The Isle

[Stewart]

Now here's a wonderfully symbolic film from South Korea. The camera work was nice, the pace idyllic, the setting beautiful yet dreamy, and some of the actions involved unexpected (i.e. a couple of self-mutilation scenes)

Unfortunately, the British Board of Film Classifictions have managed to censor it with certain scenes involving animal cruelty being cut from the film. It appears that it's okay to eat a live squid on film (Oldboy, also South Korean) but you can't show someone catching a fish, gutting it, and eating it all in one take. Ridiculous!

The ending is strange, ambiguous with many ways to decipher, and seems out of context to the film. Maybe the film, however, is out of context to the final scene.

An interesting film, slowly paced and with little dialogue, studying female and male sexuality. I suppose I'll need to watch it more to get some real thoughts on what it is about.

 

[Fistandantilus]

is this a war movie? what is it actually about?

 

[Stewart]

is this a war movie? what is it actually about?

No, it's not a war movie. More an understanding of the sexes instead of a battle of the sexes.

It's about a mute girl who runs a strange little hotel on a lake where guys mostly turn up for fishing trips. She travels between the floating rooms by boat to sell them bait, fishing line, drinks, and - when required - herself. She falls in love with a guy staying at her hotel who is on the run from the cops.

 

[Fistandantilus]

i see. doesn't sound like my kind of movie. A question: What is depicted on your avatar?

 

[Stewart]

What is depicted on your avatar?

Half of an orchestra conductor.

 

[Wolhay]

It's lovely and not a typical love story. Neither are the other movies I've seen by Kim Ki-duk.

Is the part where a fish is skinned and

Spoiler

returned in the water again only to return later in the movie

in the British version?

There were some parts of the animal cruelty that made me wonder if they didn't bother to use special effects instead of real animals. I don't remember any cuts when a

Spoiler

bird(?) is drowned

for example. Perhaps it's just skilled moviemaking such as in 'Irréversible' where the cuts aren't seen in the long scene.

The final part of the movie is quite different from the rest. I wonder if it's an humerous simile to the saying that "every man is an island".

 

[Stewart]

Is the part where a fish is skinned and

Spoiler

returned in the water again only to return later in the movie

in the British version?

No. Neither is the bird part you mention - although she does throw the cage in the water; is there more to that scene? The nearest thing with an animal seen actually being hit was the dog being slapped across the nose from a distance.

I wonder if it's an humerous simile to the saying that "every man is an island".

No man is an island but a woman is?

 

[Wolhay]

It's been a while since I saw it but I think that you got to see the bird struggle and enough time passed underwater for it to not be likely to survive. The other animals might not be considered as important as they are "lesser" animals and they are also rumored not to be able to feel pain.

Apart from artistic reasons I think the cruel scenes serves the movie well as it gives something of an obvious insight to her personality. They're certainly not unecessary at least.

No man is an island but a woman is?

Now that's just obscene.

 

[Wolhay]

I just saw the movie again and I was wrong about seeing the bird drown, it's cut before all of the cage is below water. You do get to see an underwatershot where cage and bird is sinking however.

A romantic gesture that I probably missed the first time I saw the movie was that a fish hook that he's putting down makes the shape of an heart together with another hook.

Ki-Duk writes "...a man's isle is a woman, and a woman's isle is a man."

Obviously he's some kind of homophobe.

 

[lenny nero]

The fishhook scene stayed with me for days!