the scale and the jail cell? (spoiler)

to: hellospencer

k, not gonna make fun of your intellect, but i would like to insult your 'heart', cause to me it seems you prefer intellect above heart. i read in your comment you find a lot of scenes 'useless', to me, your whole comment is pretty USELESS as what i get out of it is that you just searched hopelessly for examples to just bash on this movie. your point 1. who's to say who is a good actor or not in asian movies, they act very differently than more western actors, since you don't speak the language you cannot define solely on that and neither on their mimicing performance cause like i said: asian actors use very different (and somewhat strange to us westerners) way of acting. i wondered for instance a lot about japanese people, are they really like that in real life as they are portraid in japanese movies? who knows, anyway it's not up to us to judge foreign actor's skills or lack of them.
every point you made in 2. i can reject with ease, not gonna waste my time on that just a few:
- The first couple coming home throwing their bags theatrically on the floor to point out they have a bad marriage,

who says it's to show they have a bad marriage? it just states they had a bad trip (that was SUCH a USELESS comment, THE perfect example why i just know you were only looking too hard for stuff to bash on Bin Jip)

your 'tea ceremony' comment is the second proof of that. who cares if it's done before, it's their bloody culture come on! and every one films it as THEY perefer to ok!

the boxing champion couple returning: he finds them, he finds out nothing was stolen, he's just puzzled by that and well, when confused, people don't find the time to look for the perfect sentence to speak eloquently, that's real life, he just stumbles out these first words that come to mind. think about all the stupid non-sensical blurrings that come out when you try to make contact with a person you like a lot just because you're confused and are not familiar with that? this is what happened to the champ

the prison/learning to hide comment: USELESS USELESS USELESS you've seen to many chow yung fat movies i guess so yeah, you're disappointed by this. i'm not into martial arts flicks so I wouldn't know about that, just leave me with the amusement i get with this rather funny scene, cuz that's just what it is, not pretentious 'zen'-lesson BS like you obviously thought it was (cuz seeing it like that yeah, it would've failed). i even think it's more of a parody to those kung-fu schmung-fu *beep* films anyway

taking care of the dead guy comment: geez you think too much, really! again i state the cultural point of view. also: every time he breaks into an appartement he fixes things, cleans up n stuff, this time there's a dead man in the appartement, it's only logical that he cleans up this mess as well, don't you think? no broken clocks, but a dead man bleeding all over the place. LOGIC LOGIC LOGIC

"you just see someone who you think just killed your dad and you just tell him to stay where they are, you pick up the phone ... Come on" wtf? he comes in, he sees the couple, doesn't know where his dad is, do you really think the first thing popping up in this guy's head is that the couple KILLED his dad? my turn to say 'come on'! it's a couple ffs who don't even speak! that would be pretty pre-judgemental wouldn't it. you go visit your dad whome you haven't reached for a while, come in at his place and find a mute couple without a trace of your dad, if you tell me that YOU would immediately assume they killed your dad and would bash in their heads though you're not even sure that's what happened, then my friend you're not only heartless but also plain DUMB. so yeah, I would tell them to stay put and then call the police. LOGIC

woman status of the 50's comment: CUL-TURE

and last: it is NOT certain if the woman in the car is dead or not! further more, why should that have returned in the story? nothing points out to them as the culprits, apparently there were no eye-witnessess so they get away with it, that's what happens. and if you are familiar with kim ki-duk's work you know not everything gets more attention than just that one scene. with some things you get away, like that golf-ball accident, for another case for which you are innocent you get arrested for! that is the point for that scene/subject and not re-occuring anymore during the rest of the film. imo

and my last but biggest annoyance of your utter pointless and useless post is this: "In my opinion it looks more as if the director had no clear picture and just leaves everything else to the people watching. It is very simple to write such a storyline! Anybody can do that" well i dare you on that one, write me one of those. you make a movie with such powerfull imagery, filled with feelings and heart, leaving out just the right elements so the viewer can think of all sorts of meanings that would be equally plausible yet giving enough to well/weild (how do you write this? dammit) it all together into a poetic lovestory. a great movie leaves the watcher stuff to think about, leaves things open for personal interpretation. Bin Jip does that perfectly.

