like against the walls of the elevator. Like it's one of those rides that go really fast. And then the floor comes down. Oh, my God. I hate those vomit machines.

[00:53:19] Wait, are you saying that it's because it's a woman that he's like pinched to the wall? Yeah, he says it. Oh, does he? Or at least he mentions this is the first time I've been, you know, how will I handle it? Yeah, OK.

[00:53:31] I wasn't sure whether he had just was afraid of the elevator too. No, I think it was because it was a woman. But then he also steals her sunglasses. It's clearly fine getting close to a woman by the time he was walking out with his sunglasses.

[00:53:45] A lot of things can happen in elevators. This will come back later. Yeah, and they're like the little far side, you know, like the wife in her glasses, like 50s kind of frame.

[00:53:57] And then as he's walking out and she's like telling the cops, like that guy jumps off. And with a little dog in hand. Yeah. I didn't actually see that the dog was part of that. Oh, yeah, the dog is in his hands. Yeah.

[00:54:12] Like unless he pulls a bug bunny and jumps out of his hands right before he hits the ground. You know, yeah, maybe onto an awning. And then he's adopted. It's actually extra sad. I was thinking about it.

[00:54:22] I was like, you know, this guy is wants to kill himself and he doesn't want his dog to be left alone. You know, yeah, it's kind of tragic. Yeah. Fun scene now where he gets into a fight with some local like hoodlums, like not the highest class hoodlums.

[00:54:37] Right. But real quick, we had seen the phrase when you smile, the world smiles. Oh, yeah. When you weep, you weep alone. It was under the painting, I think, in the hotel. Yeah. And now he repeats it. Yeah. Or at least with voiceover. Yeah. And that voiceover.

[00:54:52] When he does it, he gives this like super fake smile. Yeah. Right. Like a very forced smile. Right. So when he does that voiceover of that line, is that where is that voiceover from? Do you think? I don't know.

[00:55:07] It's actually the voiceover when it's a voiceover and when it's not, it kind of confuses me. Yeah. It could have just been like him thinking that. Yeah, exactly. I was thinking also of the letter that he writes at the end to the hypnotist.

[00:55:20] It could be part of that, but we don't really know and it's probably not that important. So the hoodlum fight is fun. It's a little bit like a spaghetti Western, you know, and it's got good music.

[00:55:31] And he's in this kind of nihilist state right now that gives him a kind of power, and I don't give a fuck. This is probably at his coolest in the movie, I would say. Probably.

[00:55:44] Well, you know, he has this like fresh new suit that he got in the suitcase. And as he says, he's aware that he's a fugitive. He has no home to go back to. So he's really like, I don't give a fuck. Yeah. And yeah.

[00:55:59] And he's been practicing martial arts. He wants to know. He wants to put it to test. Was my punching the wall to do anything? And it did. Like, does it have any practical benefit? It does.

[00:56:11] So then it cuts to him all of a sudden, if that's at his height, like all of a sudden he's in front of this restaurant with this same green light just saturating him.

[00:56:24] And a guy who looks like maybe a homeless guy comes and gives him a phone and a wallet. I think there's even like a little reaction that he must smell. Yeah. There was something, by the way, outside of the restaurant, he's looking in the fish tank.

[00:56:38] He's already said something. And I think this might have been his voiceover where he is thinking about what he's going to do to plot his revenge. He says he's going to chew up and eat whoever's keeping him. And now he's like staring at the fish tank.

[00:56:55] We learn later that he wants to eat something alive. And so I think that that's why he's staring at the fish tank. But he's looking at a fish and he says, it's tenacious despite having weak reflexes.

[00:57:05] And that word, the tenacious word will come back as a description of him himself. But also he's looking into a fish tank, which symbolizes imprisonment. You think that you're swimming around and controlling, but you're just being imprisoned and controlled by larger forces.

[00:57:23] So now he has money, which he didn't have before. And he has a phone. And so he goes into the restaurant and meets Mido, a young sushi chef. She was on some kind of cooking show. And so maybe that's why she looks familiar to Odeisu.

[00:57:45] Who knows why he also looks familiar to her. To her, yeah. We'll see if we find out. Yeah, very famous scene right now because it culminates in him eating a live octopus, which the actor really did. Yeah, which hits me every time. Poor little guy.

[00:58:06] Where are you when you're watching this for the first time or now? I mean, I'm wrapped up in the mystery at this point. I'm like, fucking homeless guy gave you a cell phone and some money? You're getting called. I'm with him. Who are you?

[00:58:18] That's the first question out of my mouth. And so at this point, the sushi chef is, she's a cute young woman. And they're talking about, oh, you look kind of familiar. I'm just all in on the mystery. He gets a call. And what happens in the call?

[00:58:34] Not that much, right? Well, he does go through a list of like, who are you? And he starts listing off all the names. And this is when you realize, wow, he's had 15 years or whatever to think of

[00:58:43] all of the possible people who could have done this to him. And so he's just going down the list. And that's where he says, I'm a sort of scholar and my major is you. And then he says, the question is why? But without saying anything more.

[00:59:02] And then he says, be it a grain of sand or a rock, they sink the same. And that's it. And then he eats the octopus. He says, I want to eat something alive. And she's like, I'll cut it for you.

[00:59:16] And he just grabs it and stuffs it in his mouth. Why? Yeah. This is one of those things where it's like viscerally just shocking. And I think gets you again in the mode of what you're about to see is not,

[00:59:32] it's not going to hit your normal noir tropes. It's going to go beyond it. But in terms of why he has to eat a whole octopus, I don't have a great idea about that. What about you?

[00:59:47] I mean, the only thing I could think is when he says, I want to eat alive is again, the callback to the, he wants to eat his captor or whoever did this to him. He wants to eat him up.

[00:59:58] Maybe this idea that you gain power over something by consuming it. And he's like practicing. And maybe also putting him more in beast category than man category too. Yeah, that's true. He's not unlike Saturn eating his own son in that painting. Yes. Yep.

[01:00:20] And so he does it and then passes out. And she takes him home, which is, you know, a super erotic story, I think, under the circumstances. And like he wakes up at her house and it's kind of a nice scene. She's like kind of telling him what happened.

[01:00:42] And she says, just rest up. I'm going to the bathroom. And she says, like, and don't try anything. I've got a knife, which she does. And then in another darkly comic scene, you have a callback to him saying, like,

[01:00:57] you know, all that violence that I practice, would that bring a benefit? The answer was yes. And then he does that same thing, but with sexual advances. And then you just see him as she's peeing.

[01:01:08] You get this wide shot of her peeing in her bathroom and him just bursting in with his and like trying to kiss her and her just saying, get away from me with the knife. It's just like and then he says it hadn't, you know, very funny. I think.

[01:01:24] Oh, I took it as attempted rape. Like, I thought that's what I mean. It's definitely, it's definitely sexual assault, but it's like there's something about it. That's like he knew she had the knife. It's not played as he's a violent rapist at that moment.

[01:01:42] I mean, she's so chastened by also getting told to go to get out. Well, yeah, and she's playing it very lightheartedly. But honestly, I thought it was just another instance in which his monstrous side shows up like his sort of selfish monstrous side.

[01:01:59] This woman took him in and is like caring for him actively. Yeah. And that's what he does. Yeah. It's just, you know, with that little beat of would it my training in the TV. Like it's definitely also played for a very. Has she already been reading his notebook?

[01:02:18] Yeah, I think she read the notebooks while he was passed out. Yeah. And he wakes up and she's reading them and he just like kind of in a funny way, like grabs them all like, no, no, no, don't read that.

[01:02:28] And turns around half naked sort of like screw, like just protecting them with his body. Yeah. And that's another reason, like when she goes into the bathroom, she probably knows like there's a chance he's gonna, he's gonna burst in. I don't know.

[01:02:42] I'm not trying to say that it's not wrong to burst into a bathroom. Too late. But then her reaction to it is to say, look, I'm not ready right now, but I do like you too. That's why I brought you home. And she says, one day I'll be.

