Golf with a Korean Twist

A mix of social comment and visual intrigue makes this a highly enjoyable film, the nature of the appeal midway between the slow, beautiful charm of ‘Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring Again’ and the surprises of ‘Old Boy’.
Audiences will recognise the director’s signature use of colour, Buddhism motifs, ethereal heroes and toe-curling violence, this time to overturn ideas about golf as a harmless retirement past-time for the well-heeled. Korean film expert Hyangyin Lee flew in from Seoul to London on Monday last to set the films of Kim Ki Duk in the context of the ‘Hallyu’ contemporary Korean wave, two days before 3-Iron premiered at the Curzon, Mayfair. Kim, said Dr Lee, is better liked in the west than in Korea, where his refusal to spell things out for his audience is too much for even the hybrid Korean movie scene, and where a generous helping of sex and violence tends to drown out aesthetics. In ‘3 Iron’, the handsome young hero has perfected a modern version of the begging bowl approach to living, staying in peoples’ houses whilst they are away , making minor repairs and doing any leftover washing in return for helping himself to the contents of the fridge. It all gets complicated when he ‘rescues’ the abused wife of a sadistic businessman, and the corrupt local justice system gets involved to restore the lady to her rightful owner and sling the by-now well-bruised hero in jail. There follows a sequence in which he develops his Buddhist powers, luring an unsuspecting jailer into a bare cell where his presence is increasingly undetectable. An ensuing mix of comedy, mystery, mayhem and magic-realist action leads to a happy, literally out-of-this world, ending for all involved. Minimal dialogue lets us concentrate on the action, in a variety of intriguing urban interiors from which we learn many Zen lessons, from how polishing pots and tending carp in your garden in more conducive to domestic harmony than striving for business success, to the correct method of wrapping a corpse.

Thanks Sheila

Was going to see this anyway, but this intrigues and makes it one to see.

Nice review

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