Memories of Murder
Where the DNA of Memories of Murder travels
Films that shaped it
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Chabrol's films were a huge influence on me, especially 'This Man Must Die' (Que la bête meure). It’s a very simple story of revenge, about a father trying to track down his son’s killer. But it becomes this very complex portrait of the killer and his family, and you feel a strange sort of empathy for him. That sense of dread and the slow accumulation of details, that was very important for 'Memories of Murder'.
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I’m influenced by many directors, Kiarostami for sure. 'Close-Up' is just mind-blowing in how it mixes things up. That freedom he has, that playfulness with reality, it definitely inspired me to be more adventurous in my own films, like with the shifts in tone and genre you see in 'Parasite' and even 'Memories of Murder'.
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When I ask him about American directors who have influenced him, he mentions David Fincher’s Zodiac and Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs.
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The Face of Another Atlas note
He is a master of blending genres and having a very strong, unique voice. ‘Memories of Murder’ left a deep impact on me as a filmmaker. It’s one of the best police investigation thrillers I’ve seen, and its ending is still haunting me.
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The Wild Bunch Atlas note
He is a master of blending genres and having a very strong, unique voice. ‘Memories of Murder’ left a deep impact on me as a filmmaker. It’s one of the best police investigation thrillers I’ve seen, and its ending is still haunting me.
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The Long Goodbye Atlas note
He is a master of blending genres and having a very strong, unique voice. ‘Memories of Murder’ left a deep impact on me as a filmmaker. It’s one of the best police investigation thrillers I’ve seen, and its ending is still haunting me.
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Twin Peaks Atlas note
He is a master of blending genres and having a very strong, unique voice. ‘Memories of Murder’ left a deep impact on me as a filmmaker. It’s one of the best police investigation thrillers I’ve seen, and its ending is still haunting me.
Films it shaped
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Movies like ‘Memories of Murder’ by Bong Joon Ho…the tonal shifts are just amazing. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, genuinely shocking, and utterly hysterical often within the same scene, and it’s something I really tried to achieve with ‘Promising Young Woman.’ You’re laughing one minute, you’re weeping the next.
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Parasite Atlas note
Bong Joon-ho has said Lee Chang-dong taught him that genre films could carry the weight of social critique without becoming lectures, that entertainment and political anger could share the same frame. Burning and Secret Sunshine are the films that built the tradition Parasite sits inside. But the deeper ancestor is Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960), a Korean film about class resentment in a domestic space, which Bong has called the founding text of Korean cinema. It's on MUBI.
