Through the Irrigation Ditch: Conflicted Nostalgia in Memories of Murder
November 2024. Written for Contemporary East Asian Cinema class. Unedited after final feedback.
There is an ironic tension evident in the title of Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder. Moreover, there is even a nostalgic fondness present in the film’s title as opposed to simply a memory: “The Korean title of the film, Sarinŭi ch’uŏk, also reflects the point of view of the killer. Sarinŭi means ‘“of murder,’” and a better translation of ch’uŏk is, in fact, 'nostalgic recollection' rather than 'memory.' (Lee 78). Thus, ideas of memory are complicated. Two key structures in the film, an irrigation ditch and a train tunnel, embody the presence of nostalgia in the film and connect them with ideas of the past and the modern. The irrigation ditch and train tunnel in Memories of Murder exhibit the conflicted nostalgia in South Korea as it deals with rapid modernization and development.
Throughout the film, Park interacts with the shifting landscape that the two key structures exist in. For Detective Park, the 1980s were a time of violence and corruption but also a time of freedom, power, and absence of modernization/ capitalism. There is a noticeable shift in Park’s position at the start and end of the film. He is constantly trying to impress his superiors at the cost of the truth, and he was also able to exert power and control over others. But by the film’s end, he has settled down, lost his position of power, and his possibility for recognition: “Furthermore, the years that bracket the film - 1986 and 2003 - are significant in relation to Korean history, as they denote a period that coincides with Korea's emergence as a globalized, world economy.” (Jeon 81). There is a shift between Park’s procession to the irrigation from the beginning and end of the film. Initially, his police vehicle breaks down (the rice fields seem to deter any sort of modernized technology) and he gets a ride from farmers, followed by a group of local children. By the end, he walks alone as he reminisces about the murders. Also evident is his shift to a juicer salesman, presenting his capitalist position and a shift into an occupation with less societal power.
This shift is also evident in the film's two key structures, starting with the irrigation structure that invents a filmic approach to the investigation. The ditch starts with guiding the film from its lively, golden presence to the drab noir that makes up the middle of the film and initiates ideas of potential. As Park crouches down and peers through the irrigation structure where the first victim lays, Park is constricted and framed by the structure (Figure 1). This creates a frame within a frame, separating the golden fields from the horrors within. The structure becomes evocative of looking into the viewfinder of a camera or the private viewing of a Kinetoscope, foreshadowing the narrative and tonal shift into the investigation. Park uses a mirror (reminiscent of an SLR camera) to see into the tunnel which is momentarily blurry but comes into focus. The mirror’s light briefly illuminates the concealed corpse (Figure 2). Inside, the colors augur the depleted color palette of the rest of the film. Altogether, reference to the apparatus, noir palette, and filmic framing create a cinematic throughline to the middle section, not only citing the tropes that the film will go on to subvert and but the way Park views himself as a detective with power and potential for recognition.
On the other hand, the use of the train tunnel shifts this hopeful outlook and embodies the presence of the modern and the incoming capitalization of South Korea that ultimately leads to the film's nostalgia and discontent. The train in particular is an important symbol of modernity and perceived development: “As a technological object, the train acted as metonym for modernity–its very existence testified to the presence and legitimacy of the modern; modernity was rendered imaginatively through the materials of technology. The railway became modernity's most prominent emblem” (Aguiar 71). Thus, the presence of trains throughout the film points to the film’s larger themes of modernization. Yet, trains in the film complicate modernity as a positive shift. For one, the supposedly helpful modern technology is actually the investigation with the train killing a key witness. Additionally, in the concluding segment, a train emerging from the tunnel tears apart the inconclusive DNA results from America – the modern destroys the modern. In the grappling of power and violence, the tunnel forebodes the “legitimacy of the modern” and challenges how helpful these technologies really are to the investigation. Without these innovative new technologies to fall back on, there is a disorientation and desire to escape to the first moments of the film.
