If a blog has its own identity then this one is in an existential crisis. I say this because 1) it’s an exercise in free will, and 2) I’m wondering what the point is. To put it another way, I’m considering committing blog suicide. Ending it, putting it out of its misery, sending it off to the big sleep.

I’ve been in Korea for two years and eight months. I’ve had this blog for all but four months of that time. I’ve used it primarily as an opportunity to share my impressions of living in this culture. I have a particular audience in mind when I write, that being my family. Actually, when I write, I usually have my mom in mind, because I know she reads all the time and I know she enjoys it. But there are two reasons why I think it’s time to end it…

First, my readership has plummeted. This is partly my own fault. I don’t blog as much as I used to. Still, there were times in the past when output has lightened but readership stayed somewhat strong. Something’s different now. The major blow came from the bastards at Pusanweb.com. They used to link here via a blogroll and I’d get tons of hits. But they changed their policy for some stupid reason and now never link here.

I think the PIFF thing is what really depressed me. During last year’s PIFF festival I’d get about 150-175 hits a day. A quick look at my traffic for PIFF week this year, and it’s down to about 40 hits a day. That’s a serious reduction in traffic. And it’s a drag. I spent a lot of time working on coverage for PIFF because it’s a brilliant festival and a great time to be in Busan. I post observations and reviews hoping that maybe, with a little readership, people might be able to search and find information on these lesser-known films and on the overall experience. But c’mon… 40 readers a day? If no one’s reading, why make the effort? Comments have also ground to a halt. I like the idea of blog posts as an opening for discussion, but that doesn’t happen anymore (unless I’m bagging on the Pope).

My second reason for wanting to end it might actually be a contributing to the first reason. Maybe, after two and a half plus years of being here, I have nothing else to contribute. I don’t look on my experience here with nearly as much wonder. I still have strange and interesting things happening to me, but I’m not surprised by them. When I come home, I no longer feel like I spent the day in a virtual reality world. In a way this has me feeling nostalgic for the crazy early days of Korean life, when everything felt unknown and exhilarating, and writing therefore became almost compulsory.

So the well’s run dry I suppose, at least in regard to documenting observations. I continue to meet new and interesting and creative people, I’m fully involved in music projects, I spend an hour or so every day studying Korean, I prepare for classes, I do academic research (not as much as I should), I work on expanding my understanding of sound design (my new thing is modular synthesis and sampling), I have at least one new collaborative film project coming up (probably more like three), and I’m making preparations for future endeavors. It’s life. It’s interesting to me, but probably not to anyone else.

I don’t know if I’ll stop posting. But I probably won’t feel compelled to keep it going as some form of necessary document. When I take a trip to a new temple or a new village, when I travel, when I see an interesting movie — when I have something I feel is worthy of sharing, then maybe I’ll share it. But I think the times of two or three or four times a week are over. Probably more like once a month. We’ll see.

Incidentally, I should also bounce this back to Tharp’s blog, because he’s saying a lot of the same things as me (although mercifully, with more brevity). He didn’t inspire this post, but he did beat me to the punch, as he often does… the bastard.

Anyway, if you enjoy what I write, I thanks for reading. That’s kind of the point.

Here are the winners. (The only one I saw was Paju.)

My final screening at the 2009 PIFF festival was a Korean melodrama called Paju. This was also the last PIFF screening at the Haeundae Megabox theater, so the entire staff of volunteers came out to bow to the packed house of patrons. It was all very cute.

Paju was not cute; it was pretty damned intense. This was yet another taboo romance, with director Park Chan-ok successfully putting her audience through utter hell. As is typical with modern Korean melodramas, a tragic event has occurred, leading to a misunderstanding, and thereby throwing everyone into self-inflicted conundrums of Shakespearean proportions. The story is intended to induce suffering, from the three tragic central characters to the backdrop of forced relocation of homes to a rural community with seemingly no future.