your problem is that you want to think too much here and block your feelings. for some movies you just have to turn of that thinking machine and have a good laugh (dumb comedies like dodgeball n american pie *yuck*) or enjoy the visuals (even dumber action flicks like fantastic four or whatever). well, for some movies you have to shut down your thinking machine and let your heart absorb it. this is one of the latter. it's pure from the heart and for the heart. is there a deeper meaning to Bin Jip? yes there is, but it's not something you'll find by analysing it from top to bottom but from feeling it, sensing it. you've been looking at this film from the wrong angle pal. grow a heart.

ABOUT THE OTHER POSTS: damn i've rarely seen such ridiculous crap written about a movie as here: the main characters being dead? omg! there is not ONE indication in the whole movie where one could even think one of them is dead, where do you come up with this? (about this, inaudible whispers86 nails it right in his/her comment) again, people who try to think too much about the movie. feel - don't think, and you'll enjoy this one much more.

sense ya later. M9

"Power to the people who punish bad cinema!!" - Cecil B. Demented for president!!

Hey! Well you posted your comment like two years ago but I read it and I thought that maybe I would like to discuss it with you. I agree with you on some aspects. I mean if you watch a lot of J-horror (I know, I have no life) then you begin to notice that they never make any sense. I mean, not in a this-has-some-deeper-meaning way but instead in the I'm-purposely-going-to-make-no-sense-to-make-the-audience-believe-this-actually-makes-sense way. Although I don't too much agree with you on your rationalizations about some of the scenes I must say that I completely agree with you when you said that this had a nice plot but could have been improved better. I mean, the whole "not talking" thing was a good idea. Even the plot of having someone breaking into people's homes is kind of original. I just felt like at some parts they were unnecessarily stupid. Did you get that feeling too? I mean, at the part when the dead guy's son called I thought "man they better get out of there. He'll probably come by if he knows that his dad just answered and hung up," and I thought they would leave but they just stayed there!! And if you notice in more than half of the houses they break into something goes wrong. After awhile you think he would realize it wasn't working for him. I kind of understood where you were coming from about the whole setting back women thing but after watching all of the Asian dramas I have I always thought that, that was in fact just their culture. That's all I really have to say. I just think that sometimes people get kind of crazy on these boards and I thought that I actually wanted to have a "intellectual debate" with someone...even if you'll never get this.

[deleted]

Even though hellospencer posted this 3 years ago, I'm still annoyed enough to reply to the comments.

The whole situation with the abusive relationship between the woman and her husband does not indicate anything about a woman's status or culture. While there are differences in cultures, where they may believe a woman should be more submissive, but you're completely ignoring how people react to abusive relationships. If you knew anything about these situations, you would know that a lot of women tend to stay with their partners even through years of abuse, so this kind of scene could occur (and does) here in the US. After time, they may think there's no point in fighting back, just as the woman did early on. Her silence in the beginning also shows how subdued she was because of this. After returning home, her slap shows that she is more "empowered" and won't sit back feeling hopeless.

Also, I'd like to say that since you obviously don't know Korean (or anything about Korea), the skill of the translator is more important than the lines in the movie. A bad translator can turn the most elegant words and phrases into a pile of crap. If things are translated word for word, then it will sound like horrible writing, but a good translator will "rewrite" the lines to sound natural in the language it's being presented. Since you said you've seen "many great Asian Movies," I'm surprised you still don't understand that. To me, the lines sounded natural, but reading the examples you gave, it did sound horrible. I was fortunate enough to watch a different version than you, where all the lines were done well.

I don't feel like going through all the points mentioned, but it seemed like most of them were already covered with the previous replies. I'd like to add that all the points you bring up makes it seem like you didn't really pay attention to the movie anyway.