Hong San-o: “Confucius said: wise men like the water, benevolent men like mountains. I am not benevolent, I like the Sea.”
Park Chan-wook has never hidden the fact that he is a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock – frequently highlighting Vertigo as the movie that got him into film making. Like many before him, perhaps most notably Brian De Palma, he has found clever ways to integrate influences from The Master of Suspense within his own work, the easiest comparison being Stoker. . . a loose remake of Shadow of a Doubt. But his most recent feature, Decision to Leave (2022), which he co-writes and directs, might even be more so – though crafted so subtly that you really need to know your Hitchcockian filmography to see where he is pulling from.
Originally getting the idea from the song “Mist” by Jung Hoon Hee and Song Chang-sik, which fuses quite nicely with the above quotation from Confucius, this mystery crime thriller flits between the always mist filled skies of seaside Ipo and the mountainous city of Busan. Though insomniac detective Jang Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) resides in the former with his wife Jeong-ahn (Lee Jung-hyun), he lives six days a week in the latter – a place that he has moved to for his job.
Organized, detail oriented, and with an OCD-like level of cleanliness, Jang is known for his late night stakeouts – his sleeplessness helping with this skill. Almost like an extension of the snoop-happy role played by Cary Grant from Rear Window, he will soon also have a flair of Gregory Peck’s much more confounding character in Spellbound as he takes over his new case.
With a sixty-something year old man found dead at the bottom of a mountain, it does not take long for his much younger Chinese wife Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei) to be the prime suspect. Showing nearly no emotion upon hearing of the death of her husband, while also having a cut on her hand and bruises on her body, she immediately exemplifies the cold Hitchcockian blonde, minus the golden locks.
She is an aloof mystery to be unraveled, a carefully guarded masked exterior only showing the slightest tells in her facial expressions and body movements. Drawing the detective in, he becomes all consumed by everything about the woman – including her looks, how she lives, and her blandly claimed innocence.
Quickly taking a voyeuristic turn, Park Chan-wook develops visuals never before seen to exemplify this – the binoculars bringing us into the room with her in a most unique way, Jang sometimes transported inside himself (observing every move she makes) – as if he is now a part of her life, narrating what he sees into his recorder to keep track of all of her nuances (even private things like her eating and smoking habits – things that don’t matter to the case). An intimacy at arm’s length, lust interweaving with the job, she soon understands all and seems to allow herself to be part of the hunt.
Spending more time than a detective should with a suspect, Jang starts allowing Song to help him with some of his unsolved cases (which hide behind a curtain in his apartment). . . a side venture that will bring the dizziness of Vertigo to mind – not just for the detective’s obsessive nature. Never losing its mystery or suspense, the narrative also starts integrating romantic elements, complicating things so very much. Though this sounds like it might be closing in on the conclusion, this is only a little over halfway through, with the story taking a reboot that will bring to mind how Vertigo echoes itself in the second half.
Never easy to decipher, both stars are aptly able to capture the depths of their respective characters – further intrigue comes from the detective being South Korean, the suspect Chinese. . . meaning there is never a perfect understanding of what the other is saying. A complicated game of cat and mouse, is it love, lust, or all just a manipulative deceitful game? Might this be more like the highly influenced by Hitchcock Basic Instinct?
Constantly revolving around the characters are the above mentioned themes, with the detective being like the mountains – strong, solid, and regimented, while Song is like the water, her mesmeric ebb and flow working on his stability – a growing whirlpool drawing him in. While the mist of Ipo (which features more prominently in the second half) further shrouds every enigma, Park Chan-wook only reveals the remaining puzzle pieces when he is good and ready.
Intriguingly, Park Chan-wook has said that he wasn’t “conscious of the movie Vertigo when I was making Decision to Leave, but I did also mention that it did have some subconscious influences on the making of this film”, which seems about right considering how subtle this movie is. Like the mysteries hidden within the story, the Hitchcockian influences echo too from within, the lasting power of influence, obsession, and repetition. Look closely and you’ll see the same themes in his fantastic film making – wallpaper looking like both water and mountains, reflections being reverberations of the self, or the detective using eye drops (how clearly are we seeing things through our protagonist?). Lastly, it is worth highlighting the visuals one more time – try to take in his use of angles, close-ups, camera placements, and so much else to truly appreciate what a superior level Park Chan-wook is working at here. So, ignore the film’s title, and make the decision to stay for this dynamic movie.
This film is in Korean and Mandarin with English subtitles