I’ve seen enough Korean movies now. Once I got the Big Answer halfway through the film, I knew what was coming. I won’t give anything away, but it has to do with that very Korean form of sacrifice and heroism. And, as with other Korean melodramas, there is always, always the beautiful girl who makes it all worth it. Actress Seo Woo is indeed almost impossibly adorable, but her character is no saint. She’s selfish and detached, with a bit of a mean streak. Granted, her situation has played a role in making her that way, and she does have a sweet side to her. But it pains me to see what these men go through for the doe-eyed “innocent.”

Still, this is a complicated character and a complicated set of circumstances. Even if the misunderstanding could be worked out, we’re still left with a forbidden love in a hopeless town. Like Romeo & Juliet, even if the message arrives, even if they could come together somehow, reality is still against them.

If I sound like I didn’t like this movie, that’s not it at all. In fact, I’ve really come to like these heartbreaking Korean yarns. Paju is well made, with a very effective time-shifting montage that provides mysteries and then reveals them in a manner that works. This is an edgy art film with big budget production values and an excellent ensemble cast.

And with that, I think my PIFF blogging is done. I lost count of how many movies I saw — 11 or 12 I think. The atmosphere, the films, the weather, the parties, the conversations… all added up to another wonderful week. But I’m tired. I haven’t slept much, I drank too much, and my apartment is a disaster. I feel the need for a weekend of social inactivity, to calm down and get back to normal life.

In travel, as Spalding Grey used to say, you’re always holding out for that “perfect moment.” With this year’s PIFF festival, I’ve been waiting for my “perfect film” to come along. It almost happened yesterday. For me to really love a film it has to be what I feel is exceptionally well-made and also hit me personally. In short, I want to be impressed and moved at the same time. Dust, a movie out of Luxembourg, accomplished about 95% of each.

Dust is what good cinema is all about. The great thing about movies as a storytelling device is the way they reveal a story through images and sounds. Film is not really about dialog; it’s about presentation. Books can’t do this, and neither can theater. Director Max Jacoby utilizes the full spectrum of what is available in the form to his advantage. Little is said in this movie because the camera and soundtrack take up that narrative role more than any dialog could. Jacoby, through cinematographer Fredrik Bächar, is an expert in blocking and framing. Every shot seems intended to give you a clue about what these three characters are thinking and feeling. It could be choice in focus, a slow dolly into one character’s face, someone intentionally cropped out of the frame, or someone moving in or out of the frame. The sound design also plays a strong role, with liberal use of offscreen sounds. We hear a door open and we wonder; we hear the crackling of glass under footsteps and realize something happened here; we hear the arrival of a car and we feel what that means.

In essence, Dust is a post-apocalyptic love triangle. But the setting is not simply a device. The environment and situation almost acts as a fourth character. It’s something the other three must contend with. It has a say in their decision-making and it forms the particularites of the relationships that have developed and will develop. Jacoby presents the landscape as monumental in size and scope, both containing and reflecting their own dilemma. This space and setting, combined with the sparse dialog, also gives the audience plenty of headspace to wonder how all of this is going to work out. I found myself a lot of times thinking “well shit, they can’t…” or “oh right, so how…?” The slow pace kept me in suspense and kept me wondering. And when that happens, when you realize how involved you are, that’s when you know you’re watching a great movie.

Which brings me to the remaining 5% of this movie that I didn’t like, that being the ending. Again, it’s revealed by the camera, and it was… not hugely disappointing, and not unexpected. But it wasn’t enough. We needed a third act and we didn’t get it. The director had done such a fine job of telling this story and creating an atmosphere of tension, and three minutes before it ends I’m thinking, oh crap, now they have to deal with x. But Jacoby let me off the hook. He had me in suspense and I was gearing up for an interesting final 20 minutes or so, but then he let me go. In short, we needed a conflict and we didn’t get one. I warn you that the next sentence is a bit of a spoiler: Yes, the penguin kept the ring, but the spell was broken without the penguin having to face the consequences of that, so it didn’t really matter anyway.