[01:03:00] This is very weird. This is again where you get in this mystery, kind of pulpy mystery, just these hints of just darkness that make you ill at ease. She says, when I, there will be a day when I'm ready for you like to have sex and you

[01:03:16] really get the sense that she's a virgin. And she says, and I'll sing this song and it's the song from the TV. And she said, and that's it. You know, we're going to do it like blast off. But then she says, and look, I may resist.

[01:03:29] I may tell you to stop, but show no mercy and just give it to me. She holds out her arm in that. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. And like, again, it's this twisted fucked up version of noir where one of the things

[01:03:44] about these classic noir films is that the protagonist is kind of, you know, the hard boiled guy who's kind of an ass, like the women just end up falling in love with them like so fast when you look at these old movies and it doesn't make much sense.

[01:03:58] But this is like a, just a fucked up version of that. And even more fucked up version of that. Yeah. And also just to add the little twist of if I sing that song, like, that's it.

[01:04:08] Like you take me by force, you know, is just like, wait, why? Why can't you just have the ability to call it off if you want? You know, it's like a safe word. Yeah. Yeah. Just kind of gives you this icky feeling.

[01:04:24] Just that like, just that she says that. And then you go into this weird scene where she says, she's read about the ants in the journal and she has this theory about why ants appear to lonely people. It's because they're always together. They're always working together.

[01:04:42] And so then you get this, or she's like, but not to me because I'm not lonely. But then you see some kind of either memory or vision she's having of her on a subway.

[01:04:53] And then a little further down the car is just this giant ant who kind of looks at her and like, you know, tough day. It's such a Lynchian, you know, like his rabbits kind of. Yeah. And Cronenberg too. And Cronenberg too, yeah.

[01:05:08] But like also Miyazaki in that it's very kind of calm and they're just moving along. And I don't know. Yeah. But she's devastated. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a flashback because like her hair is different or look is different. That's right.

[01:05:23] She's a lonely soul is what we find out from it. Yeah. Yeah. And that helps explain why she might have taken him home to begin with. So now they're on a quest. She's on board.

[01:05:33] They're like working together now and they're on a quest first to find his daughter. And they use Mindy to do it because he's a fugitive, like you said. And you get these scenes where, you know, she goes into a store to try to find information.

[01:05:49] And what she's looking for is herself in these. Yeah. And that's something that comes back, you know, both for him and for her. But again, that's very noir, very Mahone drive. Like the person you're looking for is you, but you just don't realize that.

[01:06:07] You know, I was confused when I watched it because she's told by this jeweler, she finally gets this information that's like, oh yeah, I know that person. She even gets an address. And I'm like, wait, wouldn't she know that it was her? If this woman is giving information.

[01:06:27] And so it just seemed, I guess the answer is that this woman has just been also given false information as part of the plan. Because like the story was that she, you know, she was living with a Swedish family. Right. In Stockholm. Yeah.

[01:06:39] And then later on we see that she's been in Korea. In Korea. Her whole life. In the scrapbook. Right. So then after they find that out, that she's probably in Scandinavia,

[01:06:51] but I think that is to kind of throw her off the scent of who she's really looking for. Which again is another like pretty fucking complex plan if he's been able to plant this information. Yeah. Unbelievable. And there's so many little details like that.

[01:07:06] The next step in their like investigation is to test all the dumplings in town to figure out where that prison is. And there's like a cut to this weird shot of her with her arm outstretched, holding a dumpling to him.

[01:07:20] This has always struck me as just wait, why? Like it just cuts immediately and she's in this pose of holding the dumpling to him across the table. And you know, like this time I was thinking there's so many of those poses of just holding

[01:07:35] an extended arm out and down. And I think it's just another echo of the bridge and the falling, you know, like the hammer too. There's all these diagonals of that, that I think are very much reflective of that central thing that set all of this in motion. Yeah.

[01:07:55] Those lines. You're right. That's a, I hadn't noticed that. So it's a striking shot. Totally. So then there's some stuff that I'm never fully clear on the details, but he goes to this internet cafe. It turns out she's been chatting with somebody.

[01:08:12] I guess, I don't know if this is where the evergreen comes up for the first time. It is. Yeah. And this puts her in contact with the phone and then he calls up and he says, how's life in a bigger prison to Odeisu?

[01:08:27] And so now Odeisu realizes she's been in contact with the person who imprisoned him. But I don't totally get like the, like who she's been messaging and how that worked. No. And I actually was confused about when he feels like he's gotten evidence that she's

[01:08:45] a conspirator because of his like Nate.com, like his monster at Nate.com. Like I wasn't sure how he felt he had evidence of this. I mean, that was late. That's later where he accuses, right now you just get the sense that he doesn't trust

[01:08:58] her, but yeah, I don't understand any of that. I don't totally get what's going on in this kind of proto internet. Right. I think part of it is, it's very confusing because we're relying on subtitles for whatever

[01:09:11] they want to subtitle and not on the context of the whole website that we're able to read. Right, right, right. Yeah. And he says something, whoever Evergreen is, he says something about being a Count of Monte Cristo, which I think make his ears perk up. Yeah.

[01:09:26] Because that story is essentially Odeisu's story. He was in prison for a long time and goes out to seek vengeance. That's the kind of image he has of himself at least. Yeah, exactly. That's getting all to build him up just to knock him down.

[01:09:43] So he bursts out, he doesn't trust her. He grabs a hammer. It's a little unclear, but clearly he found the dumpling, the magic dumpling. At some point he's going to the prison. This is awesome. He goes up the elevator.

[01:10:00] He does some marathon man torture to try to get information out of the prison warden, who's such a scumbag. Like that guy, that actor is just the scummiest piece of shit. He's like, I was trying to get why he seems so grotesque to me.

[01:10:19] I was like, it seems mean that I find him to be grotesque. It's just his face. Right. But yeah, and I think it is a good performance because just slime just like oozes out of him as he talks.

[01:10:32] But still it's tough to watch him get his teeth torn out. Yeah. Oh man. I can't. Yeah. There's a lot of scenes here where you're looking away. Just like don't. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The guy says finally he's tortured.

[01:10:45] He has enough teeth pulled out that he's going to tell him that like, I can't, like, I don't know who it is, but I got a recording of the call. That puts you in prison so you can take that.

[01:10:56] And you do find out that it's a private prison. Yeah. That's like people pay to incarcerate people, which really made me think, wow, this is fucked up. Like I wonder if any of those places exist at all. I don't know. It feels like there are.

[01:11:09] I mean, I imagine we wouldn't know about it. Like, you know, it's a trade secret. Yeah. One day like we'll be the partially examined life guys will have a saved up enough from their Patreon. Now, all of a sudden you have, you know,

[01:11:27] probably the thing that people know this movie the most from the hallway fight. And it's awesome. I think this was the thing you texted me after you saw it. You're like, it's undeniable, you know? Yeah. No, it's crazy. It's insanely done.

[01:11:44] It's a continuous take and there's no special fucking. I mean, the knife is CG. I read the knife in his back is everything else is just rehearsed. And it's like what? 20 dudes in him. Yes. He's like making progress through the hallway.

[01:12:02] It's both like stylized, you know, with the music and the slow tracking shots going side to side of the hallway and the colors of the hallway, but then also real, you know, it's like real people fighting, getting tired. You know, we talked about that.

[01:12:17] Looked like a famous deadwood fight, too. It's like people are getting exhausted. They're not good at it. You know, like throwing haymakers, you know, like people don't fight neat and clean. They get tired and doesn't matter if they're like badass, which he is like, you know,

[01:12:33] he's doing fucking martial arts moves and stuff, but they have to pause and take a breath. Yeah. And you get like the poor, the one, the one dude with his shirt off, you know, who's just like unsure whether to keep going or not.

