The digital age is all-consuming at this point, encapsulating almost every element of modern life. How people communicate, understand their identities and perceive reality are all tied to some degree to phones and technology. It’s an ever-shifting landscape that is begging to be explored in art, and yet, most auteurs remain committed to the analogs of the past.
Filmmakers are scared of smartphones, preferring the time when technology was simpler and more romantic. Despite this nostalgia, the digital age offers newer, more complex storytelling devices that are waiting to be utilized. “Decision to Leave” is the first truly great film that embraces those tools, making smartphones a sexy force to be reckoned with.
Park Chan-Wook, the South Korean auteur behind “Decision to Leave,” has made a name for himself as a director unafraid to delve into the ultra-violent side of humanity. He’s known for cult classics like “Oldboy” (2003) and “The Handmaiden” (2016), and audiences who know him have come to expect borderline-absurdist thrillers that feature all manner of brutalities. With “Decision to Leave,” Chan-Wook trades in severed limbs for something more subtle: an emotional violence that bubbles beneath the surface of his characters and rarely rises to the level of gruesomeness seen in his past work.
The film follows a seasoned detective, Jang Hae-Joon (Park Hae-il), who is investigating the mysterious death of a man on a mountaintop. The victim’s widow, Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei), quickly becomes a lead suspect and Jang must separate lies from the truth as he grapples with his newfound attraction for Song. It’s a romantic thriller set in a modern world and Park Chan-Wook effortlessly utilizes smartphones as a central propellant of the story.
There’s a tendency in newer films to grasp at the aesthetic of the past. A guy standing in a phone booth making a call feels more visually appealing than someone holding a smartphone to their ear. This notion by many filmmakers (old and new) that cell phones are ugly visual devices is at best short-sighted and at worst regressive. The texture and feel of the 1970s are, of course, gorgeous — but at the time many filmmakers were embracing the advances of the decade. In fact, it wasn’t until the 21st century that most filmmakers abandoned such optimism for modernity.
This notion is put to shame by the visual style of “Decision to Leave.” Shot by Kim Ji-Yong (a veteran in the Korean scene), the cinematography is gorgeous and layered with both text and subtext. The digital elements of the characters’ lives are seamlessly woven into the shots to emphasize their states of mind. This is achieved so simply it’s almost shocking it hasn’t been done before. In one scene, Jang is texting Song late at night. His desire for her has deepened and he longs for her presence. The text bubbles from her phone are layered over his face as the light from his phone illuminates his gaze. Song is not physically in the scene but the timing of her replies and the way in which her texts and text bubbles play over Song amp up the longing he feels for her in the scene. These choices feel groundbreaking despite working so naturally into the style of the film. “Decision to Leave” feels like a revelation in digital-age filmmaking, subtly reinventing how to shoot subjects to adapt to an ever-changing world.
Visual language aside, modern technology is changing how or what filmmakers can use as storytelling devices. There are obvious examples, such as the accessibility of video and voice recording, or the ease with which we can communicate with people across vast distances. Unique and compelling ways to introduce characters, establish key plot points and emphasize themes will hopefully continue to develop as more filmmakers follow Chan-Wook’s example.
“Decision to Leave” uses translation tools as a way to create distance between two characters who desire intimacy. In the film, Jang is native to Korea and Song to China. While Song can speak Korean, she is very new to it, speaking with the simple vocabulary of a child in some scenes. She’s far more fluent in Chinese, but Jang is not. The two are intertwined emotionally but disconnected verbally. There comes a time when Jang discovers a secret about Song that leaves him “shattered,” as he puts it in Korean. Yet Song doesn’t understand the weight of his feelings due to their language barrier. Once he’s gone, she uses her phone to translate his words — and now she is also left shattered. The delay in emotional response creates complex layers of feeling in the scene as Chan-Wook expertly navigates the raw human experiences combined with the coldness of a digital world.
Park Chan-Wook is not the first filmmaker to delve into a world connected by the vastness of the internet and the connectivity of technology, but he’s certainly the first to fully integrate it into his visuals and story with such proficiency. In an age where filmmaking is more accessible to young directors than ever and the types of stories being told are widening, it’s only natural for that level of inventiveness to bleed into how technology is portrayed on screen. Old romantic ideas about how a film should look and feel are beginning to die off as the new age is finally coming into its own. “Decision to Leave” on its own is a beautifully devastating romance disguised as a detective procedural. In broader terms, though, it will be remembered as a key milestone in how we understand technology in relation to ourselves and the stories we tell.
