I Actually AM a Cyborg

Over at Chud, Devin Faraci links to the trailer for Park Chanwook’s new film, I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK. Chanwook has become a bit of a controversial figure for his graphic, hyperstylized violence; the curmudgeon crowd thinks he’s slick-and-sick, just a shallow, vulgar showoff, while his defenders praise him as a pulp visionary. I suppose I think both groups are right, though if pressed, I’d defend him. I haven’t seen Lady Vengeance or JSA; I thought Oldboy was electric, but in the way of an underground no-holds barred fight—thrilling for sure, but perhaps a little too pleased with its smoldering, amoral heart. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance I just can’t get through. It’s a bit slow at the beginning, and every time I try to watch it, I get distracted. I’d love to see it in a theater, but it just doesn’t grab me on my medium-sized TV.

The new trailer, however, really makes the best case for Chanwook’s work--at least for those of us who don't speak Korean. There are no English subtitles, so you have to experience it entirely as sound and image. And from that perspective, it’s entrancing. For all my talk about movies as social indicators or barely-cloaked political texts, much of my interest in film developed out of a desire to be swept away by breathtaking imagery and enveloping soundtracks. Chanwook’s work, love it or hate it, is as powerfully stylish and engrossing as movies come.

And while I’m here, I want to point out one more thing. At the end of his post, Faraci writes:

I don’t know when the heck this will be hitting the US, but I am hoping that it plays at some film festival I attend so that I can see it long before the rest of you and spend months and months rubbing in how good it is, and maybe even put it on my Ten Best list a year before you can even seriously consider seeing it. Bow before me, puny mortals!

Cute, sure, but it indicates how miserable the distribution situation is for foreign films in the U.S. Yes, I know, the market blah blah blah—I’m not suggesting that these films ought to be displayed in huge cardboard cutouts at the entrances of Wal-Marts. It seems odd to me that even a director like Chanwook, whose work has been prominently discussed in The New York Times, Slate, and other mainstream publications, gets the shaft on U.S. distribution. How difficult would it be for Amazon or Netflix to stock region 1 versions of these DVDs reasonably soon after their foreign release? This is 2006, after all, the Web 2.0 future where niche markets are everything and the long tail rules. Yet the only way for most of us (read: people outside New York and L.A.) to see films like this, at least in anything approaching a timely fashion, is to take off of work and travel across the country. Where’s the home theater/DVD revolution when you need it?