Far From Just Ordinary — Memories of Murder

Memories of Murder (2003)

(major spoilers below)

The American crime genre seems to have a very worn-out structure. We see crimes, we see suspects, we see a police investigation, and we see someone get caught. Maybe that's precisely what people want. By the end of the film or TV show, the stage is always clear for the next crime and the next set of cops. 

I think that's why I found Memories of Murder so haunting. By the end, the stage wasn't clear at all. The actors were starring back at the audience wondering who?, what?, how? as if nothing in the film happened. Where most stories would come full-circle, Joon-ho Bong's just stopped, creating a shape that would never be whole. In a lot of ways, it was far more chilling than any real suspect could be. 

On the surface, the storyline in Memories of Murder is quite familiar. Multiple murders break out in a small Korean province in 1986 and the police start to notice a trend — always female, always at night, always when it's raining. There's a good cop and bad cop, only the good cop is only good-ish. Detective Park Doo-man, played by famous Korean actor Kang ho-Song, claims he can see through every suspect. All he has to do is usher them to look into his eyes and he can decipher guilt from innocence. It's "how he survives as a detective," but on this case, it's not working. Detective Cho Yong-koo is slapping suspects around and kicking chairs over and nothing is coming of it. Not even coerced false confessions are making it go away.

Then the young hotshot violent-crimes detective from Seoul hits the scene. He's volunteering his time because at this point, the murders are being plastered all over the country. While Doo-man and Yong-koo interrogate and pressure suspects with their typical tactics, Seo Tae-yoon is in the background smoking a cigarette and contemplating his next move. This punk isn't the killer and he knows it.

It all sounds familiar, doesn't it? They'll keep investigating and eventually Tae-yoon will be one step ahead of the killer and catch him in the act. At one point early in his screen time, I even thought "I've seen all of this before." But Memories of Murder is like nothing I've ever seen before, and it didn't take long to realize it.

Tae-yoon, seen in the far left, isn't on board

Like all great thrillers, the film builds tension in seemingly trivial scenes. Every conversation and every shot has a purpose. Sometimes it's a slow-burn to the next light bulb going off and sometimes it's out of the blue. It's all thoroughly effective because it's not quite predictable. There's no pattern to anything unfolding, but it's all shot smoothly and it's often accompanied by an eerie score from Taro Iwashiro. Bong has everything envisioned perfectly and all you can do is watch.

He even manages to successfully intertwine some dark humor throughout the story, which doesn't seem to call for it all. Rumors are swirling throughout Gyunggi of the police torturing innocent people inside their headquarters, and at one point late in the film, it's not getting anywhere. Everyone in the building is going through the motions when Tae-yoon comes in and proves what they're doing is a waste of time. Off in another room, the sergeant hands Yong-koo a piece of rope and nonchalantly asks 'Have we hung him from the ceiling yet?"

In the middle of a terrifying killing spree that's based on real murders from the time period, what place could cheeky little one-liners like that have in the script? I don't know, but it works. Normally, I'd find them distracting, unfunny, irrelevant, or all of the above, but in Memories of Murder, they just seemed to work.

Some of Bong's cinematography at work

Really, everything works. Everything in the film works while absolutely nothing in the investigation works. The suspect leaves no evidence at the scene. It's always raining, so footprints are smudged. He's precise and professional and everyone's dumbfounded. It gets to the point where every time it rains, they declare a state of emergency and send cops everywhere. The entire province is safely indoors and yet, he kills again.

What's truly refreshing about Memories of Murder is very little of the actual crime is shown. You don't have to see it. A few sharp takes before or a couple post-mortem shots is all it takes because the atmosphere is so engrossing. It's all frightening enough on its own, and that's hard to pull off.

The film's most climactic scene comes after the final murder. Tae-yoon knew the killer would strike again and let his prime suspect get away the night prior, causing a major guilt trip. He storms to the suspect's house, pulls him aside to some desolate train tracks and resorts to what he doesn't stand for. He's punching him, throwing him to the ground and pointing a gun in his face until he gets a confession. "I killed them all. That's what you want to hear isn't it?" Except, it's not. He didn't do it. 

Doo-man bursts onto the scene with the paperwork they've been waiting for. Without advanced-enough technology in Korea at the time, they had to send a crime-scene sample off to America in hopes of matching DNA. It doesn't match. This isn't the killer. Doo-man is staring deeply into his eyes. The camera is zoomed in tightly on his face for an uncomfortable amount of time. It's haunting because it's not even him. The detectives desperately need him to be the killer and he simply disappears into the darkness of a tunnel, still in handcuffs. 

Memories of murder

Normal films might end there. It was fitting enough. That was their last chance of cracking the case and it evaporated. But what Bong has in store is far more captivating. He flashes forward, years after the crime spree caused Doo-man to quit the police force. As he's driving by the field that sparked the entire story, he tells the driver to pull over. He meanders down the dirt road and bends over to peer into a small tunnel. It's where he found the first body. 

A little girl comes by and asks what he's looking at. "Just looking," he says. And that's mysterious to her because not long before that, another man came by and was doing just that. He had memories there from years ago and just came back to look. Stunned, it occurs to Doo-man that it was him. He came back to the scene. The killer was there.

"What did he look like?" he asks. The little girls struggles to answer. "Well...kind of plain. Just...ordinary." Doo-man's stare into the camera gets deeper and deeper. He's looking into the lens, into the audience, into the world, in search of the killer. How will he ever be found? Who is he?

They'll never know.

— EE