Cinema September 14: Memoir of a Murderer

A Misunderstanding of Ambiguity in Storytelling

I thought it was only the world of K-pop that gave us confusingly similar titles for different things (Boy In Luv and Boy With Love anyone?), but alack, here we are with the same phenomenon in film. 2017’s Memoir of a Murderer is so god damn similar to 2003’s Memories of Murder (title-wise at least), that when you look up the former on YouTube, you get more videos about the latter. The Korean titles- 살인자의 기억법 and 살인의 추억- are not that different either, so it isn’t just an unfortunate translation thing. With words like ‘murder’ and ‘memory’ in the title, you can also make the safe assumption that the genre and style of both films might bear some family resemblance.

And the answer to this is both yes and no. Yes, in terms of theme- both films are about serial killers murdering (checks notes and sighs) young women, and everyone investigating being generally horrifically bad at their job- but in terms of style, and ultimately efficacy, these two beasts are not the same.

Memoir’s plot centres around an ageing father with recently diagnosed vascular dementia[1], who begins to suspect that the man dating his daughter is behind a recent spate of serial killings. How can he come to such a drastic conclusion? Because he is also a serial killer, and, essentially, takes one to know one. This is the elevator pitch of this film, and also a reasonably fair summary of its story, though there are key elements to be aware of that shade the information above. When I first read this synopsis, I remember being mildly intrigued by an old, un-caught killer recognising his own kind, and what this could mean in terms of morality, justice and depravity. The element of dementia is less publicised in the pitch of this film, but it is also an important addendum. Not necessarily a good one, but an important one.

So why is this film not in the same league as its almost-named-the-same predecessor? Well, there are several factors, but key among them is the (in my opinion) slight cop-out of having our old stabby Joe be a man who only murdered scumbags he deemed deserving. I also have questions over the portrayal and use of Alzheimer’s in the film too. Not that I necessarily think that it is an unfair, inaccurate or offensive portrayal, more that it doesn’t ever feel like a full character trait. It never moves beyond being a fiendishly convenient way to create an unreliable narrator. A very intriguing narrator, but still a narrator rather than a person.

Onehallyu’s review of the film really helped to clarify my own viewpoint on it, when they said that it was “a little too textbook psychological thriller”. Their review pointed out that the twists and turns were ultimately predictable, erasing a lot of the expected impact that the film could have had. I can’t help but agree with this point, especially in regard to the man that our central character, Byeong-soo (Sol Kyung-gu), suspects might be a violent lady killer. That man, Min Tae-joo (Kim Nam-gil), is first seen after Byeong-soo hits his car in an accident on a foggy road. Boot jogged open, there is a huge bloodied bag inside, that Min insists is a deer before driving away without giving his information. He is later revealed to be a police officer, before deliberately inserting himself into Byeong-soo’s daughter Eun-hee (Kim Seoul-hyun)’s life to eventually become her boyfriend.

From just the actions I’ve outlined above, it is pretty clear that there are two options with this character: he’s either a manipulative killer seeking to stop the only person with reasonable evidence of his crime, or he’s actually a policeman who’s realised that Byeong-soo is no angel himself and is investigating him. I hit this realisation pretty early on in the film, and from then on it was pretty much the last page of a choose-your-own adventure: page 50, he’s a nasty man, page 55, Byeong-soo’s a nasty man. Ambiguity of identity and reality doesn’t really work if you’re essentially just choosing which of the two heavily-signposted options is the truth. What you really need in this situation is a turn of events that is truly blindsiding, as in something like The Handmaiden. This film fails in achieving that.

It is easy to see how the writers of this story (I can’t speak for the novelist who wrote the book the film is based on, Kim Young-ha, but I can direct my gaze to Hwang Jo-yun and Won Shin-yun, the screenwriters) thought that they had hit a metaphorical, moral goldmine in choosing an old man with dementia as the protagonist. Here is a medical condition that gives us all the unreliable narration we need! It’s like Momento but not annoying (I said what I said)! And, to credit them and actor Sol, they do make good efforts to portray the realities of the condition, at least in some regard.