[01:12:45] And then just fakes a leg injury, you know, like when he was like, oh shit, I don't, I don't like, I don't want to do this. He just starts limping. He's like Paul Pierce, you know, when he fell down. No, he's not like Paul Pierce.

[01:13:01] That was a heroic comeback. Yeah. And I also just love at the end where just everyone's exhausted and beaten, like all the people that, you know, he's finally, and they're just throwing sticks at him and they just get progressively like nowhere near him as they're throwing it.

[01:13:21] And yeah, then there's this again, kind of comic beat where he opens the elevator and you just see his face and you know from that smile, that fucked up smile that, oh, there's a lot of people.

[01:13:33] And it just cuts to him in the down part of the elevator and all those people falling out. And I love it both because like it's breaking up the monotony, giving this other beat. It's not like just continuous fighting in a way that's going to bore you.

[01:13:49] But also I could appreciate that they spent like a gajillion days perfecting that one continuous take and rehearsing it. Like give the guy a break, like let him just close the elevator doors and then reopen them with everybody's ass kicked.

[01:14:03] Yeah, no, it's perfect because you don't want any more. It's been perfect. It's exactly like what it should have been. But yet another day I can't get through quietly, he says.

[01:14:14] And then he also says, when I get my revenge, can I go back to being old Odey Su? So you get this sense of like what happens when you engage in this quest of revenge?

[01:14:27] Does it become all consuming to the point where your identity is swallowed up by it forever? And I think that's a key question for both of the protagonists, both of the main characters. Yeah, you're right. And here's where the themes of identity, vengeance and loneliness all come together

[01:14:45] for me, where it's like these are lonely people consumed by vengeance who are becoming somebody else. And the question of who would they have been were it not for this is, you know, it's indeterminate. Yeah, it's indeterminate.

[01:15:02] And it's something that if they're reflecting enough, they might wonder, but they're so consumed that like I don't think either of them is that reflective about it. There are moments where you peek through little glances of, but then... Like this, like what he just said, right? Yeah.

[01:15:19] Yeah, where he asks that question. He has enough self-awareness to just ask that question. But he's also still deluded. Like he's already assumed like, okay, I have the information. I'm going to get my revenge. And he's already thinking one step beyond that, you know? Yeah.

[01:15:34] You know, I don't know why I feel like I just... My mind just went back to what you said about him being at his coolest in that opening, like fighting the thugs. And that's so true.

[01:15:43] Like it's the coolest moment of his story because it's the beginning of the journey. He's wearing like a cool suit and he bounces back and you see the red and then he beats up the thugs. And like that's as good as it's going to get.

[01:15:55] You don't get the sense yet that he's being controlled or a puppet necessarily. Right. He's cool wearing sunglasses, you know? Yeah. It's like... Yeah. And like the hallway scene is the coolest scene in the movie from the film's perspective,

[01:16:11] but he's already a little ragged in that scene and gets stabbed in the back literally and pulls it out. Yeah. So Woo Jin just for the first time, I think this is the first time we see him, right?

[01:16:23] The guy who has arranged all of this for Oh Dae Soo makes an appearance kind of as he's stumbling through the streets, puts him in a car and says, where are you staying? And then sends him to the girl's house, Mi Do. But he does identify himself.

[01:16:42] He says, Oh Dae Soo, you know? Yeah. So then he just wakes up and he's back with Mi Do and this is where he listens to the tape. But yeah. Why do you think he just showed up then?

[01:16:55] This is when you're starting to get a glimpse about how much control and how much observation he's putting into this. And it is a great scene. It's like a Kaiser Soze kind of scene or something where you see in his face, the minute he puts

[01:17:09] him in the car, sticks his head in the window and reveals by saying his name and the car takes off and Oh Dae Soo's like, fuck, that's the guy. This is the fucking monster who's been behind all of this.

[01:17:22] And by the way, the guy is young and a good looking dude. He's like a smiley, you know? He's got that, same with Steven Yeun in Burning, that just kind of the swagger and confidence of an unbelievably rich guy. So here's where he listens to the tape.

[01:17:41] This should be a clue. Why did Woo Jin leave you at the tape if, you know, he's really worried about you finding him? But he listens to it. You know, here's where you learn the details of this prison that it's used to get revenge on people usually.

[01:17:56] And you hear Woo Jin saying, what if he goes insane? Won't he go insane? And then the warden says, now we can give them this drug if you want us to. And apparently it's really effective at treating schizophrenia. Like going to stave off the insanity that might come.

[01:18:13] Yeah. And given this duality of monster, man, it does start to make you think that this is really about one person, maybe, you know? This idea of schizophrenia getting dropped in, that there's a lot of like fragmented people that might be a single person.

[01:18:36] In some kind of broader, weirder interpretation. Oh, I've never thought about that. I got for the first time ever, got this like there's so many references to this idea of a split in a person. But then you also find out he gets this clue.

[01:18:53] The warden says, man, 15 years, what did he do wrong? And he says, Oh Dae Soo talks too much. Which is exactly what somebody would say if they imprisoned me and they didn't want me to know too much. Exactly.

[01:19:09] I think both of us could easily have had this happen to us and still might. All right. If there is a maybe a lull in this movie, even though there's a lot of cool bits of it, but it might be right now where they're continuing the investigation.

[01:19:26] They find his friend who had bailed him out and they do this kind of very early 2000s internet investigation where they hone in on the school that maybe this person comes from.

[01:19:40] But then all of a sudden it's also cut to him having tied up Mi Do because he doesn't trust her. And here's where he talks about the monster, which I took to be obviously evocative of the monster thing, but also like some internet. Yeah.

[01:19:56] Like I completely didn't have time to look up some Reddit explanation of what's going on here, but he created an account on whatever this chat room is. It's called Nate.com and his handle is monster at Nate.com and he feels like he's now

[01:20:16] collected enough evidence to be convinced that she is in on it. Was he manipulated into thinking that or is he just so distrustful and paranoid? That's what I couldn't figure out. Well, I think that she really is talking to Evergreen and she has been for a while.

[01:20:30] But she wasn't denying that, right? No, but he's just paranoid, right? Because he realizes that she has any pre-existing relationship with the guy who imprisoned her. He thinks maybe she's part of the whole plan. Yeah.

[01:20:45] So then he gets a call and Woo Jin, it turns out is in another part of this apartment complex with his henchman. And so he runs, he leaves her all tied up and runs down to see him.

[01:20:58] After writing, by the way, the address on her midriff in lipstick. Yeah, exactly. This is where, you know, if you want to be critical of the Oh Dae Soo character, you know, this could be exhibit A that he just leaves her tied up. The door open. Yeah.

[01:21:14] It's interesting that Woo Jin is getting more and more actively involved. You know, he's not behind the scenes as much anymore. I know he needs to get her, get him out of the, uh, his own apartment. But what's the point of having this confrontation there? Do you think?

[01:21:31] I don't know. But in another movie, this would be the stupidest shit for villain to do. But it's so crucial for Woo Jin. To show his face. Yeah. It's been such a part of his life and his plan involves him actually dating Oh Dae Soo into doing things.

[01:21:52] And so, yeah, like proximately getting him out of the apartment is one. But he also just wants, he needs to tell them like, no, this is where you have to figure it out. Like, because his final plan is. That Oh Dae Soo does figure it out. Exactly.

[01:22:06] And the way he figures it out is to use a photo of this old yearbook. And so he needs to show him his face. Just practically speaking for the plan. There's also that. Yeah, right. That's right. Yeah.

[01:22:18] And also just giving him more and more breadcrumbs to track this down. It's almost like he's getting impatient that he's not doing it fast enough. Here's where he gives him that July 5th deadline. The deadline. That we'll figure out. Which is what?

[01:22:31] Five days away or six days away. Yeah. And then he says, oh, you might want to go back to your apartment. I think you left the door open. Yeah. And Mido tied up. And Mido tied up. And now you get this like clockwork RNG scene.

