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n many ways, Park Chanwook is Korea's David Cronenberg: They both make stylish, forward-looking genre films with philosophical ambitions — and both seem to insist that there are frightening, powerful things inside of us that cannot be bottled up. In three films — Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Old Boy, and, now, Lady Vengeance, out in limited release April 28 — Chanwook has used sickening violence and breathtaking horror to communicate some very primal thoughts on our drive for revenge. In Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, a poor man kidnaps and ransoms the daughter of a rich crime boss to pay for his own sister's kidney transplant — and then things really get ugly. In Old Boy, a man is imprisoned for fifteen years in a tiny room for no apparent reason, bottling up more rage every day. And now, Lady Vengeance is the masterpiece of the trilogy. A beautiful, fearsome film more intimate than the first two, Lady tracks a young woman who is released from prison, where she was serving a sentence for

kidnapping and murdering a young child — and is determined to see a terrible scheme play out to its last terror. Nerve caught up with Chanwook in a bare New York hotel room and spoke with him via a translator. Dressed in an avant navy jacket and sci-fi sunglasses that might protect you from a postnuclear solar flare, he occasionally scratched his scruffy goatee and pondered everyday evil. — Logan Hill

Will you make a fourth vengeance film?
No, I think this feels like it's done. I just got that Criterion Collection of Ingmar Bergman's Film Trilogy, and I loved the way it didn't feel like three different films. It felt like one film in three parts — and I was striving for that. Not necessarily to make three masterpieces like Bergman, but to make three films that all dealt thematically with the same subject: revenge.

Revenge is big business in the movies these days, from Man on Fire to Kill Bill and The Punisher and terrorism films in which fictional Americans get the kind of revenge real Americans can't find. What are you trying to say about vengeance?
I think we have to distinguish all the different reasons for revenge, and the different uses of vengeance. First, all revenge films deal with the idea that you can get even — especially when it's the most foolish thing in the world to do. A lot of films try to hide that last fact. You just get the sense that it's fun, that it's cool. But I try to put that fact [that revenge is foolish] right in front of audiences.

Park Chanwook

And, God, do you. The first two films were often gruesome. But there's a different feel to this last film, something more mellow. Why?
Well, the woman in this film has felt great pain over it, but in the end she yields the right to her revenge, and instead she becomes the observer of it: just eyes. The film is entirely her point of view, her watching the plot, just like the audience. I wanted the audience to feel that point fo view. To not be objective, but to feel her watching this revenge, and to think about their emotions as they watch it all happen.

Like the audience?
Yes, You might say you're simply observing in the same way you would any other movie, but I'd argue that as she feels all this emotion, this rage, so does the audience. I've been thinking of those Russian videos of the terrorists who held those children hostage and killed them. Just think of the rage mothers and fathers felt watching them.

It's interesting to hear you talking about real-world vengeance, because I couldn't help but think of Abu Ghraib, or the Middle East, or, in your case, the history of recrimination on the Korean peninsula. Each is a genre film, full of blood and gore, but more too — and in each film you seem to be tackling different points. What was on your mind making this film? George Bush?
[Laughs] You trying to get me in trouble? It's been different with each film. In Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, I dealt with class. Old Boy wasn't political at all; if anything it was mythical — a fundamental story. But Lady is different. It's about how vengeance is essential — is at the core not just in Korean society, but in all societies. I believe that vengeance defines twenty-first-century Korea, but that vengeance stories are a central metaphor for life anywhere: from the U.N. to a gang of people on the street. It's not specifically my comment on terrorism, but I'm not surprised if people think of the U.S. and Al Qaeda. But Korean audiences would be thinking of the execution of the prisoner accused of blowing up a Korean airliner years ago: a woman terrorist from North Korea who was also a beauty. I'm interested in that moment that people kill, and become the terrorist, even if they believe they are killing for the most noble cause.

When is it justifiable? Bush's father had a few run-ins with Saddam. Do you think vengeance was a major motivation for him?
I'm sure he invaded Iraq for many reasons, economic and otherwise, that I couldn't possibly know. But I think there is a strong element of revenge for 9/11, and as a cause I believe that revenge hasn't disappeared from societies just because they think they are advanced or civilized. That's what I'm trying to get at. Underneath it all, we want revenge. We go very far to take revenge. And we can't ignore it. It's an important emotion and psychological motivation that is a part of all of us. It doesn't go away because we disapprove of it in action movies. It's all around us.The terrorists on 9/11 certainly felt that they were justified, that they were going to heaven. In Korea, we saw one of our journalists being beheaded by Al Qaeda on the internet, and there was an uproar. People became very angry. But there, we have to serve two years in the army, we men are required to. So we felt that anger differently, and there was a great call to actually pull out our troops.

In all of your films, vengeance is inevitable. Like some movie monster who can't be stopped.
Yes, revenge is an endless circle of evil, going around and around until the chain breaks. We tend to justify vengenace, but it's not my idea to justify it or explain it. My idea in this film is to take this vegeance, right or wrong, unjust or foolish, and to get the audience to feel it, to taste it.  n°