Fun Spider Forest (Geomi sup): re-visit; re-think; re-spond

[plsletitrain]

Didn’t the schoolteacher also recall how Min’s father opened a photo store, after he (the father) left the teaching profession but before they packed up and finally left town? Yet Su-in said that the photos on the wall were taken by her father, and that she had inherited the store from him.

I'm confused by this as well. So who really owns the store? And whose father is it really, Su-in or Kang Min's?

Su-in, Kang Min, Soo-young, Eu-min.....ARRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!! Their names are adding to the already confused state of veiwers. *bangs head on wall*

 

[plsletitrain]

although it remains unclear when Min actually died. In the tunnel at 4:00 when he got hit by a car, or some few weeks later after two weeks in a coma followed by limping around here and there for a while and finally witnessing his own death.

Wait, Kang Min actually died??????? I thought he was alive.

 

[plsletitrain]

Actually, one girl could pass up for the three main roles here.

 

[clayton-12]

And whose father is it really, Su-in or Kang Min's?

Maybe they were step-siblings or half-siblings?
Just kidding.

 

[plsletitrain]

Maybe they were step-siblings or half-siblings?
Just kidding.

Bwahahahahaha! Good one!

Funny how the father's identity is always in question.

 

[sitenoise]

Wait, Kang Min actually died??????? I thought he was alive.

Wait. What?

This movie reminded me of Jacob's Ladder. A lot. So yeah Kang Min is dead, but his death is a spongy thing. Like the whole movie. This director had a longer movie and cut it up to toy with us. I not only don't get a key scene, I get it sans keys ten minutes earlier in the film. I described the scene immediately cut to after the kitchen scene that shows Min sitting where's he's going to be after the next scene -- which is just mind blowing.

I still love this flick, though. It's one of only a few films that I have re-watched immediately after an initial viewing. (The Isle, Cafe Noir, Green Tea, M).

 

[plsletitrain]

Guyz I'm pretty sure Kang Min is alive. Paralyzed, incapacitated, yes, but alive.

 

[sitenoise]

Guyz I'm pretty sure Kang Min is alive. Paralyzed, incapacitated, yes, but alive.

maybe he was in a coma for two weeks but you do agree that the ending scene is him witnessing his own death-even though that's weird. That's what he has to do in order to shore things up and get out of the forest. But it begs the question of what the heck is going on on the operating table--it's Min's imagination trying to find a miracle to stay alive instead of dying in the street.

I'm still unhappy about him knowing Su-in before he goes to hack up his girlfriend. Seems like they had a budding relationship and it seems uncool of Min to go do that in the midst of getting to know Su-in. Su-in is there for two things: to get Min to remember her so she can leave, and to show Min his memories--that he died, and the kids stuff--so he can leave. These two goals seems intertwined. I just can't get around Su-in showing up to show Min that he died ... before he dies.

I'm going with @clayton-12 and the movie trailer who cast doubt on the murder.

OMG - I just looked the scene again where the kids see (supposedly) the father hacking up his wife. BUT the scene is cut so we see it over, or past, a naked woman's shoulder....we see past that, the guy hacking someone up. So there are three people in the room. What does that mean?

 

[clayton-12]

OMG - I just looked the scene again where the kids see (supposedly) the father hacking up his wife. BUT the scene is cut so we see it over, or past, a naked woman's shoulder....we see past that, the guy hacking someone up. So there are three people in the room. What does that mean?

The father is not often home, and the town gossip was that the mother would often entertain gentleman callers. I assumed that the father had come home while his wife was in the middle of entertaining, and had attacked the unlucky gentleman caller.

 

[plsletitrain]

maybe he was in a coma for two weeks but you do agree that the ending scene is him witnessing his own death-even though that's weird. That's what he has to do in order to shore things up and get out of the forest. But it begs the question of what the heck is going on on the operating table--it's Min's imagination trying to find a miracle to stay alive instead of dying in the street.

I'm still unhappy about him knowing Su-in before he goes to hack up his girlfriend. Seems like they had a budding relationship and it seems uncool of Min to go do that in the midst of getting to know Su-in. Su-in is there for two things: to get Min to remember her so she can leave, and to show Min his memories--that he died, and the kids stuff--so he can leave. These two goals seems intertwined. I just can't get around Su-in showing up to show Min that he died ... before he dies.

I'm going with @clayton-12 and the movie trailer who cast doubt on the murder.

