FILM REVIEW: Memoir of a Murderer (살인자의 기억법)

*** A note here that in Korea, one's surname (family name) comes before the given name. I will be naming the characters as they are named in the film (in Korean style) in this review.

Memoir of a Murderer, or 살인자의 기억법 (Pronounced Salinjaui Gieokbeob) in Korean, is a 2017 South Korean film based on a novel by novelist Kim Young-ha. It revolves around a serial killer (Kim Byeong-soo) who sees his murders as "cleaning trash". Byeong-soo develops Alzheimer's Disease at the same time as serial murders of young women, and begins to fear that HE is the one committing all the murderers but forgetting them. One day, he meets a young man named Min Tae-joo through a car accident. Byeong-soo becomes convinced that Tae-joo is the serial killer, but is shocked to learn that Tae-joo is a police officer and is dating his daughter Eun-hee at the same time. Byeong-soo also is beginning to labeled a madman by Byeong-man, a close friend and a police officer who begins to suspect himself that Byeong-soo is the serial killer. Byeong-soo begins to mentally fall apart, having memory lapses that can go on for days and even weeks at a time and begins to genuinely feel terrified that he IS the serial killer, not Tae-joo. As the film, ends everything unravels as Byeong-soo begins to see the truth about everything around him and who the TRUE serial killer is: Tae-joo or Byeong-soo?

I would like to add here that I won't be talking about the ending AT ALL (unlike my usual reviews) since this film relies very heavily on plot twists and a constant psychological manipulation (which I will talk more about), and knowing the ending and the identity of the killer effectively ruins the villain (although I can still re-watch it 2-3 times and still get shocked by the twists).

The first thing I want to point out is the amazing acting by Sol Kyung-gu, who plays Byeong-soo in the film. Sol really sells his character here, and his non-verbal acting specifically is phenomenal. Whenever Byeong-soo has a memory lapse, one side of his face begins to twitch, and then he changes emotions like a snap of the finger. Sol portrays this masterfully, his character's actions and emotions changing fluidly as if he actually IS experiencing these conditions. Furthermore, his character also has a disorder that makes him react to emotional scenes and show these emotions later then most people. For example, if there is a funny scene in a movie, he will laugh much later after the scene has passed. Sol manages to do this perfectly as well, having an eerily emotionless expression (which you can see in the poster above) and then bursting out into unusually extremes bouts of emotion, during which he even almost looks like a completely different person, and soon after which he returns to his emotionless state, and Sol really does convey that side of Byeong-soo fantastically well.

Furthermore, Byeong-soo becomes such a sympathetic character because of everything that he goes through. He considers the people he murders to be "the scum of the earth", but because everything we see is in his point of view we can't really determine if this statement has any merit to it, aside from him killing his abusive father, since the movie establishes that Byeong-soo is a very unreliable narrator. Not only that, but his murder of his father is brought back multiple times throughout the film to haunt him or affect him in some way, and I really liked that they connected it all at the end (more on this later). I also really liked that we, as an audience gets to hear some of the inside thoughts of Byeong-soo's mind, as if we were reading a novel written in first-person POV of Byeong-soo. While this doesn't always necessarily work in a movie, because the film is showing everything from Byeong-soo's POV and since the concept of memory is so crucial in this film, the narration presents itself like a note to self or a side note of sorts that Byeong-soo is adding as he writes everything in his diary in real time. This also gives us further insight into Byeong-soo mind, so it adds much more character depth to the story.

