The 25 Best Movies of the Century: No. 24 - ‘The Handmaiden’

0:28This episode is presented by Audi.

0:40I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is 25 for 25, a big picture special conversation show about The Handmaiden. You should have let me do a little... Is that what you want to do going forward? The Handmaiden. I mean, I guess it's in the title of the episode, so people already know. Yes, they're not surprised. Yeah. How do you think everyone's feeling right now? About this choice? Yeah. I hope excited. Me too. You know, I think there's been some speculation that this would be a wildly predictable list and it would be only movies that we've talked about in the past. And I don't think we've really talked about The Handmaiden very much.

1:10So I'm excited to talk to you about it today. No, it came out in like a special time just before the show. Yes. Or maybe it was like at the earliest, like the chrysalis phases of the show, if that's the correct scientific term. And now we are a full-blown butterfly. and that's out of the chrysalis and he was a beautiful butterfly that's the last page of the very hungry caterpillar for those of you not in this phase of life yeah so this is a fun one to get to talk about yeah so this is a 2016 masterpiece by the South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook it came out September 27th 2016 it's available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video where it has been available to stream throughout its entirety tell you what I did not remember that this was paid for and released by Netflix Amazon I mean Amazon Yes In part In part Paid for by Amazon But that is an important part of this conversation It's also written by Park And co-written by Jang So Kyung Who is a co-writer on a number of Park's films It's based on a I would say acclaimed And maybe even beloved 2002 novel by the Welsh novelist Sarah Waters Shout out Sarah Waters Sarah Waters' novel is set in 19th century England And this film, of course, is set in Korea under Japanese colonial control.

2:31In the 30s. In the 1930s, so just pre-war. And the title is Victorian slang for pickpocket. Fingersmith is. Yes, which is a punning reference to the dexterity of, quote, the lesbian hand, as the writer Laura Miller put it. And The Handmaiden is also sort of a punning reference to the lesbian hand. We'll get more into that discussion shortly. It stars essentially four actors, King Minhee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo, and Cho Jin-wung. And this is a fascinating period piece. It is, well, I'll give you the brief description of the plot for the listeners at home who are not familiar with this movie. We will be spoiling this movie throughout this conversation.

3:14If you haven't seen it, please, please turn this off and go watch it. Because, and especially if you also have not read the Sarah Waters novel, it is propulsive and there are twists and you don't want to see the twists coming. Yes. So in this story, with the help from an orphan to pickpocket, a Korean con man devises an elaborate plot to seduce and bilk a Japanese woman out of her inheritance. That is some of the story in a way. That's the first 20 minutes. It is the first 20 minutes. Okay, so the question that we always open this conversation with is, why did the handmaiden make this list? I've accumulated a significant number of reasons for this.

4:01Right, because you're kind of talking yourself into it a little bit. I don't want to spoil our selection committee conversation. But we can spoil this part of it. That we went back and forth between the handmaiden and old boy, which is, of course, Park Jen Wook's breakthrough in America, at least.

4:22revenge, you know, psychotic thriller, you know, depressive, whatever is going on there. Existentialist action masterpiece. And what he was first known, at least in the U.S., for and I think what a lot of people might assume would be on this list. And we went back and forth. And I do think I said to you, if you would like to put Oldboy, you can do it. I'm open to it. I understand its historical significance, the fight in the hall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know. For me, this is a no-brainer. So I didn't have to talk myself into this. I just prefer The Handmaiden. When I was making my list in my head, I went to The Handmaiden first.

5:02I think Oldboy is quote-unquote more important, whatever that means, to the canon, to the introduction of, you know, the South Korean new wave cinema and all these things that happened. And we'll be talking about it as we go through this episode and frankly through this list. but this movie I think is the culmination of a lot of what he was driving towards but just done in a slightly different register which is to say it is quite violent like old boy in a slightly different way it is quite sexual, it is quite extreme it is quite intense, it is a pure thriller he is one of the great living thriller filmmakers it also I think is elevated I guess by the historical setting, the milieu the production design it being a period piece I think is actually a very comfortable place for Park, even though he doesn't make a lot of period pieces.

5:49He tends to make more contemporary set thrillers. So this is a little bit outside of what he's most familiar with, but also I think really speaks to one of his strengths, which is sort of like complicating what seem to be simple stories with this like depth of design that goes into the stories. So this movie in particular, because of Waters' kind of source material, is really knotty. Yes. And really kind of obsessed with class and power and gender dynamics and sexuality and the way that power is conferred in sexuality. And so this is like really rich text for him. He tends to work on original material most of the time.