[01:22:43] With that hotel warden is back, you know, coming to get like dental revenge. And now even his Margaret test because he just has a grill. Yeah. You know? Yeah. His full on gold teeth. Yeah. And like it looks like they don't have good things planned for Mido either.

[01:23:05] He does pull out one tooth I think. But then... No, he doesn't. He doesn't even do that? No. No, he doesn't. I thought he did and I was paying close attention to this. He, you know, uses that little separator that dentists use to like open your...

[01:23:17] Keep your mouth open. And he puts in the whatever like pliers to pull it. And he mocks the twisting gesture and like a grunt. And Odeisu screams. Yeah. And that's when he actually says, you're a coward. Your imagination that I was doing it was like all it took.

[01:23:38] Oh yeah. So you have to imagine that I'm not doing it. And that's when he smiles. And that's when he smiles. He just goes that crazy maniacal smile that just makes him pause for a second. And then he gets a call.

[01:23:51] And what you get from the call is that Woojin has bought him off. Like he's given him enough money so that he doesn't have to get revenge by torturing Odeisu and raping Mido. This is another thing like he can be bought off. That's something maybe Odeisu should remember.

[01:24:11] And as he's leaving, Odeisu still says like, let's fight. And he says, I'm going to cut off your hand that touched Mido's breast. So he's trying to be chivalrous now. Right. We didn't say like her breasts are exposed. Like she's tied up against the wall.

[01:24:27] But when he says that I'm going to cut off your hand for touching Mido's breast. He says, well, what about my tongue? Which gives you some sense of both what he did to Mido and what's... What's to come. Everything is foreshadowing.

[01:24:39] It's just like there's nothing that doesn't have some kind of connection to something else. This more than even most movies that are like this, you have to watch this movie two times.

[01:24:50] Like I don't think that there is a way that you can enjoy like 80% of what the filmmaker intends for you to enjoy without having... And so many things it's almost like in a really good movie where this happens. It's like, how did I not realize it?

[01:25:06] There's so many things that's foreshadowing. This is your daughter. This is your... You are looking for your, you know, and only when you know it afterwards. Now as they're driving home, she's being a very good sport about what happened. And she says, so wait, what's the deal?

[01:25:25] He's going to kill me because you love me. And unless you figure it out. Yeah. Like I overheard him say that he's only going to kill people he loves. Yeah. Might you love me? I have to say Mido's character is super sad to me.

[01:25:43] Once you get that loneliness vibe from her in the beginning, like it's just all tragic. Yeah. She is the most abject character in all of it. Like if you think about her life and where it is.

[01:25:59] So she sings the song and once she sings a song, you know what that means. Woojin, now we get the sense is really plugged in. Like he can hear everything that's going on. There's this weird scene right now where he's having some kind of EEG heart monitoring.

[01:26:18] And he's wondering whether they've truly fallen in love. And it's just a weird scene like why this is going on while he's has these stuff plugged into his chest. Anyway, this is a really like when you've seen it, when you know the deal.

[01:26:34] The sex scene is just, it's brutal to watch. The second time and forever more that sex scene is going to be hard to watch. You know, like the things she's saying, it's painful, but I'm enduring it. I want you to know that.

[01:26:46] The whole scene is very red, but there's splashes of green and purple. So you have all the color schemes. It's just, it's tough when you know, they really drag it out. They drag out the sex. At first it's painful. Then there's a little bit of enjoyment, perhaps.

[01:27:03] And her just desperation that he gets the relief that he wants. Yeah. Like how could you have held this in for 15 years? And he says like these lines that are just in both contexts, not knowing and knowing.

[01:27:16] Or so he says, I'm grateful for all those years in prison because would Mito have loved me like this if not for those years, you know? And it's like, oh God, man, that's just on all the ways that's so sad. Right.

[01:27:28] But he's so grateful and he's being kind of a gentleman afterwards. He's blow drying her hair, you know, it's like a moment of tenderness. And I think, you know, the way they treat each other is tender, except when he is assaulting her or like tying her up.

[01:27:45] And okay, now there's just a scene afterwards, they're asleep in the bed and this just makes your skin crawl. So Wu Jin comes in, like they gas both of them. So they're out cold and Wu Jin comes in in a gas mask and you get this breathing sound.

[01:28:00] It's like Darth Vader. Yeah. And, you know, like, so it's done like, it's kind of like the sound when you're scuba diving, but you know, with gas and then he just traces her naked body with his finger and just like, Right.

[01:28:15] Especially when you find out he's been taking care of her since she was three. Yeah. It's like, it's almost like not like him. No, it's like very violating. Yeah. You know?

[01:28:26] And Wu Jin has been so slick up to this point, like, and this is just perverted and weird. And of course we don't know the first time why he would want to come in here at all. Yeah.

[01:28:37] Because we don't know any connection that the two of them have. So then when they wake up, he knows he's bugged and he wants to get rid of it. He knows he's bugged because of the present that was left. Oh right.

[01:28:49] There's a present that was left, which contains... Park's hand. Yes. Right. The warden's hand. The warden's hand, because it was the hand that touched the breast. So now he knows that they heard that and he says he wants to get the bug off

[01:29:04] and he does something somewhat smart here. He goes and says, I think I have a bug on me, but he writes that down. But just as this is happening, she says something pretty interesting.

[01:29:15] She says, look, maybe he let you go because he has fun watching you run wild with revenge. That maybe he's toying with you. Could that be it? And he doesn't answer. It's such an interesting thing because number one, she's basically right about what's happening.

[01:29:32] And number two, she also is focused on the right question. And he doesn't pick up on it at all because he's doing his like, oh, I'm a secret agent. You know, like getting this bug out of my clothes. Forest for the trees, man.

[01:29:46] Like you can't see what's going on. Here's where they go back to the internet. No, he calls his friend at the internet cafe. Right. And Woojin is there. The way he is tracking them now is his only way is through the friend.

[01:30:02] And here's where you find out that Woojin had an older sister. She went. The story is she went alone to the dam and fell off a bridge and died in the river. Rich family, but the friend said also total slut, you know, multiple times, just like full on.

[01:30:19] Like, remember, primary thing is she's a fucking slut. You know, that's the main takeaway from this phone call. And he does suffer from that. And here's another case where like that kind of perfect control that Woojin has, like it slips a little bit.

[01:30:41] I think he genuinely loses his composure here and stabs him with floppy disk. Like a CD. CD. He breaks the snaps of CD and fucking goes crazy on him. Yeah. But I think like he says to Oh Dae-su,

[01:30:58] I need you to know that my sister was not a slut. And also that it's your fault that I'm killing him. Like, again, that's just not part of the plan. I don't think he would do this. He deviated from script.

[01:31:09] Joo-hwan right before he gets attacked says like the last thing he says on the phone is after he's telling him about the sister, he says, didn't you also? And then like that's the last thing he says, which, you know, he was starting to connect the dots. Yeah.

[01:31:23] So while he's on the phone, they receive a flyer. Like so as this is happening, as Joo-hwan, his friend is getting his ass beat and killed, he gets a flyer in a purple envelope with that scissorhands cafe or whatever. Oh, right. Salon. Yeah.

[01:31:41] So again, he's just getting fed the next clue. It's like a scavenger hunt. Meanwhile, Woo-jin goes back to his penthouse suite. And here's where Oh Dae-su makes, I don't know if this is a flaw in the movie or maybe it's

[01:31:57] just I need to work it into my interpretation, but he makes a pretty indefensible decision. Which is, OK, now that we're like hot on the tail of this guy, I need to keep you somewhere safe.

[01:32:13] So I'm going to go back to the prison where that warden is whose teeth I forcibly removed and tortured because that'll be the safest place for you. Because the rationale is he'll be so consumed with revenge for his hand. That it'll be a common enemy. Right? Yeah.

[01:32:35] And I'll give him the ring back and we'll be fucking square. Yeah, right. It's so stupid that it almost seems intentional. Like this is some way that his psyche is trying to bring this tension to some kind of resolution or some sort of final battle or something.

