The last time director Bong Joon-ho was in Washington was in 2006, when he was promoting his film The Host. He has since become kind of a big deal, as The Host ended up being the highest grossing movie in Korea of all time. He came back in early March for Mother and talked with The Diamondback via translator about his new film, Mother.
The Diamondback: Was your own mother anything like the character in the movie?
Bong Joon-ho: My mom didn’t kill people, no. She worries a lot, yes. She’s the type of person who tends to worry about certain things that haven’t even happened already. The sensitivity, the anxiousness and nervousness [of the film’s mother]; those aspects are similar to my mother. My mom actually saw Mother in May of 2009 but since then, for nine months, she would never even mention the film to me.
DBK: In both Mother and The Host, there’s a character that’s mentally disabled, but they’re still loved and treated equally. Is this because you’ve had personal experience with people like them?
Joon-ho: Growing up, I’ve had the chance to encounter physically or mentally challenged kids. I remember in our apartment [building], there was this mentally challenged boy. In a very funny way he was the most popular kid because he was always so funny and goofy.
Generally, in all my movies, my characters tend to be very weak and powerless. … The one at the bottom would be, in the case of Mother, the crazy JP, the boy with the Down syndrome. In the case of The Host, there is a bunch of homeless boys who were actually abducted when they were young and were forced to sell illegally stuff on the streets. So I tend to separate even the most weak of the weak, and usually they end up being the accused, or being blamed for something they didn’t commit. They usually are the ones that take the sacrifice in my movies.
DBK: How do you think American audiences will react to your film?
Joon-ho: All human beings have mothers. Some are mothers themselves. We all have memories of our mothers and ultimately I think in the end, I would like to predict that there would be similar feedback from both the audiences in the U.S. and elsewhere. I would like all audiences to try to see the movie and think of what their own mothers would do, in that sort of situation.
Last week, after the screening Mother and Q&A session in New York, one late-20s American man came to me and gave me a small letter. It was a story about his own relationship with his mother. He also wrote down what he felt as he was watching the movie. It made me realize that some of the American audiences, they’re bound to think of their own mothers as they are watching this film.
DBK: What aspect is more important — the visuals or the story?
Joon-ho: If I were to define what a film is, I would say a movie is a display of image and sound. The story and visual — they’re inseparable. I write my own scenarios, and I’m pretty sure all other directors who write their own scenarios feel the same way. I don’t write a storyline and then start visualizing what the image is going to be. As soon as I’m starting to write the image, the sound is already in my head.
Of course I have to send out the scripts to the staff and to the other working assistants so I do have to write, but I believe that a good image brings out the storyline but most important of all, the story and the visuals, they can never be apart from each other.
Mother will open in Washington on March 19.