While Sol Kyung-gu was definitely the greatest actor in this film, it is also impossible to forget Kim Nam-gil's performance as Min Tae-joo. Tae-joo is suspected by Byeong-soo to be the serial killer that have been murdering young women recently early in the film. While I won't confirm whether this is true or not (due to obvious spoiler reasons), I still really loved how mysterious they kept Tae-joo overall. Overall, Tae-joo is very composed and charismatic, which is very clear in every scene he is in. While he can definitely pull off the charming and trustworthy police officer, he also manages to give off a very unsettling vibe in those same scenes. He always has this small grin (smirk?) on his face, and while that can seem nice and friendly, it can also be extremely creepy, especially after you learn that Byeong-soo suspects him to be serial killer. But the brilliance enters here: for every scene you get of Tae-joo being creepy and suspicious, you also get a similar amount of scenes where he seems to be acting with everyone else's best intentions at heart (or at least acting like a regular person would), and due to the additional fact that Byeong-soo is a very unreliable narrator (with his memory lapses), it actually becomes rather difficult to accurately pinpoint the actual antagonist at some points, as you constantly question yourself as to whether Byeong-soo's crazed mind is projecting his own serial killer persona onto Tae-joo or if Tae-joo is manipulating Byeong-soo into becoming a scapegoat for his crimes (using his status as a cop to his advantage).

The film had very good plot twists that I genuinely didn't expect coming. The film also builds up and up all the way up to the final scene, constantly revealing new secrets and actually crucial plot points and character backstories almost at the last minute, which really shows the way Byeong-soo's Alzheimer-riddled brain operates well, with his mind turning on and off (metaphorically speaking) unpredictably. There was one character backstory in particular that I found a bit lacking in actual development, but that could be explained by the final scene of the film, which sort of connects to that specific scene (if you've seen the movie and would like to know exactly what I'm referring to, feel free to contact me directly). I really can't go into more detail without spoiling the end of the film (which I REALLY don't want to in this case, since knowing the ending could really ruin the film on your first viewing). I liked the last scenes of the movie as they actually connected back to a (seemingly) offhand comment that related his murder of his father and his memory loss (again feel free to contact me directly about this). The final scene of the film was... interesting. While I traditionally like endings that wrap up everything neatly and give me a clear explanations for everything, this movie definitely benefited from a vague, inconclusive ending. It fit in well with the overarching theme of the hazy truth and reality, as no one, throughout the entirety of the film, seemed to have a completely clear grasp on the truth or reality. And this ending scene allows us to make our own interpretations as to what the ending meant, which I personally like since the concept of an unreliable narrator forced us to make our own theories and interpretations throughout the film anyways (again feel free to contact me directly if you'd like to know my interpretation or if you'd like to share your thoughts).

Overall, Memoir of a Murderer is a stunning film. It has a very riveting premise; i.e. a former serial killer with Alzheimers being caught in the middle of another serial murders, an extremely talented cast, and really great writing throughout filled with unexpected but welcome surprises. While personally, I'd really like to discuss my personal thoughts on the ending of this film, I don't want to include it here and potentially spoil it for people who haven't watched it yet. If anything, I'll probably do a separate post on my own thoughts at a later date. While it is based on a novel, I have not read it yet up to this point, but I do plan on reading it in the upcoming months, so after I read it, I'll most likely do a book review and an adaptation review as well. I really couldn't find anything I didn't like about this movie, and it still managed to be enrapturing during my third viewing of the film. Memoir of a Murderer gets a rating of 5/5.

I regret to write that this will most likely be my last post for probably a month or so. I'll be on vacation for most of the summer, and I do have exams coming up so I will not be able to post new stuff. I will, however, try to do at least one or maybe two posts during that time, but I can't guarantee anything. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!

Your Most Faithful Blogger, 

The Connoisseur

NOVEL & FILM REVIEW: The Outsiders By S.E. Hinton

In this review, I'll be trying something different. One of my favourite novels when I was younger was S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. After first reading it in Grade 7, I instantly fell in love with this novel, and ended up re-reading it over and over again. I really loved the film adaptation too when I watched it, and I knew I wanted to discuss both versions of the story here. And this is where my new style comes in. The novel and the film (directed by Francis Ford Coppola) The Outsiders are so similar and so well adapted that there's hardly a point in doing a separate adaptation post when my intention is to review the two stories. So for those EXTREMELY faithful adaptations (like The Shawshank Redemption and perhaps even Misery), I will first talk about the overall story and why I liked it so much, and do a small separate section on the novel and the film separately (like I do at the end of my usual adaptation reviews) and talk about my overall thoughts at the end.

