SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE

The unfortunate Ryu decides to kidnap a little girl, but she accidentally dies. The father, who after his daughter's death remains completely alone (his wife had left him when business was bad), in a fit of rage and despair, plots revenge. It's the only thing that can "satisfy" him. But will he have peace after obtaining it? "Mr. Vengeance" is the first episode of the Revenge Trilogy by Korean director Park Chan-wook. The viewer is taken aback and doesn't know who to root for. Everyone is right... and everyone is wrong. One thing is certain: their actions, whether right or wrong (depending on our point of view, our conscience) are paid for with blood. This is a slow film, but that is not essentially a flaw. It's a film quite different from the frenetic, as "Old Boy", the second chapter of the trilogy, might appear; rather, it is a thoughtful, more reflective and more delicate film, it dwells much on the beauty of the images (Park Chan-wook knows how: in his youthful studies he can boast of aesthetics courses, and watching this movie you will understand how the director knows how to handle the camera with care showing the viewer wonderful images, a pleasure for the eyes, pure poetry). The violence? I wouldn't say this is a violent film. After dozens and dozens of horror movies, some cuts with a knife, blows to the head, blood splattering meters from a perforated jugular and a torture with electric shock, surely won't impress the viewer much. What might seem more disturbing than the torture is the psychological violence, that is, the exposure of feelings of anger, pain, suffering, despair, helplessness in the face of the bad luck of an economic condition far from comfortable. Probably it is more heart-wrenching to observe the face of the father who sees the corpse of his own daughter, his only reason for living... or the brother who sees his sister suffering horribly and doesn't know how to help her... rather than the explicit violence. In this sense, "Mr. Vengeance" is a film that strikes the viewer more often in the stomach, without showing too much blood, and the exposure of these feelings emotionally brings the viewer closer to the desperate protagonists. It is a complex film as much as "Old Boy": if the latter, in my opinion, is a puzzle, with pieces that gradually come together, this "Mr. Vengeance" can be considered a domino, with actions linked one to the other, with revenge as the sole guiding thread, violence that causes another violence, death that sows death, and so on: everyone is swept away by this blind and destructive fury, revenge is probably not the best cure, we are inclined to think. But perhaps it is a "right" in the face of so much suffering. A feeling that fascinates. The perverse charm that surrounds this dark feeling captivates and involves. Some points remain obscure to the viewer. They are not salient points, for charity's sake, but some questions remain hanging. How did Ryu manage to kidnap the girl? How did the police figure out that Ryu was the culprit? How does the girl's father manage to find Ryu's hideout? These are questions that do not find an answer, perhaps it is a film to be seen more than once, but they are not fundamental questions to understand the meaning of His Majesty Park Chan-wook's work. Final warning: I repeat for the umpteenth time that the director sacrifices action to the psychology of the characters and the dramaticity of the story; forget therefore the adrenaline of "Old Boy"!