Korean cinema in the world : Park Chan-Wook

 

 

 

 

Park Chan-wook

 

박찬욱, 그리고 그의 영화..
1. 빼놓을 수 없는 필모그레피와_ 복수 3부작
2. 첫째도 개성, 둘째도 개성, 무엇보다도 오직 개성

1992년 <달은 해가 꾸는 꿈>으로 정식 감독에 데뷔했으나 흥행에 실패한 후,

곧이어 <3인조>, <아나키스트> 등 후속작 역시 큰 빛을 보지 못했으나,

 2000년 650만 명 이상의 관객을 동원하며 그 해 최고의 흥행작으로 기록된 <공동경비구역 JSA>개봉한다.

 이를 통해 그 영화의 감독인 박찬욱은 실로 한국 흥행감독 중의 한사람으로 떠올랐고

한국영화 붐 속에서 그 기대는 더욱 증폭되어갔다.

 

이렇게 매번 박찬욱 감독이 흥행에 성공하는 이유는 무엇일까?

과연 박찬욱 감독의 영화에는 무엇이 담겨 있는 것일까?

대중들에게 호평을 받는 박찬욱 감독 영화의 스타일에 대해 분석해 보자.

 

 

One of the most successful directors from South Korea, the director Park Chan-wook was born on August 23rd, 1963. Initially considering himself a critic of art and film, it was after viewing the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo that Chan-wook decided he was to become a filmmaker. He wrote articles for film journals after his graduation, and even became an assistant director for such successful South Korean films as Watercolour Painting in a Rainy Day (1989), learning from the esteemed director Kwak Jae-Yong. Chan-wook, in 1992, made his debut feature film named The Moon is…The Sun’s Dream, but his rise to some degree of fame, both regionally and internationally, did not materialize until he directed Joint Security Area, a searingly political film about soldiers on the border between North and South Korea.

Park Chan-wook has since become known for his themes of vengeance and broken taboos, his signature directorial style of slow transitions, and most of all, his excessive and notorious use of extreme violence, a theme that is associated most often with his ‘Vengeance Trilogy’. Along with directors such as Bong Joon-ho and Kim Ki-Duk, Chan-wook is responsible for hugely increasing the profile of South Korean cinema in the international community, with his major hits even having the honor (and subsequent critical panning) of being remade for an English-speaking audience, such as the Spike Lee adaptation of Oldboy.

Chan-wook himself has already delved into the English speaking landscape himself, with his first feature for a Western audience being the Hitchcock inspired Stoker, and his television adaptation of John le Carré’s novel The Little Drummer Girl for the BBC airing at the time of writing. There has been no more interesting nor as important a time to look back on the career of Park Chan-wook and analyse the films that have made him such a pioneer for his country’s international cinematic standing – whether you have only seen ‘The Vengeance Trilogy’ or perhaps never seen any of his films at all, this is the perfect place to find out what you’ve been missing.

 

1. 심판 (The Judgement, 1999)
# 복수 3부작 이전의 작품
# 인간 욕망의 심판
# 강렬한 이미지의 단편영화

 

- 줄거리 : 죽음을 일상으로 접하게 되는 병원의 영안실. 대형 참사로 얼굴이 심하게 훼손된 20대 여자의 시신이 안치된다. 죽은 여자가 서로 자신의 딸이라고 주장하는 한 쌍의 부부와 염사. 사고 담당 공무원과 취재 중인 기자까지 죽은 여자의 신원을 밝히는 데 증인이 된다.
양측의 주장에 따르자면 사실 확인을 위한 유일한 증거는 다리의 흉터인데 그들이 주장하는 흉터가 있거나, 혹은 없어야 할 다리는 잘려져 나가고 없다. 그러나 갑자기 나타난 한 여자로 말미암아 이 모든 사건이 보상금을 노린 사기극이었음이 밝혀지고 거짓말을 한 사람들은 마치 심판을 받듯 사고사를 당한다.