OMG - I just looked the scene again where the kids see (supposedly) the father hacking up his wife. BUT the scene is cut so we see it over, or past, a naked woman's shoulder....we see past that, the guy hacking someone up. So there are three people in the room. What does that mean?

Yes, I kinda remember the father hacking someone else but I think I brushed it aside to rule that it was the father hacking the guy, and the one who hacked the wife was a lover (right before the father arrived).

Going back to the Kang Min is dead thing...I really can't get over it and I watched back. Yes, I'm pretty sure he's alive. My reason being, during the first few scenes, yes, he did mention seeing himself dead. But the scene, right after he was hit by the speeding truck, showed him looking at a silhouette of himself, then cut to the operating table (the first few scenes). This is what I made of it..that he really did survive that fatal crash. After he saw a silhouette of himself he became unconscious. I couldn't make of the heavy crying he did though if indeed he made it through.

 

[sitenoise]

The father is not often home, and the town gossip was that the mother would often entertain gentleman callers. I assumed that the father had come home while his wife was in the middle of entertaining, and had attacked the unlucky gentleman caller.

That makes sense and it also makes it more of a mirror of the Kang Min killing of Boss Hog and Su-young. On the one hand it would explain in a monkey see monkey do way of why Kang Min kills, or it could twist up into nothing more than a figment of Min's imagination implanted by Su-in to get him to remember the incident that happened when he was a kid.

Remember how I described the Post kitchen scene being a shot of Min where he's going to be after five minutes of film? This flick starts that way. It starts with Min lying there (which we will learn after five more minutes of film pass by), he turns his head and looks to the cabin, then we see the non-beatup Min walking to the cabin. Five film minutes later we see how Min ended up lying there. Weird technique.

 

[sitenoise]

This is what I made of it..that he really did survive that fatal crash.

That is what the film leads us to believe. So the director uses great poetic license at the end where Min sees his own <insert Monty Python voice> Not Dead Yet body get hit by a truck. Actually there's no poetry in showing someone see their own "injury". It's not like Min sees himself get hit by a truck and thinks "Oh, that would explain why my head hurts"! There's no poetry in that! He has to be dead in that tunnel ... even though half the film depends on that not being true. And as @divemaster13 points out something about the timeline has to be based on real time reality. That's just the fuckeduppedness of the film.

 

[plsletitrain]

Darn, its one of those which-one's-real-which-one's-imagination/dream/wishful thinking movies. I think yeah, you're right. He really died. Otherwise, why would he cry his eyes out at the end. Damn, I got fooled. lol

 

[sitenoise]

@plsletitrain He has to be alive and survive the crash. If he died, who would have told the cops about two dead bodies in the woods?

But he has to have died in the tunnel for their to be poetry in the ending cry scene. We have to live with this contradiction.

 

[plsletitrain]

@plsletitrain He has to be alive and survive the crash. If he died, who would have told the cops about two dead bodies in the woods?

But he has to have died in the tunnel for their to be poetry in the ending cry scene. We have to live with this contradiction.

Sorry, I just to have an issue with immediacy. If he was alive to be able to tell his tale, for what reason could he have died for? Hehehehe yeah, I'm working my way on it. Sorry for being so strict. I'll just have to settle with that (even if I'm having a hard time being convinced that he died after 14 days of surviving the life-threatening situations he found himself in).

 

[clayton-12]

He has to be dead in that tunnel ... even though half the film depends on that not being true.

I've never taken everyone's musings about Min maybe being dead seriously until now. What you've just said makes perfect sense in the context of the ER scene, and particularly in the difference the second time the ER scene came around. Min died as a consequence of being hit by the car - they made a point of showing it, albeit that the physical death occurred on the operating table. But he came face-to-face with himself in the tunnel, reached out and willed himself back to life.

Min wasn't ready to give up on life - Su-in had convinced him that he owed at least that much to the memory of his wife.

 

[clayton-12]

YesAsia has the UK all region out of print disc with a 120 mins runtime, and the Korean disc at 112 mins. The US version doesn't say.

I managed to get hold of a copy of the UK disc and had a skim through it. From what I could make out, the extra eight minutes is made up of four scenes:
1) When Min first leaves the hospital, as he walks out the room the old man beckons to him, and hands him a blue key.
2) The pantomime apple eating portion of the kitchen scene, which occurs while the kettle is boiling for the herbal tea
3) When Min is sick, and Su-in gives him a pill, the flashback to eating ice cream at the airport is extended slightly - on the way home, Min sees a young boy in a car, and lets go of his misgivings about having a child.
4) The scene where Min uses the blue key to open the photo store.