Still, good lord what a beautiful work of art this movie is. Unfortunately, the movie I saw afterward, The Dust of Time, wasn’t. It was horrible. Seriously, my god, I hated this movie. That wooshing sound you hear is the sound of this movie going right over my head. I had no clue who these people were and what was going on. Well, I did eventually, but by the time I caught up to what the director was trying to do, I didn’t care. Willem Defoe is laying it on so thick that it’s almost campy. This movie has so much melodrama — heavy moments, crying, slow motion — that was empty because I didn’t give a damn. It’s so strange to be watching actors on screen pouring it all out and I’m just empty. And I had to endure this for over two hours. I kept thinking “it has to end sometime it has to end sometime it has to end…” but it just kept going and going and going. After a while I’m just staring at a point in the center of the screen like a laser, not looking at anything, just waiting for the damned thing to end. When that didn’t work I tried to open up some latent telekenetic ability so I could peel the corners of the screen in order to make a paper airplane out of it. Anything just to end the damned thing.

Every movie experience is like a relationship between the maker and the audience member. And in this relationship, maybe it’s not about you, it’s about me. Maybe I just missed what all this passion was about. I’d like to give some benefit of doubt and think that. But I could see other people squirming. And when it finally faded to black and those first text images started to roll onto the screen, people practically lept out of their seats heading for the exits. Usually PIFF-goers will wait for the credits to end, clap, and then leave. But not here.

Luckily this isn’t my final film. I’m seeing my last one tonight, the one I was hoping to see — Paju.

As the PIFF festival winds its way into the final lap, I’m thinking about the things I missed. There were seminars I had every intention of attending but simply could not find the time. But mostly I’m thinking about the films I wanted to see but couldn’t, partly through scheduling but mostly through sell-outs. Sorum only had one screening. But I believe this is because it was a last minute addition to commemorate the death of actress Jang Jin Young. Then there’s surrealist Taiwanese film Face (sold out every time), Air Doll from Japan (one scheduling conflict, one sell-out), and I Come With The Rain starring Josh Hartnett (no surprise, also sold out every time). Then there are Korean films In My End Is My Beginning and Paju (both always sold out). The one I really want to see is Paju. It has one more showing on Thursday, so I’m holding out hope that I can see it. If not, Air Doll is there as well. Fingers are crossed.

Last night I saw one movie, another Polish joint called Zero (dir. Pawell Borowski). It’s up for the festival’s Flash Forward award. The director was supposed to speak before the movie, but got caught up in traffic (and the lift — jeesus, the PIFF organizers have to do something about the crazy busy, slow-ass elevator problems). He arrived, out of breath, and simply said something to the effect of “this movie is not for everyone, but I hope you like it.”

Whereas many arty films are constructed nonlinearally. This one is the exact opposite. It is completely linear, in that the whole thing happens in a forward progression of character interaction. A character does something, meets with another character and that new character then moves on to the next stage of the story. On an on we go, twisting through 24 different characters (according to the trailer above). In a sense, that means there are 24 stories, but there are really about a half dozen core events going on. While the progression may be linear, the story does circle back on itself, so we’re able to revisit the central characters in new situations with new aspects layered onto their stories.

Yes, this is a blatant construct, and you could even call it a gimmick. But it works very well, almost too well. Ten or 15 minutes into the film, we’re well aware that we’re being subjected to this construct, and for the rest of the film you’re wondering what the director’s next move is going to be. It’s a little distracting, and at 2 hours, it gets somewhat tiring after a while. The best scenes are those when you don’t think about the trick. These are the moments when the director slowed things down and we got to witness the actors and their characters breathe a little. The acting is outstanding throughout. It’s a credit to their talent and the director’s that the movie is able to bring to life so many genuine, human characters. When we get a new interaction, we don’t feel like we’re getting introduced to another new story (that would be too tiring) but instead we feel like we’ve come across someone in the midst of a story in progress. I was impressed by how I never felt abandoned or lost. There are so many characters, but I could remember each one because each was so distinct and so well-defined.