Byeong-soo, now a vet, is shown having total confidence in his abilities until his memory sabotages them (as a scene with a poor fluffy cat demonstrates, RIP Michelle), along with seemingly random dips in and out of lucidity and confusion. Sol infuses his performance with a nigh-on perfect amount of restraint, never bowing into melodrama, understanding that that is not how someone with Alzheimer’s functions. He has clearly worked hard to achieve this performance, and it shows.

But, ultimately this is a crime thriller, and not a character study. As mentioned above, this is obviously not the first crime thriller to deal with memory-related disabilities as a plot point. Indeed, cinema itself is a form of memory warping and evocation: that’s basically what editing is. Regardless of this, it still felt like this addition to Byeong-soo’s character was never serving a greater purpose than the film’s plot. With an illness as destructive and horrific as Alzheimer’s, something about this didn’t sit easily with me.

This is not to say that the film mocks or misconstrues the condition- from my brief googling, it seems that even the ‘hallucinatory’ episodes that Byeong-soo had are possible symptoms of the disease- but rather that it ultimately uses it as a ‘clever’ new angle. As much as we see the disease destroying Byeong-soo’s career and his dignity, it is mostly there to guide the twists and turns of the story. I can’t fully say that this is a bad thing: films about dementia cannot all be the same, and we can’t demand the same things from them. However, as I said, it ultimately sat uneasily with me.

Along with this, Byeong-soo’s moral position was another slightly frustrating aspect of the film. As I mentioned earlier, Byeong-soo has also killed a seemingly huge number of people (as evidenced by the large bamboo grove that he’s used as their burial site), though all people of dubious standing. The opening montage telling us this does well to show that Byeong-soo’s moral code is very much his own. For example, he delivers the same fate to a man who savagely beat his family, as he does to a woman who throttled her pet dog for swallowing her expensive ring. Both shitty people yes, but perhaps not both deserving of a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere. Whatever your personal opinions of these moral nuances, for most of the film it is made very clear that Byeong-soo is our protagonist because he only kills bad people. It’s all very Dexter. I think. I never saw it.

The film does twist this perception as the film goes on, in two main instances. The first is when, in a hallucinatory moment, Byeong-soo strangles his daughter thinking it is a random woman (because strangling the random woman- totally cool). This is explained as a result of his dementia, which is understandable (dementia patients can unfortunately become violent). However, the second instance is in a flashback where it is revealed that he murdered Eun-hee’s mother, 17 years ago, out of jealousy when he discovered she was unfaithful to him. Whilst the significance of this is not downplayed, the extent to which this muddies the waters is never fully addressed. This murder ultimately asks the audience to reassess Byeong-soo’s moral worth, only for him to undo it all by sweeping in as the film’s hero in its climactic moments.

This was where my enjoyment of the film became stifled. For, as much as there was moral ambiguity, and questionable narration, it only ever seemed to go as far as: thing ‘x’ is either good or bad. As above, ambiguity is not ‘a or b’, it’s true uncertainty. Particularly when mixing this with a character suffering from Alzheimer’s, this narrative trend is incomplete. Dementia sufferers do not live simply through fully remembering or fully forgetting, much as moral codes are never fully one thing or another. Memoir of a Murderer is an entertaining film of course, and I feel I’ve slightly undersold that, but it falls short of greatness through this collapsing into the binary. A great concept for a thrill-ride crime drama? Absolutely. The basis of anything deeper, more meaningful? I’m afraid not.

[1] I later refer to Byeong-soo’s condition as Alzheimer’s as this is how it is referred to in the film. However, when Byeong-soo first receives his diagnosis, the doctor makes specific mention of vascular dementia, hence why I initially described it this way. I am aware that the two conditions are not synonymous.