6:24And this being an adaptation makes it a really fascinating one. So it actually was not a hard choice. Oh, good. I'm glad. Welcome. To hit Nathan Island. Yeah, well, the thing is, there's the list that represents everything that matters to cinema history, or at least the 21st century, and then there's what you really like the best. Yes. I think this is probably my favorite of his movies, so that's the end. This movie is wild. Everything that you just said in terms of it being a marriage of his themes and interests and also his tremendous craft skills, production, design, but also just things being very weird and funny and unexpected.

7:08and he's adapting a novel. So there's a lot of story. Like it moves, it is propulsive. And just when you think you know what's going on, it shifts in a way that is disorienting just on a basic story level, but it's certainly in his wheelhouse. So it's a great showcase for him. And as you said, kind of an elevation for him, but this movie is so fun to watch. Yeah, it feels like a page turner. Yeah, I mean, it is an erotic thriller. And that's another thing. Like we don't really have another erotic thriller on the list that I can think of off the top of my head, at least not yet. This is one of the reasons why I felt like it was an important addition to the list, which is a sort of lurid but classy drama.

7:53Right. AKA erotic thriller. It's something that in the 21st century, the United States basically punted on. Sure. It kind of went out of fashion. We no longer made them in the same way that we did in the 80s and 90s. And across Europe and Asia, they have persisted. You know, we've had Stranger by the Lake, Blue is the Warmest Color. We've had Black Book. We've had The Skin I Live In, The Works of Luca Guadagnino. Like every single one? So there have been a lot of examples of these kinds of movies that have proliferated. I think this is probably the best of the best. And so it's also an interesting space to show us like really transgressive images.

8:26You know, in this movie, you see lashed asses. You see scissoring women, you know. You see the tongues interconnected, interwoven in emotional and sensual poses. There's real innovation in camera angles used during sex scenes. And there has been, as there is with all movies featuring any type of sex, some conversation about whether this is exploitative or, quote unquote, liberating, especially because the majority of the sex scenes, like the actual sex as opposed to just a tremendous amount of weird porn. Yes. Well, literature, painting. Literature, literature. Yeah. But I mean, it is. A sort of prehistoric porn.

9:15Yeah, it's old school pornography. Pre-video. You know, the way we did it back in the day, kids, before the internet. When you draw two stick figures banging each other. But the actual, like the sex acts that you see, which by the way you do, are all between two women. Yes. And they are photographed with gusto. And many people rightly feel with that, with cliche bordering on exploitation. I just think that it's kind of exciting. And there is that inventiveness, even the camera angle, which is, you know, going in a certain way. Yeah. The headshot. But what you're seeing is someone's face and someone's enthusiasm at being there as opposed to the actual, you know, canal, for lack of a better word.

10:07Canal, eh? Well, you know. Entry point? Like all of the various like euphemisms in that are read in the beating scenes are like floating through my head right now.

10:22This sex is the text of the movie in a lot of ways. And it is the their sex scenes are the only like pleasure, only like freedom, only like actual expression and feeling in the entire movie. So for me, it works. But if you would like to read The Scissoring Debate, that's available for you online. And I acknowledge that. I have respect for that criticism, but we can talk about it, I think, in the context of character and plot. because in this story, this young woman who Kim Min-hee portrays is the niece of a very powerful man, a Korean man who has moved to Japan, who is attempting to essentially become a naturalized Japanese citizen and to adopt this sort of Japanese lifestyle.

11:10This man is a forger and he's a collector of rare things. And in the event that he can't collect the rare thing, he makes a fake version of it. And he draws the nobleman from Japan into his kind of lair, his reading room, his study, where once his wife read these erotic stories, now he has enlisted his young niece to do the same thing. And he's building sort of the library of Alexandria, but of written porn. But with horny octopuses, yes. And in this movie, this character, Hideko, who Kim and he portrays, effectively learns about sexuality by having this forced exposure at a very young age, I think as early as five years old to this literature, to these paintings.

