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Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Memories of Murder) spoke at a preview of Mother about the influences on his latest film, and how his own mother hasn’t talked to him about it since it’s release…
Bong Joon-ho’s latest film Mother (Madeo) previewed at the BFI during November’s London Korean Film Festival, which also held a season of his films. He spoke, through an interpreter, with Tony Rayns after the filming. As well as tales of growing up in Korea, his influences and how he got into movies, he talked in detail about his new film – the tale of a devoted single mother who’s simple-minded son is accused of murder and she sets out to clear him… with unexpected and harrowing results.
Bong said he’d had the idea for the film since 2004. The curious scene which ends the film – of a group of mothers dancing in the aisle of a moving bus – was the first he thought of.
“In Korea it’s a reality that mothers dance together on the bus, but they dance behind curtains so you can’t really see it as you’re going past,” Bong said. When he was younger he was embarrassed by it, but now as an adult he empathises with them: “It’s funny, but also sad at the same time.” So, he decided if he made a film about mothers that dance would have to be its last scene.
He decided to cast veteran actress Kim Hye-ja as the mother. In Korea she’s well-known for her television work, but Mother is only her third movie role.
“She was acting before I was even born and was one of those faces I always saw on TV. She was always really warm and an iconic mother figure, but in my mind I could see the slightly mad, crazy side of her and I always thought they tried to hide that from the audience,” Bong said.
“I wanted to concentrate on that particular aspect of her character and before the story even existed I wanted to work with this actress, so it wasn’t a typical casting process. I very much wanted to focus on her and how her crazy side could be explored.”
Fortunately, Kim also liked the idea and embraced the role: “she enjoyed this process and would suggest ways of taking it further and making it more extreme.”
The rest of the casting was just as subversive. He turned heart-throb Won Bin into the slightly simple and homely son, and made co-actor Jin Ku the sexy best friend. Bong said he “found happiness turning a handsome man into an idiot,” although he was scared about casting Won in the first instance because he already has a huge fan base in Japan and Korea.
“But when I showed him the script he agreed really easily – he’s actually very adventurous. He’s naturally quite strange and awkward and that helped. Although he’s famous for his looks, he [Won] grew up in the deep Korean countryside and knew the locations even better than I did.”
On the other hand he had to work hard to make Jin look sexy: “he isn’t sexy in real life so we had to work on it in the movie,” he joked.
Bong said he’s never entirely sure how his scripts are created – whether it’s the overall idea or a plot which he thinks of first: “I write scripts more out of instinct, then look back and ask ‘why did this character say this, what’s the hidden meaning behind it’. I hate writing scripts – it’s the part of the process that’s most painful.”
However, he’s exacting about the entire process. “I want 100% control of the movie-making process.” That’s why he draws all the storyboards himself one by one, and that’s the way he’s always worked.
He’s also obsessive about getting the look of the film just right. Unlike Hollywood, where a set would be constructed to the director’s specifications, a Korean film budget doesn’t stretch that far, so scouting the right locations is crucial. For Mother, as in his film Memories of Murder, he sent scouts all over the country looking for the right buildings, fields, interiors and streets: “they complained the price of petrol would be more than the cost of the film,” he said. The final result looks like one town and its immediate environs, but was, in fact, 26 different locations.
And he wanted these locations to mirror the mother as the central character: “I wanted to find locations that were feminine in feel.” He said it’s not easy to say what counts as a feminine location or setting, but he tried to concentrate on a particular look for the landscape, in particular the shapes of hills, curves and waves.
The core of the film is the relationship between the un-named mother and son – and how far a mother will go to protect her child.
“The film is about the mother becoming the monster,” he explained. “The mother becomes a monster out of love and devotion for her son. As love becomes more extreme, so she becomes a monster. I don’t think for a second that all mothers are monsters, but faced with an extreme situation like murder, not many mothers could say for sure they wouldn’t become monsters. Maybe it’s not the side of our mothers we’d want to see, but it is possible to see if you look directly at the situation.”
“Maybe that’s why my mother won’t talk about the film, even though she saw it five months ago.”
You can see more from the interview on BFI’s LIVE site, click here.
Mother is released in the US by Magnolia Pictures on 12 March, and by Optimum in the UK later in the year, but the release date is yet to be finalised.