This is not a perfect movie. The stories themselves are not nearly as inventive as the sequencing device. And again, even the device gets distracting after a while, mostly because the movie is too long to sustain it. But it’s a fun ride, and it ends right where it should, and in doing so offers a subtle, self-reflexive twist on everything you’ve just seen. Do I feel manipulated? Sure, but it’s cinema, that’s what it’s for.

I’m finding it difficult to get the time to write. My first priority is to watch as many films as possible. The second is to meet up with people. I’m accomplishing these with some success. But my other objectives — sleeping and blogging — sometimes get left behind. Oh yeah, and there’s that job thing too.

Last night (Sunday) was another night of meeting and drinking. I caught up with my friend at the soju/seafood tents at around 10:30. I met a American-born Korean actor named John, an actress (again, the name escapes me dammit), and a producer of one of Korea’s most popular movies, Taegukgi. All of them were very cool and, thankfully, spoke good English. In my small petri dish of industry people I’ve met they’ve all proved to be very un-diva like. They’ve been well-traveled, friendly, good humored people. We drank several rounds of soju and ate things that moved. Then it was time for me to hit the sack.

I took in four films over the past two days: Sleeping Songs, An Aimless Bullet, The Forest, and The Fair Love. Reviews follow…

Sleeping Songs is a German drama with two stories. One is about a trumpet player who has lost his will to make music (and maybe even for life itself). He comes across a muse in the form of a homeless woman’s poetry scribblings. Through him, we piece together her life. I’ll leave it at that, so I don’t ruin anything. Much of the satisfaction in this movie was in an exceptional feat of editing that pulled the narrative together. We get overlapping images and sounds from both worlds, and sometimes we see things as they happened about 50 or so frames before they happen. I wondered while I was watching if the music we were hearing was Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer. Sure enough it was, and the soundtrack is a perfect ghostly backdrop. It’s a beautiful film.

An Aimless Bullet is apparently Korea’s most famous movie, from 1969. I found it to be more interesting than it was enjoyable. The story chronicled a time after the end of the Korean war, with various people trying to come to terms with post-war life and the rapid modernity that comes with it. I admit that I briefly nodded off a couple times, in fact missing the critical turning point. It’s difficult for me to watch older movies like this, especially on little sleep. At the same time, it’s interesting to see older Korean movies because the place has changed so rapidly. There was one scene with two characters looking out over the Seoul skyline that was amazing. It’s even got its own “Rosebud” motif. In this case: “Kaaa-jaaa. Kaaaaaa-jaaaaaaaaa!”

The Forest is a Polish film that’s also something of a yawner. But in this case, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I actually enjoyed it. But it’s tough to go through. This movie is very, very slow. It’s kind of like a poem put to film in the sense that it’s more of a feeling of a particular situation — a son watching his father’s last days, and the dreams the father has — than it is a typical narrative. The cinematography is gorgeous, with a rich black and white, deeply gothic look. The director holds the shots for excruciatingly long periods of time, particularly at the end, but they’re so beautifully constructed. This is one of those films in which you wonder if you can take it, but then it ends and you wish you could see more.

The Fair Love is a Korean movie that I suspect will find a large audience once it gets wide release. It’s the story of a 56 year old bachelor who promises his estranged, dying friend that he’ll look after his 25 year old daughter after he dies. Eventually he and the girl fall in love, despite the huge age difference. Koreans seem to love these awkward and semi-taboo love stories.

The dialog in this movie is excellent. The conversations they have hit all the right notes, and the two characters know full well what they’ve gotten themselves into. The best part of the movie is the performance by Lee Ha-na. Not only is her acting rock solid throughout, but she’s got the subtle nuances down. You can feel when watching her that her father’s death hangs with her in every single scene. Even when she’s happy and smiling, there’s a hidden pain in there. This can’t be an easy thing for an actor to pull of but she does it perfectly.

While I enjoyed the ride, the ending sucked. The movie talks a lot about courage, but director Shin Yeon-Shick doesn’t have the courage to give us an ending. I’m fine with movies leaving things ambiguous if the script allows for it. But this one didn’t. Shin needed to make a choice and he didn’t, which left things empty. The movie also suffers from a lack of intimacy. We get great conversation, but no real intimate exchanges between the two. It’s probably because the movie aims straight for the mainstream. To show these two actually being physically affectionate (and no, I’m not talking about skin) would push things too far. It suffers because of it.