11:53And so when you fast forward further into her life, when she becomes kind of ensnared or does the ensnaring and the con that is attempted, and she falls in love with the character who Kim Tae-ri plays, the sex that they're having is sex that she learned about in these books and in these paintings. So when Kim Tae-ri's character is sort of like, wow, this is your first time? It's like, yes, it's her first time, but she's been studying for the test for 20 years. You know, like she's really ready and she's kind of overdoing it. You know, forgive this comparison, but I think this is very applicable to modern times.

12:28You know, you sometimes hear women say when they're having, you know, relations with a man for the first time that like the man is trying to act like he's in a porno. Yeah, exactly. You know, because he's been watching porn his entire adolescence. And then he's like bringing the moves to the table that maybe are not actually what it's like. Right. When you're intimate with someone. And so the movie is, the same way that this movie is this kind of outsized, over-the-top thriller, the sex scenes are outsized and over-the-top for reasons that are informed by the character. So, like, I think any movie that is about two lesbians directed by a man is going to come under this criticism.

13:02And I understand that. I think in this case, it does more than earned. I think Blue is the War, Warmest Color is an interesting comparison point. a movie that received significant accusations of exploitation and unrealistic sexual portrayal in a movie that is otherwise more gritty and sort of more realistic. This is this Grand Guignol period piece with all this wild design and hands being cut off and, you know, bleeding from orifices and all this wild stuff. It's a part movie. And I do also think, and spoiler alert, like it the end and the sex and the whole engine of the film does move towards these two women being able to do whatever they want together outside the auspices of men outside the auspices of all like the weird expectations of porn and they even kind of like use a something from a a prior scene and a prior reading is like repurposed to signify that they're like on their, their own doing, uh, having a great time just themselves, which is not often the case in like queer cinema.

14:10And you know, the, the women, women especially are often like punished for finding each other and having a great time. So yeah, this is, this is an awakening. This is a, an act of rebellion and independence. Like it is a very kind of up feeling version of the story, even though it is kind of depraved in how we eventually get to the conclusion. And like they are very naked on screen. So, you know. They are deeply naked. Both actresses are, you know, Kim Tae-ri in particular, this is her feature debut as a performer. Kim Min-hee is an interesting actress. She is best known, I think, as the muse for Hong Sung-soo, another Korean director who is a part of this wave of filmmakers along with Bong Joon-ho and Kim Ki-duk and Kim Ji-woon and all of these filmmakers who kind of emerged in the late 90s, early 2000s.

14:54they all aren't making the same kinds of movies. Like Martin Scorsese describes Hong Sang-soo as the Woody Allen of Korea, in part because he makes a movie every year. Those movies return to very similar themes. Kim Min-hee is in a lot of those movies. Those movies are nothing formally like The Handmaiden. Kim Tae-ri never acted before and is put in this incredibly... Vulnerable. Vulnerable, yes. Open, revealing situation. And this character is also really interesting because when we're introduced to her, we feel that she has the upper hand. Yeah. And by the time we get to the end of the first act and the movie is cut into three acts in a formal way it indicates when we're moving to a new act the tables turn on her dramatically.

15:32Yeah. It's so exhilarating. It's an incredible moment in the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it had that great feeling when you're watching a thriller when you're watching a David Fincher movie when you're watching a Bong Joon-ho movie where you're like oh, oh, is this really? Yeah. Oh, no. And you're like, oh. And you're confused for a second and then you have this moment this dawning realization of the story is not what it was presented as, which is also obviously a great literary trick. I haven't read the Sarah Waters novel. Did you look at it? I looked at it. I was not able to read all of it, but it is broken into three parts.

16:02And the basic plots, even down to the uncle is a collector of literary porn, are the same. But that first act reveal is, I think, pretty exact. Okay. Or, you know, as close enough as an adaptation gets. Yeah, I mean, I think that in particular is really fascinating. And then I think the reading sequences where we see what this devious uncle is forcing his family to do are fascinating. The movie is like a story of shifting perspectives. The three parts have three different perspectives. We see the movie through the eyes of all of the main characters at various times. But then also during these reading sequences, we see the story that is being told through the eyes of the men who are observing the story being read and placing themselves in this kind of traditional dom-sub story of like being submissive to a powerful woman.

17:00Right. Who is in fact, in the reading of the story, the opposite of powerful, but has been forced to read those stories by her domineering uncle. So like, it's just a really layered psychological mind game of power. Right. And also in all of that, indicting the audience at the same time and bringing in like how you watch a movie, how you watch these things, how you consume porn, I guess, but really any sort of sexual content. And really just how your mind processes these images and the audiences or the viewers like relationship to them is pretty fascinating. It's really, really smart. There are a handful of, I guess, famous works that are cited in the movie.

