3-iron

With the release Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… and Spring there was much talk of Kim Ki-Duk’s newfound maturity. The arthouse juvenilia of Address Unknown, Real Fiction and The Isle - films marked by a desire to shock – had given way to gentler approach, and it continues with 3-iron. An ambiguous ménage à trois movie which shares moderate affinities with the couple-on-the-run and revenge subgenres, it’s nonetheless a hard film to pin down. It focuses on a young housebreaker who enters the homes of holidaymakers for brief periods of time, immersing himself in their lives and tinkering with their gadgetry. The second such incident that we see, however, shifts the boundaries somewhat. The house, it turns out, is still occupied by a woman with a black eye and broken lip. Seemingly desperate to escape her abusive husband she joins out protagonist as he continues to move from home to home.

In actual fact 3-iron isn’t too removed from Kim’s prior approach. He still revels in the creation of a specific mood and leaves his characters’ motivations by the wayside. (The central couple never once utter a word, though it’s never stated as to whether or not they are actually dumb.) Yet owing to the fact that his film is clearly less spurious that Bad Guy, say, or The Isle we’re more inclined to go with him; there’s a trust in the director that wasn’t present before as we’re no longer worrying about any potential misogynist undertows or the like. Indeed, in removing this distance (or rather potential distance given that he’s received numerous followers over the years) Kim has produced a work which we can finally allow ourselves to get sucked into.

For this is, undoubtedly, his lightest film to date. Some critics have even marked it out as a comedy, though if this were to be the case (and I’m not entirely convinced) then it would surely be an extremely black one. The scene in which our central pair first encounter each other, for example, is shot through with an edge sense of dual voyeurism: she secretly watching him pry into her private life. Moreover, sex, violence and nihilism (lead actor Hee Jae’s fashion sense, motorcycle and baby-ish looks unexpectedly recall Matt Dillon in Rumble Fish) also play a part albeit in a manipulated form. It is seen but not heard or vice versa; low key in comparison to Kim’s earliest ventures though quite how you take it is likely to be down to the individual.

Indeed, 3-iron presents its audience with some huge gaps to fill and can, at times, seem almost wilfully oblique. As said, the generic counterparts don’t really help matters much (comparing the film to, say, Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy or Terrence Malick’s Badlands won’t provide you with too many clues) and neither does the overall air of ambiguity. What exactly are the functions of these characters? We know that they are a loner, a wife and a husband, but beyond this very little. Certainly, we have as to see them as fulfilling specific functions owing to manner in which they’re presented, more like automatons than actors as time and again they do the same things in an almost reductive fashion. Is Kim therefore asking that we address 3-iron in purely conceptual or symbolic terms? After all, you continually get the impression that there are some larger reference points at work here, perhaps religious or philosophical.

Of course, this doesn’t prevent the film from remaining an elusive affair. As it progresses the danger of losing its audience grows ever greater – if we fail to “buy” a certain action or event then the whole film could fall apart. That said, Kim never does allow himself to become bogged down in such concerns as 3-iron remains a decidedly brisk effort. Slow burning, certainly, but it feels lean in its conception. The removal of almost any dialogue allows him to get down to the essentials and ultimately his central point. Whether we get it or not is likely to come down to a willingness to play along with the director, but in the meantime he’s created his lightest, more inviting and therefore most enjoyable film to date.

The Disc

3-iron comes to UK Region 2 as a near bare-bones effort. Whereas other editions have provided a director’s commentary and/or been available as two-disc special editions, here the only additions are the theatrical trailer plus promos for two other Optimum releases (Memories of Murder and Pulse). That said, the presentation is generally pleasing. We get the film in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio and with removable subtitles. There are signs of artefacting and edge enhancement but on the whole neither are especially distracting despite this being a single-layered disc. The only other noteworthy aspect is the fact that the blacks occasionally look a little too inky, otherwise the colour scheme appears to be fine. As for the soundtrack, here we are provided with a choice DD2.0 and DD5.1 mixes. In all honesty, given the film’s low-key nature (which extends to the soundtrack), there really is little to separate the two. Indeed, both sound perfectly agreeably and present no discernible problems, technical or otherwise.