Starring: Park Jeong-su, Krystal Jung, Oh Jung-se, Lim Soo-jung
Distributor: Umbrella Films
Runtime: 135 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2023
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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An ambitious director has difficulties with actors and producers to complete his personal project.
Cobweb is certainly a film for those who have been following the Korean film industry – and, with its 1970s setting, it takes its audience back to the industry of half a century ago, movie styles, movie censorship, showing how things have changed during these decades.
Best to say straight out, this is a comic treatment of its themes. Often broad in its humour (someone remarked that it is slapdash, but the characters and events in Cobweb seem intentionally slapdash), it would be fair to say the film is quite often farcical. The characters, the episodes, the process of making the film, a film within a film… But, as with topical satire, there are some serious themes underlying the surface comedy.
Audiences, especially with the popularity of the Oscar-winning Parasite, will recognise the star of Cobweb, Park Jeong-su. Here he plays a director who had an initial admired hit but now has a reputation for ordinary movie making. Remembering his celebrity mentor who, literally, went up in flames in his final cinematic achievement, Kim is determined to make a masterpiece. But for now he’s frantic – popping tablets, clashing with the head of the studio (a commanding woman prone to shrill outbursts), enlisting the support of her niece who might inherit the studio, having weird dreams, having inspirations and rewriting his script, being threatened by the chief censor, dealing with the cast who offer their own particular difficulties, and having only two days to complete this masterpiece.
And there is an early scene which has its shot at arrogant film critics who love to savage director-victims. But he is determined to make his masterpiece. The film he is making is shown in black and white. Colour is for the present. Which means then that we are moving back and forth, seeing part of the completed film, then the rewrites in production, accidents on set, a recalcitrant pregnant actress, an abusive actor with the director putting on a beard to take his place, the censor, the arrival of the Minister and the need to make a good impression (and more alcohol), with the situation getting ever more awkward.
A decision is made towards the end to film a complex one-take sequence. We are shown the manoeuvres needed, shifting the set, stand-in actors, other actors moving out of camera-line… And then the advantage of seeing the scene, the expertise of the one take.
Finally, with the various scenes of the film within the film, we get to understand what it is about, arrogant privileged people, while the line they have offering to the politicians is that it is definitely anti-Communist. It seems as though some reviewers would prefer more dignified and polished film – but, it is a satirical farce, some broad comedy, that sends up so many aspects of the film industry.
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