17:42you know, the dream of the fisherman's wife. Whenever you hear someone say the word hentai in a joking fashion on this podcast or maybe elsewhere, the sort of like the octopus raping a woman, this is probably the painting that they're thinking of. Katsushika Hokusai is the artist, the Japanese artist of the Edo period. And there's a direct reference to this painting in the film. I was going to Google this. And then who was the politician that was like searching hentai, but then typed it into the Twitter search bar and said, I was like so afraid that I didn't do it. I was just kind of like, I'm going to trust Sean on this one.

18:17I did link to it so you could take a look at it in the document. However, the site that I used to link was fineartamerica.com. Okay, all right. So hopefully in the event that someone goes browsing in my cookies, they see that this is, I'm just looking at a piece of fine art. This is actually a shower curtain from this image. Oh, okay, normal. Here you can see. Okay, yeah. I mean, it is a very famous image. As soon as you see it, you would recognize it. But also imagine showing up at someone's house and that's on the shower curtain. Yes. The Plum in the Golden Vos, I think, is the story that Hideko's character is reading during the movie, which is a Chinese erotic classic.

18:51Not one I've previously read before, but maybe I'll look into it as I go forward. The other thing that I like that is sort of a reflection of that guys watching porn thing is near the end of the film, the uncle character is inquiring with someone in the story who has had sex with his niece. and he's asking very specific questions about like how it was and what it was like. And it's real like virgin energy. It's real like never had sex before. Yeah, never been outside of that basement or that reading room. Even though this was a married person and you know the fate of his wife is a big part of this story.

19:22That feeling of like or even just the sick perversion of hearing details especially for a person in your family. The whole movie is very, very twisted but very entertaining in that way. Well, I mean in some ways it's just about like how do people get off you know and like what gets people off. Totally. And so So, and in that context, the two women having sex together is, you know, is the purest version, right? It is. And I think whether or not this is a love story or a sex story, I think, is an interesting question. Yeah, for me, I think it's more of a sex story. More of a sex story, okay. I mean, there is, again, and again, spoilers.

19:57There's also this end of the second act has a reveal as well, which is, like, equally exhilarating. and, you know, that kind of famous light, like, you know, my Tamako, my Suki. There is, like, some romance to that. The score in this movie is tremendous and, like, you know, like a bit melodramatic and sweeping in, you know, in keeping with the rest of the film. So once they, like, get over the fence together and are running through the field for the second time and the music is going, there is something, like, traditionally pretty romantic about it, I guess. But no, they're just kind of like, there's no them falling in love.

20:39There's just deep seduction. Like the scene in the bath with the tooth, which is like very hot, but. Yeah, which is filing it down. But you know, that's, they aren't exchanging ideas, you know? No, but they're all, all of those images, like in all of Parks movies are, sometimes they're like these really leaden metaphors or they're just like banging you over the head with things where it's just like, I can smooth down what's sharp in your life with like my gentle touch. You know, like there's some very obvious stuff. But I think if you, like if you looked at the poster of this film, even though it does have this kind of gesturing physical touch where she's holding one character's hand and there's a hand on her shoulder, you would still think, oh, this is like a pre-war stately, you know, Korean period piece.

21:19Right. You know, this is a piece about the occupation of a country. This is a piece about class. It is those things, but it's also just this like horndog extravaganza. And the thing that I have... It's about sex as power. Completely. And the way that the way that sex is floating under everything from a class structure to the way lives are organized. The thing is, the secret of like most costume dramas and period pieces is that like there's no sex and everyone is like terrified, so terrified of sex that, but it is all essentially still about sex. Right, so textual, yeah. Because it's about like who is allowed to have sex, who's not allowed to have sex, who is having sex.

21:57It's like how all the worlds are organized and have been forever. So this is just kind of making it extremely literal. Sometimes when you read about the evolution of movie history, you hear that some filmmakers are stymied by censorship laws and what they could or could not show. And if you look at someone like Park, I think one of the great things about looking at movies through the arc of 100 years is, if you like a certain kind of movie, in this case a thriller, you can say okay you know they really start let's just say for the sake of conversation with like Fritz Lang's M and then Alfred Hitchcock kind of takes the ball and runs with it and makes a very specific kind of movie that is very much in the lineage of this movie a movie about sex and power about wealth, class and the exertion of those things from men to women sometimes Hitchcock's movies can be really cruel there's very cruel elements in this movie too but because of the times in which he was making them they didn't really feature any sex.