[01:32:53] It is very stupid. And it's a new prison, right? He's like he's set up shop in a new building. Yeah. Yeah. And nicer. Yeah. The only thing you can think is, OK, this guy hasn't been out in the world for 15 years.

[01:33:09] He's at least sure that the prison can't be infiltrated easily. And he's right to worry about her safety. It just seems like there's more of a downside to that plan than an upside. OK, two things.

[01:33:25] One, we do get here a shot of Woojin in his penthouse, like you said. But it's a very pretty shot of him doing this stretching with his legs. He's lying on his belly. His legs are up above his head and he's crying.

[01:33:42] And you get this sense for the first time, I think, that he's sad. And there's some kind of connection that he feels towards Odaesu. Like he feels this connection and every once in a while will make a decision to sort of spare him something, you know? And. Yeah.

[01:34:03] He's not like he's not a complete monster to Odaesu. Like he's wrapped his whole life around it. It's a raison d'etre is the French. It's intercut with so you have this chilly thing of him doing this like beautiful yoga poses

[01:34:16] interspersed with Odaesu in the car just like grunting like an animal. So you're really getting this civilized man versus beast dichotomy there. But again, which makes me sort of wonder to what extent they're like two sides of the same person. Almost.

[01:34:38] I read somewhere he was trying to evoke the god Apollo. Yeah. With those stretches. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it definitely invokes a kind of godlike, you know, and obviously like the class difference of the people in the penthouse versus the people in the beat up car.

[01:34:56] The other thing I was going to say is that plastic hand that Park has is pretty hilarious, too. He's like pointing to his new TV. Yeah. And he's just it's like Buster from Arrested Development, you know?

[01:35:08] And so he goes to this place where they got the flyer and here's where he finds out that there were rumors that Woojin's sister was pregnant. Yeah. So he's like, wait, who told people that? And they say it was his friend, Joo Won, who we know.

[01:35:23] He was just killed. But if the real source was him, was Oh Dae-su. Yeah. So she's like talking to another friend on the phone and she has this realization. Wait, she says it would have been like you would know. So she's just like creeped out.

[01:35:38] I wondered, though, since Oh Dae-su is supposed to be a fugitive who killed his wife, does she know? This is supposed to be an old classmate. I think maybe this is like in a totally different part of like a more remote part of Korea and

[01:35:53] it's a local story. So that's but you're right. Also, again, you have this phenomenon where you're looking for the culprit and the person you're looking for is you. You're the culprit. He finds out there. I'm the one that did this. Right.

[01:36:10] And now he's starting to put it together. I was so confused why he was filming the woman's knees. Did you catch that? No. Like, OK, so Oh Dae-su is in the salon and he's talking to that woman and all of a sudden he's just staring at her knees.

[01:36:26] And you're like, wait, is this like a Tarantino foot thing like this? He's got a thing for knees. And yeah. And then like there's another woman who walks in, right? And he just stares immediately at her knees. And then you get an immediate flash.

[01:36:41] You get an immediate flashback to her in high school and he sees her riding her bike and it's just a shot of her and her knees. So that's the trigger that gets him back there.

[01:36:53] And it's just kind of a funny scene because it's a very almost gentle scene of this kind of tough class clown, funny kid, but also kind of a juvenile delinquent trying to pick up the nice, rich girl, the smart girl. And Su-ah, Su-ah. Su-ah, yeah.

[01:37:11] And he's just doing a kind of almost chaplain-esque goofball pickup scene with her. Yeah. And it really is played that way. Like she gets a little creeped out by him at the end, but he's not doing anything that bad. She's like, I heard you're popular with the girls.

[01:37:27] Yeah. I don't think she's creeped out, actually. I think that she leaves immediately because I think, isn't it supposed to be like that she goes immediately to meet her brother? Oh, is it? Yeah. Is it that day? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. That's right.

[01:37:41] Because then he walks and follows her. Because he walks and follows her. And this is just so masterfully done, this sequence where you get him remembering, you get older versions and younger versions of both Oh Dae-su and Woo-jin racing to this

[01:37:56] one place where you're going to find out, like you've explored the darkest part of your own soul right now. You're about to figure out. It all ends up in this cracked window that young Oh Dae-su, but also at times old Oh

[01:38:13] Dae-su looks through and he sees young Woo-jin taking photos of his sister in this classroom that it's like after school. So nobody's around. It's like the unbearable lightness of being. It's like this kind of erotic photo shoot. Yeah. It's like playful and turns into erotic. Yeah. Like innocent.

[01:38:39] Yeah, it's both innocent and then. And then he's taking her panties off. At first you don't know what's going on. It seems a little weird. But then, yeah, as it gets more and more explicit in terms of what he's doing and her attitude

[01:38:51] is just such a strange scene because she tells him to stop and he's like just kind of whines. And so it's like, yeah, like just kind of like, no, stop. Like when she bats him away and then she allows him to keep doing it.

[01:39:07] He takes off her underwear and she's like resists. But then next thing you know, like he has her blouse open and her. And she starts helping him at that point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:39:17] And there's that kind of look she gives herself in the mirror and I don't know, there's something like it's kind of hot, you know? I think he's trying to make that. I wasn't going to say, I'm glad you said it first.

[01:39:35] Yeah, no, it's like it's the relationship between them aside. It captures like this like first time, like young sort of like horny. Yeah. Like, you know? Yeah. But with your sister and not his stepsister. Not stepsister. It didn't go out of their way.

[01:39:54] But yeah, when she looks at herself in the mirror, you getting something of like what this is doing for her. She gives herself this look that she's, you know, she's turned on by the fact that she's doing this and she wants to see herself.

[01:40:10] And then she also catches a glimpse of O'Day. No, it's great because she's moving the mirror slowly. It's just like a well shot thing, right? Because she's as she's sort of moving the mirror slowly to get like a different angle on her,

[01:40:24] you know, boobs and her brother's sucking them. Then like it moves just to the point where she sees O'Day's face. Yeah. And that brings the scene to a close. And now he's like, I get it. You know, I know why he imprisoned me. Yeah, his memories jogged.

[01:40:41] Like you said, he saw his face. The reason that he knows is because he saw his face in the yearbook. Yeah. And now we get this flashback of him talking to his friend about it.

[01:40:49] And here's where you realize that he at the time, he didn't know that that was his sister. He was just gossiping. Oh, I saw this girl I was hitting on having sex with some like young kid. And like the literal day before he's supposed to leave for Seoul.

[01:41:04] Yeah. He's like moving out and his friend is helping him move. I watched this with Lai yesterday. She asked a good question of why. I know it's not like I'm trying to figure out when I first showed it to her. But it was probably not necessarily appropriate.

[01:41:25] Even Park Chan-wook's has one movie he won't show his daughter. But, you know, that's he made the movie. What was that movie about? Nothing. But she asked the question, why was it Oh Dae-su that was the target of this vengeance and not the friend? Yeah. I don't know.

[01:41:48] I mean, he's the source. He's the source. He's the original grain of sand. He's the cause of suey. Right. The unmoved mover of this whole thing. I think that is kind of what it is, right? There's no other reason.

[01:42:02] No. And it just goes to show like the vengeance that he's seeking to me is just a cure for his loneliness. There's no rationale. Like this is not the intentional act of a bad actor.

[01:42:15] This is him needing to hook onto something to live, to give his life meaning. Yeah. Otherwise he's going to die. And he's already had this heart problem that we learn about. Now he goes back to the prison with Mi-do and you get this moment, this kind of critical

[01:42:30] moment where Mi-do says, well, you said you wanted to find out why he did this. And now you do. So it's over. Let's go. Yeah. She says, can't we run away? No.

[01:42:42] Like now that you know, you said it was that you wanted to know like, and this is the moment where it's like, man, he can't and he should have. And then he would have been fine. They would have lived happily ever after. Yeah. No hypnotism even necessary. Right.