Plot Synopsis

Most people probably know the plot of the film and the book pretty well, so I'll be very, VERY brief about it (or as brief as I can be):

Ponyboy Curtis lives with his older brothers Sodapop and Darryl and are best friends with a gang of "Greasers", a group comprised of lower-class boys comprised of Johnny Cade, Dallas Winston, Two-Bit Matthews, and Steve Randle. The greasers are in a constant rivalry with the wealthy Socialites, AKA the "Socs", but the greasers will always lose due to the privileges the Socs have. One night, after going to the movie with Johnny, Two-Bit, and Dally, Ponyboy meets a girl named Sherry Valance (nicknamed Cherry for her red hair), and her friend Marcia, who are part of the wealthy upper class. While walking the two girls home after the movie, Pony, Johnny, and Two-Bit runs into Bob Sheldon and Randy Adderson, Cherry and Marcia's boyfriends, but a fight is avoided when Cherry willingly goes with Bob.

Ponyboy returns home at 2 in the morning, who a worried Sodapop and Darryl. Darryl and Ponyboy starts an argument, leading to Darryl slapping him and Ponyboy deciding run away with Johnny. The two end up in a park, but are ambushed by Bob, Randy, and a few other Socs who beat Johnny up and begins drowning Ponyboy in a fountain, but Johnny stops this from happening by stabbing and killing Bob. Once they realize what they had done, they run to Dallas for help, who gives them a gun and some cash, telling them to hide in an abandoned church at Windrixville.

During their few days' stay, Ponyboy reads Gone With the Wind and Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost to Johnny, who is very taken to the poem. Dallas comes by a few days later to check on them, telling them that a war has erupted between the greaser and the Socs, with Cherry acting as a spy for the greasers. Johnny wishes to turn himself in, and when they begin to leave, the church catches on fire, leaving some children trapped inside. Ponyboy, Dallas, and Johnny runs in the church to save them, and while Ponyboy and Dallas aren't badly hurt, a piece of the roof has fallen on Johnny's back, breaking it.

Ponyboy learns that there is a rumble (a fight) taking place, which the greasers eventually win. Dallas and Ponyboy goes to visit Johnny in the hospital to tell him about the victory, only for Johnny to die moments later with the final words "Stay gold Ponyboy, stay gold." Dallas, crazed from Johnny's death, runs out of the hospital. Ponboy returns home to learn that Dallas has robbed a store at gun point and is now being chased by the police. The gang meets with Dallas at the park to find Dallas, now suicidal, pointing an unloaded gun at the police, who then shoots and kills him.

Ponyboy goes to the hearing concerning Bob's death, and the judge finds Ponyboy innocent and allows him to stay with Darryl and Sodapop. Ponyboy returns to school, and although he is failing English, his teacher will allow him to pass if he can write a composition on a decent theme. In the copy of Gone With the Wind that Johnny bought for Ponyboy, he finds a letter from Johnny (who asked a nurse to write it in the hospital) that he wants Ponyboy to not only stay gold, but also to help Dallas see the good things in life, and he will die proudly. Ponyboy finally decides on a theme for his composition and begins writing the opening line of the novel, "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind; Paul Newman and a ride home..."

On the Story

This is a beautifully written and thought out story. The fact that the author based the premise of the novel on real-life experiences and events that she experienced during her teenage years really adds to the authenticity of the story. All of the characters are very well-written and portrayed, and you can clearly tell from both the novel and the film that Ponyboy's group of friends are almost like brothers in a sense due to their closeness to one another. The film and the novel both share many scenes, and I really think that the overall messages and tones in those scenes were communicated very well (save for a few that I will discuss more in my section on the film below).

