Thirst [Bakjwi] (Chan-wook Park, 2009)IMDB Link“Grant me the following in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Like a leper rotting in flesh, let all avoid me.
Like a cripple without limbs, let me not move freely.
Remove my cheeks, that tears may not roll down them.
Crush my lips and tongue, that I may not sin with them.
Pull out my nails, that I may grasp nothing.
Let my shoulders and back be bent ,that may carry nothing.
Like a man with tumor in the head, let me lack judgment.
Ravage my body sworn to chastity, leave me with no pride, and have me live in shame.
Let no one pray for me.
But only the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.”If it weren’t for “Let the Right One In”, Park’s vampire film, “Thirst”, would have been the best vampire film for many years. But with “Let the Right One In”, I’d have to think about it for a while if someone asked me regarding my favorite vampire films from the last decade or so.
Forefront is the Priest, played by Kang-ho Song, that amazing round-faced from such great films as “The Good, the Bad, the Weird”, “The Host”, and “Memories of Murder”, including three of director Park’s own films. The Priest, for reasons that may be due to him having too much faith or too little, heads off to an African lab to be used as a live experiment for a vaccine they are developing to cure a life-threatening virus.
He gets the virus. The vaccine does not seem to work. He is declared dead on the hospital bed, and few seconds after being declared such, he moves.
Back home, he is revered as the only person to survive, out of 500 dead, making him seem more holy to the people that follow him.
But there is something happening to the Priest. He needs to drink blood or the virus comes back. And maybe worse for the Priest, his carnal lust is increasing and he feels sexual desires that he tries to control by self-flagellation. His life soon mixes up with a childhood friend of his and the wife of the friend who he is starting to desire…
Vampire priest is already an interesting concept, and the way Park makes the movie is completely different than the usual vampire fare we are used to. The Priest battles with his new desires and urges, and while this is nothing new in contemporary vampire films, it is a battle that seems to hold more true for a priest and the urges he feels seem more like crises to his character. He is not having moral dilemmas but is faced with an eternity of hell if he does not control himself.
The pacing of the film is interesting, unlike the editing styles Park has used in his previous films. In this film, the film seems to have sudden jumps, moving fast past scenes you might have felt were important and taking his time on scenes which might have appeared less essential in the script, but Park has a good sense of what he is doing, and it works amazingly well. Park doesn’t make the movie WE think we want, he makes the film HE thinks we want. And that’s the reason Chan-wook Park is a director and we aren’t.
4/5