 

[sitenoise]

I managed to get hold of a copy of the UK disc and had a skim through it. From what I could make out, the extra eight minutes is made up of four scenes:
1) When Min first leaves the hospital, as he walks out the room the old man beckons to him, and hands him a blue key.
2) The pantomime apple eating portion of the kitchen scene, which occurs while the kettle is boiling for the herbal tea
3) When Min is sick, and Su-in gives him a pill, the flashback to eating ice cream at the airport is extended slightly - on the way home, Min sees a young boy in a car, and lets go of his misgivings about having a child.
4) The scene where Min uses the blue key to open the photo store.

Good work, very cool. It's commendable to us that we stumbled into 3 out of 4 of them in our discussion.

I want to see Jung Suh pantomime eating-acting an apple.

 

[divemaster13]

I want to see Jung Suh pantomime eating-acting an apple.

With a red clown-nose, no less.

As I alluded to in a previous post, the meaning of the scene finally hit me. No, not the overall meaning within the film, but specifically what she was doing with the apple. It was a reenactment of Eve and the Serpent. She was making this weird motion with her hand, which, now that I've seen it, is obviously the snake tempting Eve to eat the apple. Which she (Eu-in) does, in pantomime. And then offers it to Adam (Min). He also chomps a bite of this (imaginary) apple. Then Eu-in affects a look of surprise and covers herself up, ashamed of her (again, playacting) nakedness.

Not sure if we are supposed to take that at face value (SIN), or if it is some sort of coma-induced juxtapoasition of Choi's (real) apple chomping later.

I've never taken everyone's musings about Min maybe being dead seriously until now. What you've just said makes perfect sense in the context of the ER scene, and particularly in the difference the second time the ER scene came around. Min died as a consequence of being hit by the car - they made a point of showing it, albeit that the physical death occurred on the operating table. But he came face-to-face with himself in the tunnel, reached out and willed himself back to life.

I'm in the same boat. Even on my two rewatches this week and getting that Jacob's Ladder vibe, I did not conclude for myself that he was dead. For some reason I was able to dismiss that theory. Probably due to so much of the movie apparently grounded in real life. Like, Min telling his story to the cops, who investigate, looking for the forest, his camera bag, the photo shop, etc. But the theory does seem to have merit. I can definitely buy into it.

But the details are elusive. What was "real"? The part of the movie where he is telling the story to the cop friend--was that part of his coma-life? Or were those real conversations after he woke up? (But I guess if the "he's dead" theory holds, he never did wake up.) Are we to dismiss some of his story due to Min being an unreliable narrator? Certainly we can't take much of his story at face value b/c he himself has memory issues and is as clueless as we the viewers are.

Like I said in my first post, I don't believe there is any magic clue or"aha!" moment to find.

We have to live with this contradiction.

Yes, I'm fine with leaving it vague and not digging too hard.

 

[sitenoise]

I managed to get hold of a copy of the UK disc and had a skim through it. From what I could make out

I got a copy as well and noticed a couple other small additions/subtractions:

When Bandaged Min is visiting the old school teacher and asks if there was also a boy named Kang Min who was in Su-in's class the old teacher looks it up and confirms it. In the short version it just cuts to the kids, Su-in adjusting Min's scarf.

At the Photo store, After Detective #2 tells Cop Buddy about the ownership of the store, Cop Buddy stays and develops some photos that appear to be the same set Min got in the mail, we see a bunch of photos of Su-young and Boss Hog having sex in the cabin. The mysterious shot of the dark woods that Min found intriguing is also there. I think there is supposed to be a mysterious figure in that shot but I've been unable to make it out. The trailer shot of it looks more clear. Cop Buddy also takes a call there that tells him to get to the primary school--all this is absent from the cut version.

When cops are with old school teacher there is a cut to Min going up the ski lift. In the long version there is a shot of the old man from the hospital going down, which isn't in the short version.

And here's a weird one: At the end when Min is closing the tunnel door he looks back and sees Cop Buddy. In the short version Cop buddy just lowers his head and then it cuts back to Min closing the door. In the long version their two faces are superimposed on one another and they show a fade dissolve of Cop Buddy's then Min looks back and Cop Buddy is no longer there at the entrance to the cave.