[sub][sub]I deeply apologize for the pun[/sub][/sub]
Presents:
[img height= 500 width= 350]http://iconsoffright.com/news/Thirst-us-poster.jpg[/img]
Presents:
[img height= 500 width= 350]http://iconsoffright.com/news/Thirst-us-poster.jpg[/img]
Vampires and me haven?t exactly been on very good terms lately. I hate to say that ?Twilight ruined vampires for me?, since it feels like such a cop-out answer by now, but in a way, it kind of did. It?s not the most evil thing to come out of Hollywood ever, and you don?t have to be a mindless fan girl to enjoy it, but for me, it just felt like the modern vision of vampires we?ve gotten today; more human and brooding creatures often striving to belong in a human society; were incompatible with the evil, sophisticated and yet bestial monsters I had grown up with. Don?t get me wrong; I thought Twilight had more problems than simply not being able to handle two different kinds of Vampires at once, but it?s one of my bigger gripes with the series. It?s sort of like why Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence wasn?t as good as it could have been: Western acting is all about trying to be as realistic as possible while Eastern acting is more about putting emphasis behind the way you speak and move, sort of like when performing a play. They don?t mix very well, and so the movie suffered for it.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is still better than Twilight though, because it stars David Bowie and Kitano Takeshi. And how the hell is a movie going to top casting like that?
But I digress. The point is: Modern vampires are inferior to the older versions because the only real threat you can have in a vampire story with ?realistic? vampires are unrealistic creatures of lore. Basically, it turns into a battle of Good against Silly. Or two different kinds of silly, if you want to be a pessimist.
Or at least, this is what I thought up until recently. My cynical views on the modern take of vampires was completely shattered when I heard that Park Chan-Wook, one of the men I admire most, had not only made a film about modern vampires, but a romance film about modern vampires.
How can this possibly end well?
Sang-hyun (played by actor Song Kang-ho of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance fame) is a Catholic priest who bids his time by providing ministry to the sick at the local hospital. Though seemingly a strong and dedicated man of faith, beneath the surface lies much sadness and anguish. Even the beliefs of a holy father can waver when he is subjected to a world filled with so much death and suffering.
He finally decides that he will risk his own life for the sake of saving even one person, and volunteers to participate in scientific experiments to find a cure for the deadly Emmanuel Virus. During the procedure however, he is smitten with the virus himself, and after going through the many symptoms of the disease, he dies from drowning in his own blood.
But through what can only be described as a miracle, he is brought back from the dead by a medical team. Not only that, but he also seems to be completely cured of the disease. Believing him to be blessed by God, people begin to worship him and beg him to pray for them. One of these people is the mother of his childhood friend Kang-woo, who invites Sang-hyun to a weekly game of mahjong. While there, he finds himself strangely attracted to Kang-woo?s wife, Tae-ju. Conflicted about his strong desires, he heads home, only to find that the symptoms of the Emmanuel Virus have returned. After coughing up blood, he passes out on the floor, only to be awoken the very next day by the revelation that he needs to seek shelter from the sunlight coming in through the window.
Sang-hyun has become a vampire.
The blood transfusion he received by the doctors after the disease got the best of him earlier in the film appears to have contained more than simply human blood. On top of the revelation that he?s a vampire, he quickly learns that unless he consumes the blood of others, the symptoms of the Emmanuel Virus will keep returning. Desperately trying to avoid killing others, Sang-hyun decides to reside on drinking blood from blood bags he steals by the local hospital. As if this wasn?t bad enough, he is finding it harder and harder to ignore his desire for Tae-ju.
You might be surprised to know that while it is a vampire film, none of the vampires actually have fangs
This, my lovelies, is a good modern vampire romance film. In fact, it?s a brilliant modern vampire romance film. It juggles the struggle between ?good? and ?bad? vampires perfectly while making both factions act in a way you?d expect them to act, the story manages to stay exciting for the entire 145 minute running time, it feels completely fresh, and the romance feels incredibly real, and even plays out the way a romance probably would play out in a situation like this.
Sang-hyun is probably one of the greatest depictions of a human-turned-vampire I?ve ever seen. A priest wanting to help people and who was willing to sacrifice himself for others, through cruel irony is turned into a creature that needs to feed on others to survive, and who?s desires are unquenchable. He turns into the exact opposite of who he was at the beginning of the film. Yet while he is incredibly distraught by this, we see that there has always been a side of him lusting for the power he now possesses. A side he?s tried to suppress not only with common sense and reason, but also with faith. It becomes an inner struggle between his human side and his vampire side that is obvious enough for anyone to catch, yet so subtle that it never feels like it?s ramming you over the head with it. This is because the only thing that is obvious is that there is an inner struggle. The way that inner struggle is handled throughout the movie, how Sang-hyun thinks and acts, is handled with care and perfection. The movie points us in the right direction, and then lets us explore for ourselves.
In that sense, Thirst is a masterpiece that should be experienced by anyone. One could be blunt and simply call it ?Twilight for adults? or ?Twilight if it was good?, but it?s more than that. It?s a film that shows us how our desires sometimes can get the better of us, and how that can affect our lives. It shows us how hard it is to believe in something in a cruel and ironic world such as the one we live in. The Vampire is our desire, and the Priest is our reasoning.
