Park Chan-wook didn't set out to make a vampire film.
At least, that's what he told me when we spoke here in San Francisco, a week before Thirst opens. You can tell from watching the film that, despite it being a movie about a vampire, it is not a horror film, nor is it even a movie aboutvampirism.
What the film is can be summed up by its title. As with his popular Vengeance trilogy, including the international hit Oldboy, Park puts the theme front and center. It's a movie about thirst, a base desire present in all of us, fang or no fang; though I should note that the vampires in this film do not have fangs. They draw blood using tools, something carried over from George Romero's Martin, a movie Park claims to be his favorite vampire flick. It is mine, as well, and it's high compliment when I say that this movie falls in close proximity.
Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho), a Catholic priest troubled by the suffering around him, contracts a fatal disease during an aide mission to Africa. After an emergency blood transfusion from an unknown donor, Sang-hyun is miraculously healed, but only if he keeps drinking human blood. He realizes what he's become when he discovers super-strength, flight and aversion to sunlight. So far, this sounds like your typical oh-no-I'm-a-vampire story, but Sang-hyun's physical mutation is only a plotline Park came up with to explore his initial premise, which was that of a holy man dragged down by seduction. This is Park's The Last Temptation of Christ, but with a vampire instead of Jesus.
While Park himself is a self-described atheist, he was intrigued by the idea of a character who starts out as morally concrete, a far cry from Oldboy's Oh Dae-su. Despite its religious motif and operatic approach to horror, Thirst's depiction of the vampire lore is pseudo-scientific, almost as if vampirism is a medical disease. Again, shades of Martin, though still different in many ways.
Thirst is as much a story about the loss of will as it is about transformation. Sang-hyun starts out drinking blood out of necessity, but it slowly becomes a nurtured habit. Park uses a vampire's thirst for blood as a metaphor for human weakness, though it's not much of a metaphor anymore as we also see Sang-hyun struggling with sexual desire when he meets the imprisoned beauty Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin), trapped at home by her sniveling husband and his live-in mother. She runs at night, if only to feel a measure of control, something she finds after starting an affair with Sang-hyun. The relationship between them is refreshing, because it adheres to the romance and eroticism that are frequently found in vampire novels, but it also questions ifanimalistic bloodlust could ever be truly romantic, as terrifically acted by its two leads.
The film has most in common with Park's best film, the underrated Lady Vengeance. It's a story about restraint, slowly setting up its wicked noir-influenced characters into a planned and beautiful dance of violence. Yes, Park shoots his violence beautifully, as he always does. The colors in the set design and cinematography contribute to its gorgeous look. Park proves himself to be one of the most exciting and inventive directors working today, who exhibits an impressive confidence with his camera. I love the scene where Sang-hyun takes Tae-ju in his arms, jumping from rooftop to rooftop. The camera stays fixed on Tae-ju's face, while we see the ground behind her move up and down. Such a simple effect, yet it conveys the joy of flying better than any of the expensive superhero movies.
Like many South Korean films, Thirst isn't afraid to play with tonal shifts. It leaps between campy and serious, realism and surrealism; it's at times sexy and boisterously funny, others thrilling and contemplative. You can guess how the story ends, but in the middle is a lot of gaudy detours that make it wildly entertaining to watch, kind of anAlmodovar-meets-Cronenberg thing going on. Through it all, the movie stays consistent to its core morality play: evil doesn't come from power, but from thirst. It just depends on what you're thirsty for. Blood? Sex? Freedom? Peace?
Maybe even God.
"Thirst" opens July 31, 2009 and is rated R. Drama, Horror. Directed by Park Chan Wook. Written by Park Chan-wook, Chung Seo-kyung. Starring Song Kang Ho, Kim Ok Vin, Kim Hae Sook, Shin Ha Kyun.