# 복수 3부작 이전의 작품
박찬욱 감독의 영화를 전체적으로 관통하는 코드를 꼽으라면 주로 “복수”를 꼽는다. 하지만 ‘심판’에서는 복수 3부작의 복수와는 다르게 인간간의 복수가 아닌 도덕적 타락에 의한 ‘신’ 혹은 ‘자연’의 복수를 다루고 있다. 또한 복수 삼부작에서의 복수는 가해자와 피해자가 불분명하고, 가해자의 ‘악’의 이미지가 전형적이지 않은데 비해 ‘심판’에서의 복수는 악은 응징을 받는 것이라는, 다소 권선징악적이고 계몽적인 성격을 내포한다.

# 인간 욕망의 심판
기자는 기자대로 한 사람의 죽음을 소위 ‘뜨는’ 기사로 만들기에만 혈안이 된다. 부부는 부부대로 자신의 딸이 아님에도 보험금을 타내려 시신의 소유권을 주장한다. 게다가 부부가 중간에 등장하는 어릴 때 버린 자신들의 딸마저 외면하는 장면은 인간 욕망의 절정을 보여준다. 박찬욱 감독은 처음엔 시신의 소유권을 주장하는 두 사람의 갈등을 이미 일그러진 시신의 얼굴과 두 사람의 얼굴을 대조시킨다든지, 다리에 점으로 사람을 판별하려고 하지만 시신의 훼손으로 다리가 없다든지 하는 가벼운 방식으로 적당히 비틀어서 보여준다. 하지만 결국엔 지진으로 진짜 아버지인 염사를 제외한 모든 사람의 사망이라는 다소 황당한 결말로서 영화의 결론을 낸다. 하지만 이는 황당함이 아니라, 단편 영화의 특색인 “신선한 상상력”과 결부시켜서 보아야 할 것이다.

# 강렬한 이미지의 단편영화
단편 영화는 하나의 주제를 일관 되게 표현하면서, 작품의 긴장감을 유지해 나간다. 이러한 긴장을 유지하기 위해 때로는 상징적이고, 강렬한 이미지를 내뿜는 영상들을 연출하기도 한다. “심판”에서는 중간 중간에 시신의 운반을 보도하는 TV 영상을 보여주면서 아이러니하게도 배경음을 클래식을 사용하기도하고, 종반부까지 흑백으로 영상을 연출하다가 지진 이후에 컬러로 화면이 전환되는 이미지를 사용하기도 했다.

 

 

 

2. 공동경비구역 JSA (Joint Security Area, 2000)
# 박찬욱과 공동경비구역 JSA
# 주제
# 공동경비구역JSA 가 갖는 의의

JOINT SECURITY AREA (2002)

Joint Security Area (2000) – source: CJ Entertainment

From the opening shots of an owl witnessing a murder to the framing of a final photograph, this politically charged and devastatingly bleak thriller remains a fascinating early film from Park Chan-wook. A work mostly devoid of the ultra-violence that would set his films apart later in his career, Joint Security Area is a meditation on the nature of neutrality, with Lee Young-ae’s performance as Major Sophie Jean providing the calm, fascinatingly unbiased investigator into a violent event which has provoked tensions between South and North Korea. Her gaze is one of intelligence but also impatience, as the crime at the center of the story is played out again and again in slightly different ways (in another director’s hands, this could have been a strange remake of Rashomon), and ultimately the concern of her character and of the audience is not what the truth is, but rather whether releasing the truth would be the morally right thing to do.

