my friend says she's imagining him living there. like he really did go to prison and get golf balled by the husband but the becoming a ghost and then living at her house is all in her head. she imagines he's there to deal. talk
shareI too thought that he had died in prison and that it was his ghost that was there and that only she could see him. The other people the ghost visited could not see him.
shareThat was my interpretation as well, Fletcher, though after a lengthy debate on another thread about it around release time I found the general consesus goes the other way, towards a more "he learned to sneak" interpretation. Scroll down and check out the thread, it's the like 50 post long one.
shareThat's what I thought, too, that he was killed by the guard the next time he hid, after the guard had said: "if you hide one more time I'll kill you" (or something to the effect). That would make sense, except for the phonecall where the husband learns that he is out from prison.
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There are lots of grasshoppers in the weeds.
But not like Wilbur!
The phone call, for me, means he is in fact alive and is just really good at being quiet and "invisible". Just because the guard said that he would kill him didn't mean he actually was going to. Plus, it's not like he would allow himself to get killed by the guard-- he was toying with him because he could've easily taken him out all those times.
"Action is how men express romance on film." -- Kurt Wimmershare
I feel like he comes back to haunt her, and it doesn't matter if he's playing the ubercool shadow game or if he's actually a ghost- i can't remember the quote at the end, but i think its about perception and reality.
it kind of reminded me of blow up in that way.
i broken
didnt he hit golf balls at the guard once he got out?
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My opinion is that he did become a ghost, but not by being killed. He did it through being silent, mysterious and beautiful. Although he perfected this while in jail, it is a process that had been happening since before the beginning of the film. Whether is dead or not depends on your criteria - weather being a ghost automatically means you are dead, or if actually have to die. And there are then of course further arguments about 'dying' is. I think the answer is that one of the main ideas of the film is that it doesn't draw a line between life and death, nor with dream and reality. I also believe that he is Sun-hwa's daydream, and that these truths can co-exist. Like how alternate universes can be created from collective imaginations. These things might not make sense to us because we used to being bound by time, but they can if you try to think of them from a 'god's eye respective'.
I know about becoming invisible from a Moomin story by Tove Jansson. A girl that becomes invisible though not talking and having no self-esteem. I think it's in Tales from Moominvalley, which also has the story about the Hattifatteners which is one of my favourites, it's beautiful and indescribable and unforgettable like 3-Iron is. It far defies being just 'a childrens' story' anyway.
Yes, there are many ways of thinking it. I was watching it on DVD and read the Director's Commentary. YOu get mixed signals from him. He says that once he left prison he became a ghost. You see him going down the prison corridor, surrounded by guards and walking into a doorway of bright light. There are two ways of seeing it...
1) He did die in prison and so he became a ghost. (The long walk could have been the green mile to the death sentence or an artistic way of crossing over to the afterlife.)
2) He is alive and has mastered the power of sneaking.
I would like to believe that it is number 2 but there are some things that contradict it or show the possibility of him being a spirit from the very beginning. Since this is a movie about love in a real setting and love in dream like setting (The whole idea of the fine line between love and hate, dream and reality, sanity and insanity) you can let some things slide, like...
1) how did our hero climb the walls of the prison cell if they were so smooth?
2) why even though he has a degree and is intelligent he doesn't speak?
3) why when he has left the prison that people feel his prensence but not see him?
4) why at the end when the two lovers are on the scale, it says zero... even though they weigh around 60 and 40 and the scale goes to 180.
The movie itself is more artistic than logical, so the actions of our hero should be seen as a expression or metaphor rather than a reality. If you think logically, it would have made more sense to most of us that he has mastered the art of stealth and so... that is what I believe. Even though it has so much more depth and realism in the story, it seems better to follow the basic reality idea instead of delve into the dream like fantasies of ghosts. Hence the proverb at the end of the movie, How can we tell if we are in a dream or reality? Was the whole thing real or just one long methaphorically arty dream sequence?
>2) why even though he has a degree and is intelligent he doesn't speak?
he could have been mute. being intelligent doesn't equal being able to speak. or he just doesn't want to talk
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I remember that once she is back on her home, she plays around with the scale; to me she was unfixing it so it wouldn't work...
share[deleted]
2) why even though he has a degree and is intelligent he doesn't speak?
He told the police where the body of the old man was, even though we never hear it.
4) why at the end when the two lovers are on the scale, it says zero... even though they weigh around 60 and 40 and the scale goes to 180.
The scale goes up to 145 kg. He is 64.5 kg. and she 46.5 kg. Together that makes 111 kg which is what the scale showed when he stood upon it, before he had fixed it. That means that the scale was 46.5 kg over 0, the same as her weight. We see in the end that she changes the scale again, most likely so it would read 0 when they where both upon it.
- This comment is most likely authentic and fairly close to what I intended to say -
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Yeah... he is there. to fill empty spaces... to see. to feel... *beep* yeah, he is there. hi is around. he can slide in feel, the crap and go nodal
I think it's pointless to argue this point or anything else about this movie in a literal, 'did it or did it not happen' way. I've seen only one other movie by Kim KiDuk ('Samaritan Girl'), but having read lots of commentaries about that and other films of his and listened to his commentary on the DVD of '3-Iron', I have the impression that his characters are not real people but dream characters or symbols of abstract concepts, and the actions they perform reenact thoughts, not real-world actions. The story of '3-Iron' seems to take place against the backdrop of a real city, but I think it should be seen as a re-creation of something in Kim's mind, transposed on film so the rest of us could see it, too. The distinction between the imagined and the real is irrelevant, since it's all happening in a kind of virtual world which looks like the physical world, but is not, and obeys a kind of dream logic. A kind of fairytale for grownups come to life, I think. That would explain the tone of this movie, which is an intriguing combination of the coolly ominous and the warm and liberating, like a dream.
shareWell I read and appreciated your comment, samsblood.
I too had only seen Kim Ki-duk's 'Samaritan Girl' before '3-Iron' funnily enough, and I can easily accept that view of his work. You did a great job of explaining the idea of his dreamlike stories.
If that's actually the case, if his films are dream and metaphor transposed into real settings, the man really is a genius filmmaker. If it's not, he still makes genius films.
"Freedom is a myth." ~Patrick McGoohan (R.I.P.)
About the comment of the guard saying "ill kill you"
In korean culture people say that often. which basically means "im gona beat the *beep* out of you" it dosnt litterally mean im gonna kill you.
We do that here in the states ya know, like "my moms gona kill me" etc...
Also what is the point of practicing the whole 180 vision thing and hiding? i took it as hes still alive. Although when he walks away from the guards, its unexplained and i kinda though about that too.
but yea i think hes still alive.
Stop looking for something that isn't there.
Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.