[01:42:54] But he says he's become vengeance now. Yeah. It's like fucking Batman. Now we enter the portion of the movie that's just one horribly tragic fucked up climax after another. It's just like they keep coming. They keep top topping themselves.

[01:43:12] The first time you watch it, you're like, okay, I just saw that's crazy. Oh my God. It's his daughter. But okay, it's over. And then there's some new thing that's even more. It's just like, it just never stops.

[01:43:24] So we see him go to again, I think this is voiceover. He's talking about like he said he lived in a high tower. I wasn't clear how he figured out where he lived, to be honest.

[01:43:36] I mean, it makes it sound like he put two and two together because then he does this thing about like Proverbs 6, 4, which it just threw me off where he's like trying to crack the code to get into the penthouse. Oh yeah.

[01:43:46] But like, you know, I'm like, wait, what? It's just that same thing of he's still in his own detective story because the way that's played is he's trying to figure out the password and if he gets the password, then he'll be able to finally get his final revenge.

[01:44:00] And then Woo Jin just comes into the elevator knowing he was going to be there the whole time. It's just parallelism, like almost like timestamped parallelism, like the symmetry between like getting released, you know, after putting all this effort into getting into escaping

[01:44:17] and then it just gets released. And then he's putting all this effort into breaking this code like a dummy. Yeah, exactly. With the symmetry with using the chopsticks to create. Yeah. No, and there's so many things like that. He's epiphenomenal.

[01:44:29] Like he keeps thinking I'm solving this, I'm making progress. But all of this has been completely curated for him, like in the game or something like that. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So they go up to in the elevator.

[01:44:44] He's clearly OK with him being there and even OK with him saying like it's this big culmination of his detective work. You killed your sister. No, he says you slept with your sister. You slept with your sister. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Much more embarrassing. Yeah.

[01:45:00] And he's like, yeah, let's just talk about this upstairs. And he immediately, you know, there's like a nice little thing where he immediately looks to his henchman. He like sort of like looks over to the right to see the reaction that that got from him.

[01:45:14] Because I'm sure he doesn't know Korean Slim Shady is in the dark. Oh, you think? That whole thing. Yeah. I don't think that he knows that he was fucking his sister. Interesting.

[01:45:22] I'm sure he thinks that he had something to do with the death of his sister like that Odaesu did. Yeah. But. Oh, interesting. OK. Yeah, I guess that's right. Um, you know, very cool scene in the penthouse where Odaesu, uh, you know, starts out thinking

[01:45:36] he has the upper hand and, you know, he is so nonchalant about it. Woojin, he takes a shower. His posture as he's walking is just so aristocratic. And that place is such a slick, wealthy, modern place. It's just really cool the way this is unfolding at this point.

[01:45:54] It's an amazing place. And yet like so cold. Yeah. It's all concrete. And and so it's it's his own prison. It's chilly. Yes, very much his own prison. There's a lot of green inflection in it, which I think is like a symbol of the prison being imprisoned.

[01:46:12] But the coolest closet I've ever seen in my life. Yes, the one that like opens into four different sections. Yeah. Odaesu is like, you slept with your sister and he starts going into this accusation, which he thinks is his denouement. Yeah.

[01:46:25] And then Woojin's like, let's back up a bit. But he does get him with something. Yeah, it's actually when he's pulling the pictures from the wall. I think it's when he just said, you know, everybody said that she died alone, but you

[01:46:39] were there or else who took this picture and look at the date on this picture. And I think that hits a sore spot for him because even though Odaesu is using this as

[01:46:49] like again, is like fake detective as like a way to prove that he killed his sister. That's not what happened at all. It's a much, much more painful story for him. Again, like he got the big picture. Yeah, he got exact.

[01:47:01] But he does manage to get under Woojin's skin a little bit. On the note of why he got under his skin, that he has worked his whole life to get revenge for his sister's death.

[01:47:12] To be accused of being the one who killed her has to like be just like, yeah, like let's get this show. And I think he gets at the reason of it too. Odaesu, it's implied maybe a little bit because, okay, as I understand the details,

[01:47:25] it's a little hazy and you're definitely getting it from two perspectives. But I think she wasn't actually pregnant. Yeah, it's kind of unclear to me. But yeah, like it was like a hysterical pregnancy that Woojin says is because all the

[01:47:40] rumors started about her being such a slut and that actually made her pregnant. And so he says, your tongue killed my sister. It was or an impregnated my sister. It was not Woojin's dick. And so that's his story that he's telling him.

[01:47:59] And then what Odaesu says is, no, no, no, you thought you got her pregnant and then you went to the dam with her and let her die. And then when you found out that it was not necessary, that it was a hysterical pregnancy,

[01:48:12] that's when you hatched your revenge plan. That's where it was intolerable that I had done that. And so like his reaction makes him think that might have been right. Yeah, no, I think that like it's totally possible. But we really don't know the details of... We don't.

[01:48:29] I don't think we can know whether she was pregnant or not. Yeah. And I can't tell whether his story is that they did have sex, but she wasn't pregnant or they never even had sex. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know because you're right.

[01:48:43] We didn't see them have sex. Yeah. OK, as I understand the details, it's a little hazy and you're definitely getting it from two perspectives. But I think she wasn't actually pregnant. Yeah, it's kind of unclear to me. But yeah.

[01:48:55] Like it was like a hysterical pregnancy that Woojin says is because all the rumors started about her being such a slut and that actually made her pregnant. And so he says, your tongue killed my sister. It was or impregnated my sister. It was not Woojin's dick.

[01:49:17] And so that's his story that he's telling him. And then what O'Day-Sue says is, no, no, no, you did get her pregnant or you thought you got her pregnant and then you went to the dam with her and let her die.

[01:49:32] And then when you found out that it was not necessary, that it was a hysterical pregnancy, that's when you hatched your revenge plan. That's where it was intolerable that I had done that. And so like his reaction makes him think that might have been right.

[01:49:48] Yeah, no, I think that like it's totally possible. But we really don't know the details of... I don't think we can know whether she was pregnant or not. Yeah. And I can't tell whether his story is that they did have sex, but she wasn't pregnant

[01:50:03] or they never even had sex. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know because you're right. We didn't see them have sex. Yeah. So then he shows him a scrapbook. In the purple gift box. Now you start to figure out what actually happened and you get the big reveal.

[01:50:21] The reveal that is genuinely stunning. I had never really seen a reveal like that in a movie before. And you know, like on the second watching today, I realized that in the original news story about the murder of his wife,

[01:50:36] the news reports that the only thing that was taken was a family album. Yeah, that's right. Everything is so perfectly constructed here. Yeah. So I was going to ask you, does that mean that Woo Jin killed his wife? I had always assumed that.

[01:50:51] Yeah, that Woo Jin had her killed. And here's where you get another laugh in the world left with you, Weep and You Weed Alone. Oh Dae Soo goes crazy, fights the henchmen. They have a kind of a classic Bond versus the henchman fight.

[01:51:09] It's a very cool shot that like, it was unclear to me what was happening at first, but from the outside, you're looking through the window and you see them fighting and you see henchman Blondie, like he gets the best of Dae Soo, throws him. Like kind of easily.

[01:51:25] Easily. And he hit the window. And then that weakened the window and the window. And here is where like the green light is just saturating right now in here. And it's actually Woo Jin who finishes off the henchman.

[01:51:38] He just shoots him in the head because he's just impatient to carry out the plan. It's fucked up, man. I was like, I thought that was your boy. Yeah. And I like the shot of him.

[01:51:48] Like he wipes his blood off his eye from the henchman's blood and he's like, he's like annoyed. It's like, I shouldn't have to do this. I'm like rich, you know? Then he kind of launches into what I think is a very reasonable critique of Oh Dae Soo's decisions

[01:52:04] and in particular stashing her in the prison and saying like, you can't protect the people. Like that's in fact, all you do is put them in harm's way. You did it with your wife. Now you're doing it with your daughter.