While some of the direction nor writing is quite as tight as some of the later films on this list, Joint Security Area still manages to astound with some breathtaking visual sequences, whether that be the wind blowing through a corn-field, a suicide that flips the entire camera upside-down, or spit that cross-cuts into the impact of bullets. The direction is slightly less controlled than one is used to with Chan-wook, but it is experimental and engaging in perhaps an even more thrilling way – this is clearly a less experienced director, and what the film lacks in a steely calmness it makes up for in an almost exuberant imagination of style and shot. The manner in which the narrative baits the audience into judging characters by nationalities, into believing stereotypes about the conflicts involved and about war in general, before sweeping the rug away from them, is endlessly fascinating.

 

 

박찬욱 감독 영화가 가지고 있는 첫 번째 특징은 부조리한 세상을 향한 복수극의 내용이 담겨져 있다는 것 이다.

복수 3부작 이라고 불리는 대표적 작품 <복수는 나의 것>, <올드 보이>, <친절한 금자씨>를 살펴보면 쉽게 이해 할 수 있다.

 

 

3. 복수는 나의 것 (Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, 2002)
# 영화의 화법 - 하드보일드(hard-boiled)
# 영화의 갈등구조 - 복수는 ‘각자’의 것.

 

먼저 <복수는 나의 것>을 살펴보면, 당시 우리나라에서는 보기 드문 상당히 건조한 영화라 일반 대중들이 이해하기에는 약간 어려운 영화다.하지만 이 영화가 바로 박찬욱 감독의 복수 3부작의 시작이다.

영화는 누나의 신장이식수술비를 마련하기 위하여 주인공이 자신을 해고시킨 공장의 사장이자 딸을 납치하고 서로의 복수를 이루어 가는 과정을 담은 영화이다. 과장된 이미지에 잔인한 장면들이 화제를 낳기도 하였으나 후에 다른 영화들과 마찬가지로 이 영화 역시 아주 보편적인 이야기를 하고 있다.

예를 들면, 누나를 살리고 싶어하는 동생으로서의 마음, 딸을 살리고 싶어 하는 동시에 딸의 복수를 하고 싶어 하는 아버지의 마음.이 모든 부조리의 근원인 세상에 복수를 하고 싶어하는 마음, 누구나 가지고 있는 복수에 대한 이야기를 하고 있다.즉, 이 영화는 원한에 대한 복수와 갈등의 원인을 풀고자 하는 과정을 다루고 있다.

 

 

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE (2002)

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) – source: CJ Entertainment

 

The first of the, at the time unplanned, ‘Vengeance Trilogy’, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is an extraordinarily angry piece of filmmaking; perhaps the least precisely controlled and yet most furiously watchable of Chan-wook‘s career. The visual style of the film may not be as striking as the two other films in the trilogy, both of which had larger budgets, yet Chan-wook‘s skill as a filmmaker of style and intelligence is never in question with this revenge thriller.

The whole point of ‘The Vengeance Trilogy’ was, as Chan-wook said himself, to explore the theme of revenge as a pointless and self-sabotaging motive for anything – each film watches on as an individual is wronged and then tries to rectify the balance of justice with violence and anger, and in each example, the protagonist is found lacking not only justice at the end of the narrative but perhaps even simple satisfaction. That is most angrily portrayed and shockingly presented in this, the first of the trilogy, which even by Chan-wook‘s standards is a particularly nasty piece of cinema. It lacks the emotional intrigue of both Oldboy and Lady Vengeance and yet that almost works in its favor – it is almost comically black, absurd in its cynicism, and its eye for the devilish details.

For an early indication of Chan-wook‘s early thematic intentions, with a style that was still revealing itself, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is an excellent beginning into the most grisly and famous chapter of Park Chan-wook‘s career so far.

 

 

 

4. 올드보이(Oldboy, 2003)
# 인물 탐구
# 박찬욱 감독의 ‘복수3부작’ 그 두 번째 영화
# 올드보이의 흥행 요소, ‘근친상간’

 

복수 3부작 중 두 번째 작품인 <올드 보이>는<복수는 나의 것>이 계급적이라면, 이 영화는 신화적이라고 말할 수 있다.영화가 근친상간을 다루는 비도덕성을 가지고 있지만, 가장 확실한 주제와 적을 가지고 시작한다.17년간 감금된 오대수가 복수를 하는 과정에서 복수를 위해서 견디는 17년은 바로 참회이자 수행이라는 것을 알려준다.