22:54They hardly featured any nudity at all, even leading all the way up to the 1970s. It feels like Park is basically just like continuing the mission with a movie like this, which is like, how can you be both a pervert and kind of like ethical in the storytelling, for lack of a better word? And also kind of interrogating, like, what does it mean to actually want to see that? You know? And as a viewer, as a consumer, as a filmmaker, I guess it's like okay we can do it now but what does that mean and are you just one of those guys sitting on the benches imagining yourself in the story yeah there's an interesting contrast too though because you know sex is a very messy endeavor you know it's not but this movie like Hitchcock movies is very symmetrical it's very designed you know there's sort of like the parting doors are a metaphor.

23:47Yeah, like the doubles and everything. The gowns, you know, the way that everything is, the twinning quality of the characters, the two men, two women, a woman dressed as a man at a certain point. This idea of like deception and delusion matched with like the logic of life and the logic of power and money. So this is like really, really heavy stuff. For Park, it's kind of interesting in the arc of his career too because I think up until this point, even though Oldboy is this kind of legendary movie, the Vengeance trilogy is beloved by fans of Asian cinema. I still think of him as basically like pre Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann until this moment where Michael Mann like in the 80s made a very specific kind of like grimy, grounded with the exception of The Keep, like hard bitten crime story.

24:31You know, like he was really great at that. If you look at Thief, if you look at Manhunter, you know, like he was amazing at Miami Vice. Like he's a master of that thing, but it's kind of one thing. It feels like one thing. and this movie I think kind of like bumps him up into a new tier there's a lot of interesting factoids around the release of this movie that I'd like to share with you I feel like it's a big part of its legacy so like we can talk about what the legacy of this movie is specifically so as I said it's 2016 it's basically like a conclusive it's not quite the conclusive moment of the Korean new wave I think that comes with Parasite just a few years later we can talk about whether or not The Handmaiden was like a necessary step in getting Parasite into the American consciousness and best picture race in the way that it did.

25:18Not quite, but close. I think if you were a movie fan, this was probably because of its Amazon provenance, the most widely distributed Korean film. Snowpiercer was a Weinstein production, but was primarily an American and English cast. So if you look at the history of movies, like Old Boy wasn't like a box office hit. It became kind of a cult movie. In 2016, though, it was not submitted as South Korea's entry in the Academy Awards. The Age of Shadows was submitted. And I think the speculation is because this movie is so sexually provocative. Explicit, yes. Explicit, yes. And historically, Korea doesn't really lean in that direction when they're submitting movies.

26:03The Age of Shadows was not nominated for Best International Feature that year. But this movie is like all of those filmmakers that I mentioned. all of these fascinating upendings of expectation that all those filmmakers brought to the table. The fact that it is like such a classy affair, even though it's full of all of this devilish energy. Sure. Some of it, it's just like, it uses the trappings of what we understand as, you know, classy. Very, like it just has incredible costumes. The house is one of the great movie houses in terms of like making, you know, I guess form as function or just using the house to represent visually what's going on in the movies.

26:48You know, it's like half English manner, half Japanese. Yeah, it feels like a completely new kind of design. Yeah, all the doors are, as you said, like there's one scene where the two women go through like three sets of sliding doors and then the camera like swoops up. You know, they're like, they're using the architecture to tell you something about what's going on in the story. But again, that involves just a lot of old fashioned paying attention to how things look. The colors are, you know, very like rich and beautiful. The score has the traditional. I do feel like it's using all of the like the materials of like our very classic costume drama, drama, drama, Oscar bait.

27:32and then just like completely messing with them, which is exhilarating to me. Yeah, it's the finery of Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights and all those stories, but with something much more illicit underneath. The movie is in this interesting tradition. In the 60s, there was a brief period in Korea, in South Korea, where censorship bans were lifted. And so the movies that came out in the 60s are very different from the ones you would find in the 70s or 80s. So there's a movie that Scorsese, again, has talked about a lot, that Bong has talked about a lot that is clearly a huge inspiration on this movie is called The Housemaid.