[01:52:16] And it's like, this is why I think this is like deep guilt that is being made manifest. I don't think that we had, we mentioned it. But one of the things that he says early on in that one scene in the adjacent department

[01:52:30] is that the deal was if he can figure out what, why he was in prison, that he will kill himself. Not he's going to kill, kill Mi Do. And so, so he knows that that's on the table. Yeah. Right?

[01:52:42] Like, and he's seen him kill his own, like, you know, he knows that, that she might be dead, but like her knowing might be worse. Yeah, exactly. And then Oh Dae Soo realizes, oh my God, like you're going to tell her,

[01:52:55] you're going to either kill her or even worse, you're going to tell her. And he tries to do anything to prevent that from happening. And so this is where he's at his lowest.

[01:53:05] Like if he was at his highest in the fight with those hoodlums, this is his lowest point. He's begging, he's barking like a dog. There is no movie that I've seen Grovel make me so uncomfortable and be so just viscerally effective. It's very hard to watch.

[01:53:21] And that's before he cuts his own tongue, which is like, I think for me kind of impossible. Abject like humiliation at the largest, like most tragic extreme scales. And I don't know, Woo Jin, does he show a little compassion here?

[01:53:39] He says, tell her not to open the box. I think maybe he does. Yeah. Oh Dae Soo does that thing that he does in the opening scene, which is he gets, he's like, please, please no, please, please no. Like I'll be your dog.

[01:53:53] And then I'll kill you and I'll trip your body. And then just like, no, no, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean this like, but he confesses that he's committed a terrible sin to him and his sister.

[01:54:02] And I do think that that, at least my interpretation is that that did make a difference. Yeah. Maybe he's moved enough to at least spare him the knowledge that his daughter is going to find out about this. Yeah.

[01:54:15] Now that I think about it, dude, like it makes sense because I think this is just always part of his plan because the way that he's really testing a day series like. Afterwards. Yeah. Okay. Well, the next thing he does definitely isn't compassionate.

[01:54:27] So this was set up earlier, but he had this thing that would stop his heart. He said again, one of these little details that's so well planned. It's not a thing that will stop his heart, but he knew, oh, Dae Soo would think that

[01:54:39] and grab it and press it. And what it actually does is play good audio of him having sex with his daughter and in the apartment, just echoing as he goes down in the elevator. Yeah.

[01:54:55] Before the audio starts playing, I'm thinking, oh no, he just did that thing to test them. Like, were you going to try to kill me with that button? And now I'm going to kill you. But no, like it was even worse. He had planned it out to be.

[01:55:06] Keeps topping itself in terms of like how much it's going to punch you in the stomach and work you over. But then he says as last thing he says to him, he says, my sister and I knew everything and still loved each other. Can you do the same?

[01:55:22] So he's saying, look, you two love each other now, whatever the circumstances. Can you go on loving each other when you know that's this choice that he at least appears to be giving? Oh, Dae Soo.

[01:55:37] And it's a question whether it is a real choice or one of another in the series of illusory choices. Yeah. Another just really tragic scene in the elevator of him. You really get what happened or at least his memory of what happened over the water with his sister.

[01:55:56] Yeah. It's a really, really well done scene. Yeah. It's just doing what he's done earlier in the movie already splicing current person and past person. Yeah. And what's your interpretation that he was worried about it? She knew that she was worried about it.

[01:56:14] And she probably said there's an easy solution for me to jump off. And he doesn't fully prevent her, but then feels bad and grabs her as she's about to fall and then just makes the decision to let her fall. Is that how you interpreted it?

[01:56:30] You know, I was trying to look at like the details and see if there were clues there because we don't see what happened right before she gets up onto the bridge and starts letting herself go.

[01:56:43] I have the opinion that like it was a surprise that he immediately saw what she was doing and ran over to try to stop her. And she's telling him, let go. You know, I know that this is like, yeah, this will solve things.

[01:57:00] And the last thing she says, I have no regrets. Do you? And I kind of think he just couldn't hold on anymore. Yeah. But I'm 50-50 on whether he's going to let her go. I think he kind of lets go, but not fully.

[01:57:18] That makes sense to me because that's like... Not fully, you know, like intentionally, but kind of. It's hard because that's clearly what she wants. And she does this thing where she grabs the camera and takes a selfie, which is fucking

[01:57:30] tragic because that's one of the pictures that he has. That's the one that got, um, that he noticed. And then as his hand is held out now, the grown up version, but still on the bridge,

[01:57:42] you see it cocking and then you see him shoot himself in the elevator. And that's it for Woo Jin. I think like he really was living for this revenge and that had completely devoured him so that once it had been achieved to its perfection, he had nothing more.

[01:58:01] There was nothing more to do. Yeah. I think that was part of his plan. I think that he's like knew maybe because he'd been living with this for so long, but I think he knew because he says earlier to Dae Soo, like when it's done, what will you

[01:58:16] have to live for? Right. Like when your vengeance is done. And I think he's known this all along and I think he's sort of just being true to his word. Like he figured it out.

[01:58:24] I said I was going to kill myself when this was all said and done. Like I have nothing else to live for. That's a common theme in a lot of revenge movies. Even like Princess Bride, he has a line like that where he says, now that I've devoted

[01:58:35] my whole life to this, what do I do now? So it's like if you have a soul left, then it's a new chapter where you don't know. You've had a clear purpose and now you have no purpose.

[01:58:46] But if you're not like he's just a husk after that's done. His entire identity was that. Yeah. It's like it's destroyed you or it's birthed a new person that's like completely lost. Anything's possible. The possibilities are endless.

[01:59:03] So again, like you think you're done with anything that's going to be even more disturbing than what you've seen before. But there's this quite ambiguous final sequence where he has written a letter to this hypnotist. So what's your interpretation of A, what he's asking her to do?

[01:59:24] And then B, what ends up happening? So I don't think it's too ambiguous that he just wants his memories erased. Like he wants to be happy with Mido or at the very least, he doesn't want her to be miserable.

[01:59:38] You know, think about it like you would have to leave her and give her some sort of reason for why he's leaving her. And he loves her now in two ways. He doesn't want her to suffer that way. That would be fucked up.

[01:59:51] And so he's like, okay, like this hypnotist has done wonders for this vengeance plot. Like, can I get her to just fucking erase that part of my memory? Now, what actually happens? So he goes and meets her like somewhere in New Zealand, I guess.

[02:00:08] In the snow has this session. He had written her a letter. Of course, his tongue is cut out. And she says, I had no reason to help you. But the last sentence of your letter convinced me. And do you have the quote?

[02:00:20] Yeah, it's a callback to the opening guy on the building. Even though I'm no better than a beast, don't I have a right to live? Yeah. Right. And so she's like, this is what convinced me. I couldn't tell whether that was like because I don't know.

[02:00:34] Was that part of the hypnotism to begin with? Well, that's maybe right. Like depending on how far like how, you know, so many details we know have been thought out. Could it have been could he have planted a suicide guy like who is genuinely going to

[02:00:47] commit suicide to some post-hypnotic suggestion? You never know. It's weird because he immediately repeats it when the suicidal guy says it in a weird way, in a way that you would definitely like.

[02:01:00] And so what she then says is, when I ring my bell, you'll be split into two persons. The one who doesn't know the secret is named Odeisu. The one who keeps the secret is called Monster.

[02:01:12] Then the monster will walk away and every step ages him by a year and he'll die when he's 70. And she's like, I don't know if this will work, but good luck. Yeah. So then the next thing we see is Mido comes and finds him in her red outfit.

[02:01:30] Yeah. Then you look and he does very intentionally, he shows you that like the 20 footsteps or whatever have been taken from where he was sitting in his chair. And it was the monster, the one who was supposed to walk 20 paces. She says, I love you Odeisu.