But I still recommend it for Lee Ha-na’s outstanding performance and the conversations the two share.

Onward…

I had a full day of PIFF events yesterday, taking in four movies and hitting some of the star-studded nightlife. In true tabloid style, I’ll start with the nightlife.

My friend and former professor is down from Seoul for the festival. He’s filming a documentary on Korean moviemakers. For this trip, he’s documenting a particular movie star. Around 10pm I called him and he told me to join him at the Grand Hotel. When I arrived, I met some of his friends — a director and a screenwriter. We exchanged cards, had some chit-chat, then went to a party near the Westin Chosun. It turned out to be an older crowd singing karaoke. We stayed long enough to say some hellos and drink a shot and then went back to the Grand Hotel for the “actor’s party.”

We got in the elevator and headed for the top floor. Along the way a beautiful woman got on and was surprised to see my friend. They chatted the rest of the way up. When we got to the top, there were a bunch of people processing wrist bands and screening people to go through. I guess I was okay, because I got my wrist band. I peeked in the entrance and saw about a dozen photographers in two rows waiting. We were about to go through when someone pulled us back. This beautiful woman I mentioned before was apparently famous. Some “handlers” fixed up her dress and then she went in and stood in front of a huge banner while the paparazzi lit up the room. Then it was our turn. We quickly went through. Needless to say, no one took our picture.

The room inside was huge, dark except for swirling colored lights, and full of beautiful people. Apparently, all the major Korean directors and movie stars were there. Imagine going to Sundance and getting invited to the exclusive party. This was Korea’s version. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was the only white person there. I met a young director who had previously worked under Lee Myun-se and was now working on his first major film. Through him I was introduced to an actress whose name unfortunately eludes me. Unfortunate because we really hit it off and wound up talking for 30 or 40 minutes. She had lived in the U.S. for two years and was really cool.

We hung around for a while and then their group had to leave. I stayed a little while longer. I was sort of waiting to see if Josh Hartnett or Bryan Singer would show up. As time went on I felt more and more like I was loitering, so I took off. Just as I got to the hotel entrance, a black car pulled up. Inside? Josh Hartnett. He got out of the car and was met with ear-piercing screams. I couldn’t exactly turn around and walk back into the party, so I left.

(Click ahead for some photos and brief reviews)

I saw four movies on Day 2, but none of them knocked me out. It’s a crap shoot for me. I don’t want to read any reviews in advance, and I want to treat it like treasure hunting. Yesterday’s treasures left a lot to be desired, but there was at least one that I can recommend.

Metropia: This is a Scandinavian animated film set in a dystopian near-future. The animation style really bothered me: expertly rendered 3D on multiple 2-dimensional layers. I don’t care for 3D animation. It feels too cold, digital, and precise. As exquisite as the facial detail and expressions were, the characters moved in blocky motion. The 2D layering made matters worse, erasing any possible depth of field. The story itself was typical paranoid hipster existential doom. We’ve seen this covered many different times in much more aesthetically pleasing ways. Voices were provided by Vincent Gallo and Juliette Lewis, so it’s sure to hit the arthouse circuit soon.

Dear Music: That is, their Fantasy Heading for the Sea: This was the best of the foursome. The backdrop involves a Korean man, raised in Mexico, and taught to play the violin. He makes one recording and then dies. So the album is a rare treasure in Korea. The story takes place when two musicians try to buy a copy off a woman whose husband is in a coma. But the album soon becomes secondary to the melodrama that eventually unfolds. I loved the style. Clearly influenced by French New Wave, it used unconventional cutting of beautiful black and white footage, and the characters stop occasionally to address the camera. I can’t say I loved this movie (the revelation lacked some depth), but the music-as-plot-device was interesting and it was stylistically effective.