영화는 자극적인 소재를 다루고 있지만, 갈등구조를 통하여 현실을 투영하고 급변하게 바뀌는 사회의 틀에 박힌 이야기를 하고 있다.17년 간의 감금과 5일 간의 추적'이라는 독특한 설정을 지닌 또 다른 복수극 <올드보이>는 이제껏 본 적 없는 멋진 영상과 탄탄한 연출 감각을 보여주며 관객들의 열렬한 지지를 받았다.이 작품으로 청룡영화상 감독상, 대한민국 영화대상 감독상, 백상예술대상 작품상, 대종상 감독상에 이어칸 영화제 심사위원 대상까지 수상하며 큰 관심을 불러 모았다.

 

OLDBOY (2003)

Oldboy (2003) – source: Tartan Films

Park Chan-wook‘s most famous venture in filmmaking, Oldboy, is a shimmering haze of violence and broken characters, a nasty film that has captured the imagination, and the dread, of countless viewers. The middle section of ‘The Vengeance Trilogy’ is undoubtedly its most famous and that is perhaps in part due to its memorable premise – an individual, Oh Dae-Su, is imprisoned in what appears to be a hotel room for fifteen years without understanding why. He is finally released and his captor dares Dae-Su to track him down – both the antagonist and the protagonist crave vengeance, on each other and themselves, as the body count stacks up and the famous twists of the film begin to slowly unravel. It is a deeply upsetting film, but Chan-wook‘s eye for beauty and his imaginative flair is never forgotten; the famous hallway fight has deeply infected Western culture with homages that can be seen in Marvel’s Daredevil, as well as a final sequence that, while having the most horrific questions to ask of the viewer, is drenched in natural beauty.

The unforgettable finale of Oldboy is likely the reason why the film has become so infamous with Western audiences – more so than either of the other two films in the thematic trilogy, Oldboy‘s violence creeps under the skin, thanks mostly to the apparent need, the necessity, for characters to commit these acts on both ourselves and each other. Self-mutilation in cinema would so often be seen as a tactic to generate shock within an audience, but in Oldboy, the frightening aspect of the violence is how it asks us, the viewer, “wouldn’t you do it as well?” It is the glaring implications of his films, the unseen and unfathomable questions that they pose, that are at the heart of Park Chan-wook‘s filmography; that is never more apparent than in Oldboy.

 

 

 

5. 친절한 금자씨 (Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, 2005)
# 박찬욱의 복수 3부작의 완결
# ‘친절한 금자씨’의 복수와 전작 복수극의 차이점.
# 복수의 끝

 

2005년에는 여성을 주인공으로 한 복수 시리즈의 종지부를 찍은 <친절한 금자씨>를 통해 조금 더 부드럽고 서정적이며 섬세한 연출 스타일을 선보였다.여성이 중심이 되어 복수를 한다는 내용으로 전개되는 영화로 일단 대중들에게 큰 관심을 끌었고, 이 영화 역시 어린이를 유괴하고 살인했다는 누명을 쓴 여자가13년간의 감옥 생활을 통하여 자신의 복수를 계획하고 이루어 가는 과정이다.

이 영화 역시 <올드 보이>와 마찬가지로 신화적이다.주인공이 진실이든 거짓이든 모든 것을 신에게 귀의하고 또 구원을 얻고자 노력하는 모습을 통하여 알 수 있다.이 작품으로 2005년 청룡영화상 작품상 및 베니스국제영화제에서 새롭고 창의적인 작품에 수여하는 '젊은 사자상'을 수상했다.2006년 제 63회 베니스국제영화제 국제경쟁부문 심사위원으로 위촉되기도 한 박찬욱 감독. 독특한 창의력과 자기만의 스타일로 국내뿐 아니라 세계적으로도 주목 받고 있다.