[02:01:47] And then he smiles and that smile turns from maybe a genuine one into the most fucked up grimacing. Yeah, that crazy smile of the madman in the prison. I feel like within the text it's that the monster survived, that it didn't work,

[02:02:05] the procedure didn't work or that that was the ultimate goal of the hypnotist as part of the revenge plot. Which it could have been, she's still at it. Yeah. And I don't think so, I don't think that there is a possibility that it's a happy

[02:02:18] ending in the sense that he actually forgot, right? Here's what I always assumed. I don't think I knew until looking into it this time that it was such a, people viewed it so dichotomously, like either he was Odeisu and he's definitely forgot or like, I always

[02:02:34] assumed that on the one hand he was released from it. But then when that smile comes, it's like some part of him knows though, even if he can't articulate it to himself. Right. So like, it's still within him and it's affecting something about him.

[02:02:51] But if I'm to take it at the, you can't say at face value because of the ambiguity, but if the monster was supposed to have died, like actually died, then it shouldn't be surviving even in his deep unconscious. No, right.

[02:03:06] Which is why I think, yeah, and I don't think, I don't know how literally we're supposed to take that, but it does seem like it's played that he either did one or the other. It's not clear at the end with his smile.

[02:03:17] It's not clear from the 20 paces, like it's deliberately left ambiguous. I think the messages were both of these things though, you know? Yeah. I liked the thought that it was actually the final step, the posthumous revenge, the last step, like you're always going to know dude.

[02:03:36] That's the real question. The real question now is can you live with it? Yeah, that's right. Which he did say, you know? But I do kind of feel like he thought his revenge was already over when he shot himself.

[02:03:48] So yeah, maybe, but he's like so fucking tactical the whole time that like, you know, even if he was satisfied by that last moment before he shoots himself, he could have like at some time.

[02:04:00] I kind of like that more he is, it's a real choice he's offering O'Day-Sue because he does feel some kind of connection to him. They're both been completely consumed by this mission. Are you like incest is the tie that binds? Like it's a club.

[02:04:17] No, yeah, like it was only when I watched it, like rewatched it right before we recorded that I was getting these vibes that, you know, you could do an interpretation where this is one guy dealing with a, you know, only partially repressed memory of having of some

[02:04:37] kind of incestuous relationship with either his daughter or his sister and, you know, like the prison and like a lot of that stuff is a metaphor for what's happening in this guy's psyche. This unified person.

[02:04:48] I don't know how far you could go with that, but there's so many things that suggest this pure dichotomy between O'Day-Sue and Woo Jin that it almost seems like they're the shadow and the person or the shadow and the persona of some kind.

[02:05:09] Yeah, I don't like, I doubt it could work literally, but I don't think that's what you care about most. Like it's just like the emotional message here. The thing you're hiding from me. Somebody racked with guilt. Yeah.

[02:05:22] And it plays out in some sort of like revenge drama that's all internal. You know, it's you punishing yourself, you trying to figure out what it is that drives you, what it is that truly motivates you.

[02:05:34] I might find that more interesting than just the idea that revenge is all consuming, which, you know, if like if I had like a thematic issue with it is like the stuff about revenge isn't necessarily the most interesting part of this movie as opposed to the first one

[02:05:51] where I think it does raise a ton of interesting questions about revenge, but not this is less about that. I think. I think so too. It's it's what moves the plot. Right. It's a MacGuffin. It's what like, yeah, right. Revenge is a MacGuffin. It's nice. I don't know.

[02:06:07] Just playing around with it. Like maybe he was an asshole who left his daughter when they were four, actually, you know, or who molested his daughter and left her and has been racked with guilt for 15 years to the point of having like a break. Yeah.

[02:06:21] And then going back to this kind of again, not unlike Memento, pretty like unclear how much it was was actually him that caused the whole thing to get going. Yeah, exactly. In a lot of these kinds of psychological thrillers, there is this I am journeying to find

[02:06:39] something to unmask this person, this culprit, and I lift the mask and it's just my face, you know? Yeah. So anyway, I don't know. It's just like that fucking picture on the wall. Yeah. Like it was me all along.

[02:06:54] I mean, the amount of like mirrors and shit that are in this like, yeah, reflections is that much as clear. And like whether or not like, like it could be literally understood this way, like thematically they are, I think so they're twins of some sort. Yeah.

[02:07:12] But one twin is just much better at his job than the other. Although, you know, he has privilege and advantage on that front. You know, there's the scene. It's like Clouseau-like. It's like remembering the big Lebowski when he thinks he's about to solve like who he's

[02:07:30] the mystery of who this guy was talking to on the phone and he goes and he shades in the paper and it's just a dick. That's the levels of competence that is the detective. That O'Day soon has, even though like we're with him. Oh, last things.

[02:07:44] When he says at the end, your mistake wasn't that you didn't find the answer. It's that you're asking the wrong question. The question isn't why did I lock you up? It's why did I let you go? That's the key question. Right.

[02:07:59] And I think it's a crucial line in this whole movie is asking the right question. And what happens when you don't do that? But it works so well because the first time I'm hearing that, like I was like O'Day

[02:08:16] Sue, like I was just focused on, well, why did this guy put him in prison? I'm following that mystery. But like as he says that, I'm like, oh, that's actually a really good point. You know, that is probably the more pressing question, you know?

[02:08:29] And I just think that that's so skillfully done that you can get the protagonist who's a bit of a buffoon or at least a manipulated puppet, put the viewer in there without feeling totally stupid either or feeling like you were, I don't know, played with or it's

[02:08:48] cheating or something. Yeah. No, you're totally right. It's really well done. And I think that part of what makes it work so well is that he was about to escape anyway.

[02:08:57] So like when he gets released, you're kind of ready for him to be out and start his revenge mission, you know? And then there's like these very like local reasons that he gives like, oh, the statute of limitations on your murder is up, like congratulations.

[02:09:12] But that's not a reason to let him out, right? That's just, yeah. The other thing I was thinking as well, maybe now Mido is like of age, so he can get the plot going. Well, that's why, that's why did I let you go after 15 years?

[02:09:25] That's why like he had to get. I can finally get my plan in motion. I've been waiting. I've been watching her since she was three. He should be asking why instead of just being so tunnel vision focused on his own revenge, that's the problem.

[02:09:39] He can't, he doesn't have the self-awareness to transcend it and see if there's some larger question that he should be asking right now. Yeah. This is what Park Chan-wook said. Life is the same. How many enigmas stay unsolved because we are asking the wrong question?

[02:09:55] When the answer is hard to figure out, let us try changing the question and asking a new. I feel like there's a lesson for philosophers and psychologists. Yeah, maybe. But that's where like the revenge is the device that can focus this bigger question so well.

[02:10:16] It's an instance in which somebody can become so myopic, myopically focused on the wrong question that it ruins their life. And then did they live happily ever after? It is like what's the more fucked up outcome of all the possibilities? Totally. It like can't end well I feel.

[02:10:38] I think he's been driven insane. But again, Mido is just the fucking innocent little like, oh God, man. Just so terrible for her. She's lost. She's completely lost. And yet maybe this is the best.

[02:10:51] She was so lonely and that's what's even more messed up is that maybe it is the best thing for her to just keep having sex unknowingly with her father. I'll tell you as the two fathers of daughters of that exact age. That's true.

[02:11:09] I think the real answer is don't ask questions. Don't ask questions. Don't eat live octopuses. And yeah, figure out like a plan B after you get your revenge. Even if it's achieved perfection. Next chapter, what color is your parachute? Probably purple. All right. Any final thoughts? Tremendous movie.

[02:11:35] Amazing. Incredible movie. Again, would be way more rewatchable if it weren't so uncomfortable. But I think it is. For how uncomfortable it is, it's really rewatchable. Yes, because it's so fun. Like there are parts of it just moves. It's pacing. It's electric. It's beautiful.

[02:11:52] We should do Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance sometime. Yeah. All right. That's it from here. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizard.

[02:12:42] Just a very bad wizard.