Like You Know It All: Another Korean film, this one started well. A clueless movie director is a judge at a film festival (well, two film festivals) and the whole thing pokes more than a few laughs at the industry. But it was a mess of character intention and storytelling. There’s really no story here, just a pathetic man trying to get his ego stroked. I didn’t care for the director’s camera style. Instead of using conventional OTS shots and return shots for dialog scenes, he did most of them in a single take, panning and zooming the camera. While my hat’s off to the actors who performed well during these long takes (except for the American actor – dreadful), the style didn’t work for such an otherwise very conventional film. It came off less as style and more like laziness. In a word, this movie was boring.

Sleepless: A movie by Dario Angento, it’s an Italian horror film staring Max Von Sydow. It was released in 2001, but looks like something out of the 80s. I have a hard time with European horror because it tends to go more for excessive shock than story. Some of the killings are overly gruesome. But what really bothered me was the terrible dubbing that is also typical of European foreign language films. The original dialog was in English, but evidently the actors got replaced by American voices. Why make an Italian movie with American accents? I have no idea, but it was distracting as hell.

I’m sitting in the second-floor guest lounge at PIFF Center, which at this time of the day, 4pm, is very active. It’s the first day of the 2009 Pusan International Film Festival. Or, as I like to think of it, the best time of the year to be in Busan. People are greeting and meeting, perusing the catalog, reserving tickets, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, taking pictures, and doing business. As a media professor, I get a guest pass every year. So for a whole week, I watch as many free movies as I can squeeze in and enjoy some prime people-watching.

This spot always brings out an odd combination of young hipster types (filmmakers and film buffs) and older dudes in black suits (producers and other money people). This is like my little slice of Seoul. A good chunk of these folks are down from Seoul, but it also brings out the rare artists within our own relatively humble cowboy town of 4 million. You can usually tell who the directors are — something about the choice in eyeglass frames and sweater pattern. Creative people also, for whatever reason, have that look about them. They carry themselves differently. Outside I mostly see college students hanging out on the beach, laughing and gathering into small groups, just wanting to be part of the action I suppose.

I’ve got four tickets for tomorrow. I like to gravitate toward Korean offerings, or those films that seem weirdly constructed, or have a possible sound design angle to them. Tomorrow I’ll see Scandinavian film Metropia (“Roger hears voices…”), Korean films Dear Music: That is, their fantasy heading for the sea (seriously, that’s the title) and Like You Know It All, and Sleepless by Italian director Dario Argento, a guest at this year’s festival.

I’ll be carrying my laptop around all during the festival, so I hope to post a good supply of updates and reviews over the next eight days. Happy PIFFing!

I guess I’m enamored by the dark stuff. I just finished watching a fantastic Korean horror film called The Uninvited. The Korean name is “A Table For Four,” or 4인용 식탕. Adding to the multi-title confusion, there’s also a U.S. film called The Uninvited, a remake of, not this Uninvited, but a different Korean movie, my favorite so far, A Tale Of Two Sisters, or in Korean, 장화, 홍련.

Confused? Nevermind. The point is this Korean movie is called, in the English world, The Uninvited, and it’s outstanding.

Korean horror films are not really horror films. I would call them scary, psychological dramas. What makes U.S. or European horror different from Korean “horror” is that in the former style, the terror exists outside the individual; in the Korean style, the terror resides almost fully inside the mind. This makes it fun because you’re never sure what’s real and what’s imagined. There is no supernatural boogey man out there. What’s out there is the all too natural world, a world that is sometimes cruel and tragic. What’s horrific is how these characters cope when tragedy strikes.

Now, to be fair, in The Uninvited, as in A Tale Of Two Sisters, there is a supernatural component. But that’s not the story, it’s a device. The story is all too human. What I like about The Uninvited is that it’s so Korean. If people would just talk to each other, open up, trust one another, things might work out okay. But Koreans are more apt to internalize difficult emotions. There’s no seeking of help, and god forbid you should talk to your fiancée about your strange visions while she’s trying to plan the wedding invitations. Keep up appearances, deny the problems, and hope that they’ll go away. I suspect that this is much of the unique artistry of Korean movie directors. They know this, and it’s a way of shining a light on this particular aspect of culture. I’m guessing, but that’s my suspicion because it’s a very common thread.