LADY VENGEANCE (2005)

Lady Vengeance (2005) – source: CJ Entertainment

If there is one drawback to the success of Oldboy, it is that not enough attention and praise is lavished upon the final film of ‘The Vengeance Trilogy’, the unforgettable Lady Vengeance from 2005, sometimes known as Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Lee Young-ae from Joint Security Area turns in an extraordinary performance as Lee Guem-ja, a recently ‘reformed’ prisoner who was imprisoned for a horrific crime that she did not commit. Her angelic appearance hides her true intentions as she is released with the dual intentions of both finding her daughter, who was adopted during her incarceration and finding and killing the real criminal of her prison-sentence.

Beautifully shot and perhaps the most emotional member of ‘The Vengeance Trilogy’, Lady Vengeance is a complicated feminist masterpiece that is less concerned with the act of revenge itself and more with who is allowed to go through with it. Revenge is almost framed as a bizarre opportunity for equality – if the villain wronged many people, should the grieving victims not all get an opportunity to receive a slice of revenge? This worrying thematic concern is coupled with a rather affecting story of single motherhood; Guem-ja is keenly aware that she has been robbed of many years with her daughter but, once the opportunity is given to her to finally spend some time with her, she is too obsessed with revenge, too fixated on making somebody pay for those lost years that she poses the risk of losing time all the more. Whereas the twists and intricacies of Oldboy are deliberately messy, nasty in their complications, Lady Vengeance is a streamlined tale of the lengths that women, and families, will go to punish the men that wrong them.

If possible, try to find the version of Lady Vengeance that includes the ‘Fade to Black and White’ version – Chan-wook deliberately chose the color design of the film to support this technique, which begins in rapturous color before fading to a black and white palette. It is probably the version of the film that the director intended to see and is now available on the Blu-ray box set of ‘The Vengeance Trilogy’.

 

복수 3부작의 영화는 인간 간의 복수가 아닌, 도덕적 타락에 의한 ‘신’ 혹은 ‘자연’의 복수를 다루고 있다.또한 복수 3부작에서의 복수는 가해자와 피해자가 불분명하고,가해자의 ‘악’의 이미지가 전형적이지 않은데 비해심판에서의 복수는 악은 응징을 받는 것이라는, 다소 권선징악적이고 계몽적인 성격을 내포한다.

그리고 복수극 안에는 삶과 죽음이 공존하며, 박찬욱 감독의 영화를 묶을 수 있는 주제의식은 '죄와 구원' 혹은 '폭력과 구원'이라고 할 수 있다.폭력과 구원이라고 해서 박찬욱 감독은 잔인한 영화를 만드는게 아니라 인간의 본성 중 하나인 폭력성을 표현한다. 이렇게 폭력의 존재보다는 그 전환성에 초점을 둔 구조를 가지고 있다.

인간의 본성인 폭력성을 통하여 누구에게나 악마성이 내재 되어 있다는 점을 표현하기도 하는데

이것이 박찬욱 감독 영화의 두 번째 특징이다. 바로 인간의 욕망을 다루고 있다는 것이다.

 

6. 사이보그이지만 괜찮아 (2006)

 

인간의 폭력성을 주제로 한 욕망을 다룬 영화가 있다면,그와 반대로의 욕망을 다룬 아주 동화 같은 영화가 있다.

바로 박찬욱 감독의 2006년 작 <사이보그지만 괜찮아> 라는 영화이다.여태까지 소개한 영화와는 다른 파스텔 톤으로 이루어진 배경과 동화적인 풍경들. 그리고 여기서 중요한 어른의 욕망이 아닌 아이의 욕망을 이야기 한다는 점이다.