Hinton really does write her characters very realistically and she wasn't afraid to shy away from controversial topics like gang violence, underage drinking & smoking, and some strong language (at least strong for that time) some which had led to the novel being banned from school libraries to this date. I think that if she did censor her novels to take out the aforementioned controversial topics, it would have resulted in a less authentic and more mundane novel, since those controversial topics were such a big part of what made the story so much more genuine and its characters and their actions more natural and lifelike, making the novel seem more like a third-person witness account of actual real-life people then a work of fiction. I also really liked that Ponyboy really liked reading and was actually smart, as it deviated from the cliche that "lower class kids are dumb".

A really great quote about class division I found was: “They used to be buddies, I thought. They used to be friends, and now they hate each other because one has to work for a living and the other comes from the West Side.” this describes Darryl and Paul, who were essentially best friends in High School but drifted apart and became almost enemies because Paul could afford to go to college while Darryl had to work. This works really well with two others quotes: “Maybe the two different worlds we lives in weren't so different. We saw the same sunset.” and “Socs were just guys after all. Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.” These three quotes not only represent the unfair class divisions between the Greasers and the Socs, but also that if you strip everyone away of their class, then they're all the same human beings underneath, showing that there really isn't a clear cut "antagonist" of the novel. Yes, Bob did incite the incidents, but he was also known as sweet, funny, and a great friend, making you wonder that maybe he even Bob wasn't a terrible human being after all and just a product of his class. So perhaps the true antagonist of the novel (and of society as a whole) is class division?

The novel (and the film too) had some very good quotes like: “Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.”  “It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren't so different. We saw the same sunset.” The novel is very much a coming-of-age story where Ponyboy has to face the tough reality and grow as a person, watching two close friends die and have to become more "tough" to survive. While the novel largely focuses on how you can't just be completely naive and survive in the "real world", it also focuses much more on how being innocent, or "staying gold" can be a good thing, and not to late hatred get to you like Dallas did, which I think is a very importance message even (and perhaps especially) today, as most teenagers nowadays don't seem to understand the importance of sentiment and the little things like watching the sunset as much (if at all), which I think is vastly important, because while it is important to mature and grow up, growing up too fast for your age (which seems to be the case nowadays) is not good as you will end up missing and losing appreciation for the little beauties of life.

The Novel

Honestly, much of what I would have talked about here was pretty much all discussed in the "On the Story" section, but there IS one more topic I wanted to discuss here. My favourite character. While all of the greasers (and even some Socs like Sherry or Randy) have great characters and so many things to like about each if them, my favourite character out of all of them was always Dallas Winston. When I first read the book, I liked Dallas because he was a cool character. While he was cold, hardened guy, you could clearly tell he did care about his friends. As I re-read the book however, I realized that Dallas was definitely much more deeper in character.

When I first read the novel, I didn't quite understand why Dallas had done what he did. My first thought was that Dallas was just stressed out by Johnny's death and had to blow off some steam, and ended up getting killed, but after further reading and thought, I noticed that Dallas refused to drop his gun and was almost asking to be killed, and this is confirmed when Ponyboy writes, “...I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.” Then as I read and read more, it became more and more obvious that the only thing keeping him alive and motivated was Johnny, who he seemed to be the closest to out of everyone else, and when Johnny died, his psyche finally broke.

Dallas was a very broken character right from the start of the novel and Ponyboy's descriptions of his makes this even more obvious, describing him as a cold, hardened criminal filled with hate. Furthermore, this quote referring to Johnny's is quite interesting: “Sixteen years on the streets and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets and you see a lot. But all the wrong sights, not the things you want to see.” while Ponyboy is technically describing Johnny, this could be applied to essentially every greaser, but especially Dallas who HAS been through a lot and is sort of a broken shell of a man.