I read a review of this movie after watching it on the excellent koreanfilm.org. I completely disagree with the reviewer, however, who said the movie was too long and (without giving an explanation) “flawed.” I realized it was long while it was happening, but I didn’t care. I was completely involved from start to finish. Unlike many Korean films, there’s no wasted time, and not a single wasted scene. Things move along quickly and naturally, and all of the complicated plot elements are sequenced perfectly.

I don’t want to mention much about the story because it would only take away from it. This is not a simple story. It is, in fact, two separate stories that intersect through the two main characters. They share something that I don’t want to reveal. It’s not something unique to cinema, but it is in the way they come to terms with it. Lee Su-yeon is both the writer and director for The Uninvited. I commend her writer side for constructing a story that is both intricate in detail and deep in its emotional punch. And I commend her director side for trusting her story and giving all of it the space it required.

The Uninvited is an aesthetically rich feast in both sound and images. Sounds pull in and out diegetically to give you that “what the hell?” kind of feeling. Is this music or sound? In one scene we get a visual flashback, but the dialog track is bandpass filtered like a tape machine. We see the flashback as it was then; but someone is listening to a tape recording of that moment so what we hear is the present. There are also several offscreen sound clues that come into play later. I love it when filmmaker is sensitive enough to sound to use it as a foreshadowing device, or a means of building motifs, much like a composer would. Light plays another important role. It is used to falsely idealize aspects of domesticity in some areas, and in one particular scene, to reveal, harshly, a subjective “truth” that is actually a delusion. Color comes and goes. Things dim to gray in the present day or become saturated in memory.

I have to give the koreanfilm.org reviewer credit, however, for highlighting an aspect that I thought of as well watching the movie. That is the anonymity of apartment life in Korea. This is a country filled with towering, soul-less apartment complexes. People come home to disappear into obscurity and conformity. While everything may look identical, strange things are happening inside. In The Uninvited, there’s a memorable shot of a man crying and we kind of peer inside from a distance, seeing the surrounding units reflected in the window. It’s an amazing shot.

I want to see more from this writer/director. But I can’t find any additional information on her. She has no Wikipedia entry, and Google wasn’t much help either. While something in me likes the idea of the reclusive director, I also want to see her do more. This is the only film of hers I could find out there and it’s now six years old. I hope she hasn’t given up her craft.

Trivia seems to be a big thing for foreigners in Korea. A couple of bars have trivia nights and it’s a very popular event. More specifically, trivia seems to be for long-time foreigners who mostly like hanging out with other long-time foreigners and who are married or firmly attached. I suppose it’s the modern-day, younger version of our grandparents’ bingo nights.

I hate trivia. It’s not for the reasons above, although I do not (really) fit the demographic. It’s that it makes me feel stupid. And if there’s one thing I hate, it’s putting myself voluntarily into a situation to make me feel dumb as a doorknob. A fairly new friend asked me recently if I have OCD. She noticed how I cleaved my two sunnyside eggs into equal parts to lay them perfectly upon my oval-shaped pieces of toast. Yes, I suppose I do. I thought about this for the rest of the day. Whatever OCD I have it gets stronger the older I get.

Trivia is a form of test-taking, and test-taking is a nightmare for people with OCD, at least in my case. I see a question and I immediately break it down: I look at the phrasing of the question and single out bad word choices or incorrect grammar. I start thinking about the reasons behind the question; is this distinctly American? If the answer isn’t immediately apparent, I go into panic attacks. Should I know this? Do other people know it? Then the real trouble begins — I get paranoid. It’s a trick question. This answer seems likely, but maybe the test-takers are fucking with me. Then I panic. I come to see the wisdom and potential arguments in all (or many) of the possible answers. That’s the point when I give up, stop caring, and just pick something. Usually I get the answer wrong, sometimes even when I know the answer (that trick question mind-fuck). Dammit. Can we talk about this? No, we move on to the next question.