 자신이 어릴 적 떠난 어머니에 대한 애증을 가지고 있는 정신병자 일순과 자신 스스로가 사이보그라고 믿으며, 거식증에 걸린 영군의 이야기이다.

다른 영화들이 과잉된 욕망들이 엉키는 것을 다루고 있다면, 이 영화는 오히려 천진난만하며 아주 사소한 욕망에 대한 것을 나타낸다.자신의 것에 대하여 욕망을 갖기 보단, 자신의 것을 단지 가지고 가는 것 자체에 대한 '소망'을 표현한다.박찬욱 감독은 욕망이라는 같은 소재이지만, 다른 장르의 영화를 통해, 다른 욕망을 표현했다.

 

 

7. 박쥐(2009)

<박쥐>는 욕망으로 물들인 박찬욱의 새로운 장르 영화이다.

얼핏 보면 신부가 뱀파이어가 되어서 욕망을 갈수 한다는 것은 굉장히 신선하게 느껴지기도 하지만,신선하다기 보다는 굉장히 전형적이라고 할 수 있다.신부가 뱀파이어가 된다는 컨셉으로만 봐도 기본적으로 욕망에 관한 이야기를 한다는 것을 눈치 챌 수 있고,각각의 욕망과 서로의 욕망이 어떻게 작용하는가에 대해 생각해 볼만한 내용이 들어 있다.박찬욱 감독은 <박쥐>의 평범한 일상 속에 작은 에피소드를 늘어놓고,영화 속 인물들의 자신이 겪어온 것들을 통해 영화 안의 사건에 반응 한다기 보다는 각각 반응 자체에 의미를 부여 했다고 볼 수 있다.

우선 ‘생존’이라는 욕망을 가지게 되고 이 안에는 인간으로서 뿐만 아니라 신부로서 억눌려 왔던 욕망도 포함되어 있다.그리고 뱀파이어로서 다른 사람의 피를 먹는 것으로 욕망을 채우고, 또 인간으로서 다른 사람의 아내와 관계를 맺으면서 욕망을 이루게 된다.

여기서 더 흥미로운 점은 자신이 욕망을 채울 수밖에 없는 이 상황을스스로 합리화하고 설득시키려는 노력의 과정이 보인다는 점이다.이렇듯 <박쥐>는 종교적인 갈등과, 인간관계, 신화에 관한 측면 등을 통하여 인간의 욕망에 대해 잘 표현되어 있는 영화다.

 

STOKER (2013)

Stoker (2013) – source: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Eight years after Lady Vengeance and with a couple of bizarre directorial films released (including a romantic comedy and a vampire romance movie), Park Chan-wook made his English-language debut with an unofficial remake of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Shadow of a Doubt from 1943. Starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, and Mia Wasikowska, this homage to Hitchcock takes the opposite route to a film such as Gus Van Sant‘s Psycho remake (which was a shot-for-shot tribute) and instead leaves only the most simple of narrative details in – namely, there is a normal family, a mysterious Uncle Charlie visits them, and things deteriorate from there. Hitchcock‘s original has become synonymous with the director’s inclination to take the lead villain likable, with Shadow of a Doubt making the characters and the audience doubt Charlie’s intentions as the drama reveal itself (helped dramatically by a brilliant acting turn by Joseph Cotten).

Stoker abandons the honeymoon period of the drama entirely, with Matthew Goode playing Charlie from the outset as a complete sociopath – Park Chan-wook begins the tone of the film at the point from where Hitchcock left off and proceeds to ratchet up the extremity of the events and the horror of the household until it is unrecognizable from anything Hitchcock ever made. Violence and sex were always present in Hitchcock‘s work, through subtle imagery or otherwise, but here Chan-wook unforgettable links the two themes in perverse imagery of arousal through murder – imagery that blurs the lines between protagonist and antagonist.

