Decision to Leave proves anyone who’s ever thought that I am a bright guy wrong. A tough blow for my parents. From vertiginous heights to fairytale snowy woods—a leap reminiscent of Oldboy—Park Chan-wook throws us into an unstoppable torrent of convolutedly connected events that less daringly treated could have fed a five-season TV series easy. And yet, whereas its remarkable intricacy got me at times frustrated, it didn’t bar the joy of being enthralled, intrigued, and touched. In this exact order.
Under the toxically dense fog that envelops both visually and metaphorically the film, lies a near-Shakespearean love story tormented by a kaleidoscope of practical obstacles and ill-fated coincidences. As many have promptly noticed, the enigmatic Seo-rae takes Park Chan-wook closer than he’s ever been to Vertigo. The very idea of a man falling from a peak might even be an unwitting homage to the title he often mentioned as an early inspiration to his career as a filmmaker. As to how he seems to insistingly disorient his oblivious audience, slowly pulling focus from the narrative to the real essence of the film, I couldn’t help finding an analogy with Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. Now, however arbitrary and boring they might be, and indeed are, the bare fact that I was tricked into drawing parallels shows that there’s a certain manneristic eclecticism to the film that is perhaps not developed enough to disappear in the narrative. On a similar note, the director himself points out in a recorded introduction that was shown before the screening how Decision to Leave has dramatic, romantic, humorous, and sad moments. As much as contemporary Korean cinema often excels at crossing styles and genres while seamlessly flowing through opposite moods, I wonder if a film really needs to always strive for the full lot. Irony is one vital thing, but maybe for once I could have lived without the silly comedy beats.
Cutting like a blade in the flash, the finale on the shore is not quite a novel idea but it’s nonetheless harrowing and quintessentially Park Chan-wook. Though what seems to have stayed with me more vividly is the scene by the pool—don’t know why, yet—and a line later in the film, another jigsaw. ‘The moment you said you loved me, your love is over. The moment your love ends, my love begins.’
