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After 20 years of commercial film making, viewers thought South Korean director Park Chan-wook may have finally struck gold with his latest project, “Decision to Leave.” The film was South Korea’s submission to the 95th Academy Awards in the International Feature Film category. But yet again, the Oscars said no.

Chan-wook’s film “Oldboy” was a global success in 2003, but South Korea didn’t select it to represent the country in the category. Thirteen years later, Chan-wook delivered an erotic thriller in “The Handmaiden,” but he was met with the same fate.

“Decision to Leave” came out last summer in South Korea, reaching the United States on Oct. 14, 2022, and is currently streaming on services including Amazon Prime, Apple TV and Mubi. It received a lot of critical acclaim, including a Golden Globes nomination and a Best Director award for Chan-wook at the Cannes Film Festival. But the film will now be remembered as a major snub from this year’s Oscars.

Unlike his other films, Chan-wook said in an interview with The Big Picture that he didn’t want to center “Decision to Leave” around violence and sex, instead focusing on romance. The love itself has its own complications, diving into the relationship between a police officer (Detective Hae-joon, portrayed by Park Hae-il) and suspect (Seo-rae, played by Tang Wei). Hae-joon investigates the death of Seo-rae’s husband, and both characters are separated briefly until another crime reunites them again before the conclusion of the film.

Both characters are immediately suspicious. Seo-rae is not shocked by her husband’s death, and even laughs while answering questions in the interrogation room. Hae-joon tells his wife Jung-Han (played by Lee Jung-hyun) that he’s working on a case involving the death of an old wife instead of an old husband.

The investigation itself unfolds in Hitchcockian manner, filled with twists and turns that reveal more about Seo-rae’s background. Chan-wook flexes his filmmaking abilities, using a variety of match cuts to show Hae-joon first staking out Seo-rae.

Hae-joon and Seo-rae develop a curiosity about each other’s lives while the audience is still discovering the reality behind the crime. Chan-wook takes the viewer into the mind of Hae-joon, showing him standing next to Seo-rae throughout her daily routine despite him actually peering through binoculars a hundred yards away.

Stephanie Zaso | Digital Design Director

Hae-joon’s weapon of choice is archaic, but the use of modern technology is displayed time and time again throughout the film. Instead of using an old-fashioned notepad, Hae-joon takes note of details by talking into a smartwatch. Minutes into the film, a cell phone is used to take photos of all the evidence at the site of Seo-rae’s husband’s death. Seo-rae even utilizes a translator to say something in her native language of Mandarin whenever she can’t express its importance in Korean.

The film emphasizes the importance of text messaging too, but Chan-wook displays it cinematically in a unique way. Instead of a typical over-the-shoulder shot to show what Hae-joon types, an extreme close-up shows him typing out every character before the iconic three-dots symbol is overlaid onto his smiling face while he awaits Seo-rae’s reponse.

When it’s revealed that Seo-rae, a caregiver for old people, stole one of her patients’ phones to cover her tracks, a digital image is overlaid onto Hae-joon’s face again, showing him frowning as he realizes that his new love has tricked him. This combination of mystery with the new digital society further demonstrates how Chan-wook’s approach to this story was so unique.

Chan-wook said he didn’t intentionally try to recreate scenes from Hitchcock’s films, but the influence itself was more subconscious on his filmmaking decisions in general. Still, it’s hard not to make those connections, especially during one sequence where Hae-joon chases a criminal from another case, which essentially mimics the opening scene to “Vertigo.”

Chan-wook puts his own spin on this style with clever and funny writing, another strength of the film. When face-to-face with the criminal, Hae-joon goes into his most honest monologue in the entire movie, confessing how he’s in love with Seo-rae, expressing his sympathy with the man who committed a crime of passion.

Purposefully, Hae-joon’s downfall is abrupt. The latter half of the film shows his life 13 months later, when Seo-rae moves to Ipo, the same city as him, and similar events from the first half of the movie repeat themselves. In one of the most visually stunning sequences from the year, Hae-joon ends up with Seo-rae at the mountaintop where she killed her husband. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, almost expecting to be Seo-rae’s next victim.

Instead, she hugs him, admitting that she moved to Ipo to become another unresolved case of his. In reality, even if the audience wants their complex romance to bloom, that’s the closest these two characters would get.

This sad, but perfect conclusion capped off one of the most captivating films of the year. Chan-Wook’s latest work as a filmmaker morphs in and out of visually stunning images of romance, mystery and crime. The Oscars should not have overlooked it.

Published on January 30, 2023 at 11:24 pm

Contact Anish: asvasude@syr.edu | @anish_vasu