 

THE HANDMAIDEN (2015)

The Handmaiden (2016) – source: CJ Entertainment

The final film on this list, the most recent of Park Chan-wook‘s filmography, is the extraordinary and totally unique erotic-thriller The Handmaiden. Based upon the English language novel “Fingersmith”, this delightfully twisted and sexually charged thriller is sweeping in its posture, playing almost as a haunted-house film as well as an erotic melodrama that is drenched in deliberate cliche, occasional wit and then, finally, violence and madness.

In early-twentieth-century Korea, a young thief named Sook-hee is employed by an expert con-man, under the pseudonym of ‘The Count’, to become the maid of an unstable young heiress and trick her into giving away her inheritance. What follows is a twisting tale that is charged by not only the sexual energy that so dominated its overall reaction to the press but also a kind of horror that lurks beneath the surface of the house they occupy, with its ominous paintings and hidden peepholes.

Through the horror and the madness, the suicide, and the sex, it is strange (and exciting) to contemplate The Handmaiden‘s rich, and surprising, sense of humor. All of Chan-wook‘s earlier motifs are here with this (although it has certain surrealism in its early scenes that appear unique) – we saw what the director can achieve with eroticism countless times in Stoker. The black sense of humor here, though, is an exciting taste of what may be in store for Chan-wook further into his career.

But, for now, The Handmaiden remains a film difficult to define, fluidly encompassing each and every genre of its choosing and, despite the extreme sexual nature of some of its content, remains a fascinating dive into ideas of feminism – a text that seems to homage pornography, before dramatically setting its female characters free of it.

 

 

박찬욱 감독이 만든 영화들은 대부분 인간의 본성을 다루고 있다고 말했는데,이렇듯 박찬욱 감독이 생각하는 사상, 중요하게 생각하는 가치가 영화 안에 내포 되어 있다.

 마지막으로 박찬욱 감독 영화의 특징을 살펴보면, 강렬한 이미지 이다.

특히 엔딩에서의 이미지를 중요시 하는 것 같은 박찬욱 감독의 스타일.거의 모든 영화의 엔딩이 남녀가 등장하고, 상징성 있는 배경과 물체들로 끝을 맺는 다는 것이다.

 

먼저 <사이보그지만 괜찮아>를 보면, 일순과 영군이 사랑을 나누고 노을 진 풍경과 무지개로 환상적이고 동화적인 이미지를 그려낸다. 영화 <올드 보이>에서도 미도와 대수가 눈밭에서 다시 만나, 근친이라는 사실을 알고도 사랑해야만 하는 비극적 결말을  하얀 눈밭을 통해 강렬한 인상과 상징적인 이미지로 보여준다.그리고 <박쥐>에서도 상현과 태주가 피 뿜는 고래가 헤엄치는 피바다가 있는 곳에서 태양에 타서 죽는다.

 

이렇듯 강렬한 이미지를 통해, 박찬욱 감독은 관객들에게 의미를 전달하고,자신의 생각과 하고 싶은 말을 영화에 표현한다.박찬욱 감독은 지금까지 한국 영화에서 다루어지지 않았던 다양한 소재로 자신만의 독창적인 표현양식을 보여 주며, 해외 영화제에서 큰 주목을 받았고, 흥행면 에서도 국내는 물론 해외에서도 성공을 거두는 대중성까지 가지고 있는 대단한 감독이다.작품에 등장하는 인물과 소재면에서도 다양한 변화를 통하여, 참신하고 아이디어가 번뜩이는 한국 영화의 전망을 밝혀주고 있다.

 

박찬욱 감독은 영화에 대해 ‘첫째도 개성, 둘째도 개성, 무엇보다도 오직 개성’ 이라고 말했다. 박찬욱 감독은 자신만의 영화를 통해 박찬욱 감독만이 가질 수 있는 개성 있는 영화를 나는 더욱 더 기대 해본다. 이런 부분들이 영화사에 남을 위대한 영화감독인 박찬욱 감독을 존경하게 되는 계기가 아닐까 싶다.