What's interesting is that Dallas says this quote to Ponyboy: “You get tough like me and you don't get hurt. You look out for yourself and nothin' can touch you...” Dallas certainly is a strong person. He's feared even by some of his close friends and is described as being dangerous. Yet even though he might be strong physically, psychologically and emotionally he seems to be weaker then anybody else. He definitely really cared for Johnny and seeing him die (maybe Johnny was the only one that kept Dallas going, gave him hope that there was good in the world) really drove Dallas off the edge.

Dallas Winston was really only one of MANY complex characters in The Outsiders, but for me, he was the most interesting and complex. Although the plot of the novel is definitely great, what REALLY brings the novel together I think are its characters and their interactions and relationships with each other. Hinton's complex, 3 and 4-dimensional characters really bring a lot of depth and a sense of realism to the story, as (like I've praised so many times before) these characters could be real people living out their complicated lives. S.E. Hinton truly is a brilliant author, and her masterpiece of a novel gets an indisputable (at least for me) 5/5.

The Film

While I really liked both the novel and the film, there were some shifts in tone and mood that I actually found rather annoying. A major one that I noticed was the scene before Ponyboy runs away. In then novel, this was an intense scene where Darryl just slaps Ponyboy in anger, and there's a moment of complete silence where Ponyboy is trying to comprehend what just happened (because no one in his family had ever hit him before), Sodapop was undeniably shocked and scared, and Darryl just stared at his hand as if HE couldn't believe what he had done. The moment where Ponyboy runs off is actually very dramatic and emotional. The film, however, strangely goes for an "action-type" scene where Ponyboy just runs off right after being pushed by Darryl and there's some sort of rock music playing in the background, which I thought really detracted from the emotions of the scene.

Another major tonal shift was the rumble, or at least the aftermath of it. The film portrays the rumble victory as a big celebratory scene where they all cheer as if that made them superior to the Socs. While there were happiness in the novel, Darryl just mutters tiredly "We won. We beat the Socs.". I preferred the novel's take on it much more, as even though the greasers won, the victory really didn't matter in the long term. The greasers will be the greasers, and the Socs will be the Socs. Nothing will ever change for the both of them, so even though the greasers won, it meant nothing for them really. Without actually writing it out, Hinton conveyed this to great effect in the novel by describing how every single member of the greasers were injured and tired. Hinton never comes out upfront and says that "nothing will change", but she is somehow able to communicate it very cleverly in her writing.

It seems though that this movie was a starting point for many big-name actors, including Ralph Maccio and Tom Cruise, who are two actors that I particularly like (or at least are much more familiar with then the others). The entire cast was really good, and you could really believe that all of them were best friends, and they were all very good representations of their book characters, and I really think they couldn't have found a better cast. It was also very impressive to see the movie quote lines directly from the novel as well. While I really loved the film, I couldn't help but notice some tonal shifts from the book, and that did disappoint me, but it may just have been because I did read the book first, so that most likely had an impact on my enjoyment of the film. Despite my displeasure with the tonal shift, it is still and OUTSTANDING film and one that you can enjoy over and over again. The Outsiders film gets a 4.5/5, both overall as a film AND as an adaptation.

Summative Thoughts

The Outsiders is a brilliant novel, and a perfectly adapted film. I can't EXACTLY put a finger on why it became so attractive to me, but it's one of those novels and film that you just have to re-read or re-watch it again for nostalgia's sake. Maybe it's become more of a nostalgia thing now, but when I first read it, I just got really attached to the story and all of the characters very quickly. While I assume most of, if not all of my readers have already read this novel, I encourage all of you (whether you have or have not read it) to read the novel and watch the film. It really is a great story and I applaud Ms. Hinton for her immense talent in writing and Mr. Coppola for his amazing directing and casting.

I'm not sure what I want to review next... I think it will be a film review, and I do have a few options to choose from, so I do have a range of options there. As always, thank you for reading my blog, and I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!

Your Most Faithful Blogger, 

The Connoisseur