Movie Recommendation - 3-Iron
Director: Kim Ki-duk
Year: 2004
Language: Korean
Runtime: 88 minutes
3-Iron is one of the most beautiful and tender movies I have ever seen. It is one of my comfy movies and although some of the scenes are a little difficult to watch, seeing the bonding between the two leads makes up for it.
By the way - they never speak a single word to each other. Dialogue is sparsely used in this movie and I know this sounds pretentious but trust me it works really well.
The male lead, Tae-Suk, is a drifter and a loner (and a mute?). He breaks into people’s houses while they are out vacationing but never steals anything. On the contrary, he fixes their broken appliances, does their laundry and tidies up the place after spending a night there.
Following his routine, he stumbles into a giant mansion. Although he thinks he is alone, Sun-hwa - an abused housewife is also there. Her husband is out for a business trip.
Sun-hwa is so mentally broken and reclusive that Tae-Suk doesn’t even notices her until she makes herself visible after observing him for the entirety of the day.
Tae-Suk promptly leaves after the silent confrontation but decides to come back to the mansion after feeling bad for Tae-Suk and seeing her abused first hand. And this is where the movie begins.
They move from house-to-house, finding solace in each other - but never speak a word.
A popular theory is that Tae-Suk is a part of Sun-hwa’s fantasies to leave her abusive marriage. The dreamlike tone along with the cryptic ending does lends some credibility to this theory, but personally I don’t like this theory at all.
For me, this theory drains out all the magic of their relationship and bonding.
Coming to the technical aspects, The film is competently shot and the cinematography is pretty simplistic - nothing too special. But it doesn’t needs to be.
The sound design is immaculate and the film uses the silence to its advantage. The cinematography and the sound design together create a very dream like tone. The semi-absurdist ending adds to the dream like quality as well.
It is one of my favorite endings - we see both of them standing together on a weighing scale and the scale gives a reading of 0. So poetic.
There are some really great shots towards the end of the film but talking about them will spoil them IMO. Just go and see it - it’s flawless from starting to end.
It’s hard to tell that the world we live in is either a reality or a dream.
Rating: 10
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