What’s the point of all this? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about going back to grad school to get my PhD. To get into a good graduate school you have to take something called the Graduate Record Examination or GRE. The exam is divided into three parts: a quantitative section (math — primarily algebra, geometry, and word problems), verbal section (vocabulary, reading comprehension), and a writing section (two essays). Each section is timed and the whole thing takes about 3.5 hours to complete. I took the GRE about six years ago before I went to get my Master’s degree. I bombed it of course, except for the writing part. I knew it while I took it, and I hated myself for days afterward.

GRE scores are purged after five years. So if I want to go back to school I need a new score result. For some stupid reason — stupidity, probably — I decided to take the exam while on vacation in the U.S this summer. I had my rationale. The test is different in Korea and is only given twice a year. I was going to be in the U.S. anyway, and I figured I’d have some downtime to study. Big mistake. I don’t know why this wasn’t obvious to me when I signed up, but never, ever take an exam on vacation. It doesn’t work. I studied as much as I could in between meeting friends, going camping, etc. But my head was not in it. Sure enough, I came to realize this only while taking the test itself. The first stage upon this realization was self-loathing. But worse was what came next: apathy. I stopped caring about its importance. None of the words or math I studied was actually on that particular version of the exam (or very little anyway), and I slept-walked through a couple of lame essays. I got my results, and yeah, I bombed. Then, a couple weeks later, I got my writing score: 4.0. Sweet Jesus, 4.0. Last time I got a 5.5. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a colossal failure.

So I’m angry at myself and I’m pissed off at the world for making me conform to their little game. ETS, the creators of the GRE, is a monopoly. It’s a company. It’s become the standard for universities out of administrative laziness. Worse, it’s not an indicator of intelligence, creativity, or ability. It measures one very limited form of ability, that being the ability to take a test. Students learn, not how to use words, math, and making an argument in the real world, but how to pass one organization’s examination. If you want to do well, you must gain the ability to memorize a set of rules and conform your brain to a particular structure. This ability can be trained through expensive private schooling. If you’ve got the cash and the time, do all the schooling you want. Nobody knows that you did, and nobody seems to care. So congratulations, institutes of higher learning, you use, as one of your principal forms of screening candidates, an exam that singles out people with rich parents and people who have all the free time in the world to learn something that is useless in daily life.

To be fair, the GRE is only one aspect in a doctoral application. In my field in particular, universities and specific departments also take into account ones personal statement, writing examples, and letters of recommendation, among other, more minor things. Departments mostly care about this other stuff. But the university in most cases cares a great deal about the GRE because a university is a massive bureaucracy that wants to stamp something and move on. As a result, GRE scores have a huge impact on financial aid packages. In some cases (such as mine) the aid package and teaching possibilities are what make the endeavor feasible. For me, the GRE is huge. And I failed.

I’ve been around long enough to know that I’m much better with imagination, concepts, and experiential learning than I am with factual recall. My brain has a slow seek time to start with, but more than that, I collapse under the weight of rigidity. It’s an issue of attitude, and I have a really pissy one when it comes to what I view as an oppressive structure. Some person or organization has developed a single formula for every person subjected to it, disregarding the nuances of individual experience, knowledge and personality that each of us has. This entity expects me to conform to it and that is how I am to be judged. There will be no discussion; no critique of method is allowed; no questions will be asked. You may not explain yourself, make an argument, challenge the structure, or disregard its validity. I know this going in, I think about it during the process, and I seethe about it when it’s over. Even in the rare times when I’ve done well on an exam, I feel as though I’ve gone through a fist fight and through some stroke of luck managed to emerge on top, but still pissed off at the bastard for starting shit in the first place.

So now I have a decision to make: Take it again (and subject myself to all that) or say screw it and submit apps with my lame scores. It’s not a simple matter. First is logistics (I’d have to go to Japan). Second is I’m extremely busy this semester. Why pour all this time and energy into something, expecting a different outcome, but knowing that the result will probably be the same? Come to think of it, isn’t that the definition of insanity?