The similarity in the covered passageway structure of the ditch and train tunnel emphasize the change from rural to modern, also carrying the filmic references. As the middle section concludes, the suspect stumbles into the dim tunnel, completely darkened like a dim theater screen. As the investigation has failed, the tunnel shrouded in darkness and mystery contrasts the images Park saw in the irrigation ditch which are now gone – the tunnel becomes the utterly unknowable which the detectives are faced with. His filmic fantasy is no longer possible, also apparent in the use of the train. Passing through the tunnel recalls the popular cinematic subject, especially associated with early cinema with The Arrival of a Train and The Great Train Robbery. Filmic subject, movement, and development flee the possibility of spectatorship or knowledge that the tunnel comes to represent. The hopelessness is also shown in the reverse shot, showing the two detectives’ silhouettes consumed by the tunnel, contrasting the light and hopeful reverse shot of Park peering through the ditch, again reinforcing their connection and a consuming sense of loss and confusion (Figure 3).
In the film’s concluding segment, the irrigation ditch is revisited, exploring the cop and killer, who still inhabit this rapidly modernized landscape. Here, looking through the ditch structure is a way for Park and the killer to reminisce. It is revealed that the killer has also revisited the location, showing a mutual desire to relive the pre existing systems where they were free to exert power and violence. Again, it becomes like a camera or a screen in order to view, but when Park looks through, he sees to the other side of the ditch (Figure 4). Juxtaposed with the beginning’s hidden corpse and the completely dark train tunnel, the stark view lays his present reality bare. He is denied access to imagined filmic possibilities; after modernization and after he loses his important position, there is no longer possibility or power for him. In short, the potential that film represents is gone.
The way in which the two are aware of the past mirrors Bong Joon Ho and the generational shift in South Korea: “[The 386 generation] left a distinct mark in contemporary Korean history with their crucial role in the 1980s democratization movement, which brought an end to the twenty-seven years of military dictatorship.” (Lee 24). Thus, memory becomes an important element in the film’s landscapes and characters, who figuratively revisit the past and the rural. Additionally, it is intriguing that there is still a recollective aspect to the film, even though Ho was a part of the movement for change, possibly showing his own internal conflict.
Even for the audience, there are elements of nostalgia within these structures. For one, there was still the possibility of finding the killer, and there was familiarity with numerous characters who are ultimately denied narrative closure. The final shots “appropriate the nostalgic gaze in order to figure the uncertainties of the future… it functions here as a figure for the daunting prospect of ontological uncertainty and infinite possibility, and as a repository for all the unsettled anxiety left behind by the failure of detection in the film.” (Jeon 86). This conflicted nostalgia is emphasized in the absence of the beginning segment’s busy rural life. Now, the golden field is untouched but empty of all else, creating an infinite dreamscape. Instead of a group of children, the end is met with only one questioning child, wearing a modern school uniform. The fact that the audience also empathizes with these nostalgic sentiments emphasizes the conflicted nature of nostalgia and view towards the past and modern development. The wheat field sequences become a framing device, making the bulk of the film like a disconnected nightmare. The ditch and field still remain, but nothing can be the same.
Tracing the use of the ditch and train tunnel structures allows one to notice the ways in which power, modernization, and filmic reference combine to create a profound and a clashing nostalgic feeling apparent in modernized places like South Korea. The ditch comes to represent hope and potential, then ultimately the lack thereof. The tunnel presents the unknown and lack of hope. Ultimately, nostalgia illustrates the complexities in ideas of imagining the past and present: in some ways better, worse, or the same – a desire to go back for some elements but not others – a switch from dictatorship to a capitalist democracy – a way for us to imagine ourselves in the future, and a more successful past. Ho presents the democratization of South Korea as one that has left many confused and sentimental, while also questioning the extent to which things really have changed or gotten better. All that is concrete is the infrastructures that make up the present landscape, one scattered with ditches and tunnels.