Not quite Platonian dialogues...

Brian and I just had an e-mail exchange about "THE HOST." Here it is for your enjoyment... '

In a message dated 3/20/2007 10:55:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Brian writes:

BRIAN: The first time I saw HARD BOILED was in college, senior year, with an animatrix friend. I think it was playing for several days in a row and I went back at least once more during that run. I *might* have dragged you to it then, but I suspect we must have seen it a year or so later, post-college.

MIKE: It feels more like post-college to me... I think that was when I saw my first HK cinema... I do remember really liking it, and I still have the Criterion DVD of it, I should break it out at some point soon...

BRIAN: Ah, THE HOST. I started to comment on your post about it, but felt that it would quickly get away from me, and bailed on commenting, figuring that I would do another write-up of my own on it... Alas, haven't gotten around to it. I've been having trouble settling down to write much of anything since getting back from Florida. Don't know quite why.

MIKE: It's the sun. It gets to you...

Feel free to hijack my blog anytime... I enjoy long comments.

BRIAN: The first time I saw it, I laughed at the family falling down in mourning/fighting. The second tme, I didn't laugh. Third time, I laughed. I really do feel that it's meant to be sad *and* funny. I think that goes for a decent chunk of the film.

MIKE: I laughed as it went on, but more of one of those, "My god" type of laughs... Not funny, but more of a reaction... Sad and funny, that makes sense to me.

BRIAN: It's amazing how that film can so smoothly switch gears in tone and style without breaking the continuity of it.

MIKE: It was pretty good with that. I thought at the end, with the brother dropping the Molotov Cocktail, was just perfect too... The music swelling, slo mo, etc. I thought he'd miss, or the monster would move. Didn't think about him just *dropping* it, which was so right...

BRIAN: Within a heartbeat, you get a laugh as the dopey father counts to himself how many shots he's fired with the shotgun, and then just the worst kind of sadness at the spiteful thrashing of the grandfather by the creature.

MIKE: And he doesn't even try to run, because he knows it's not possible to get away...

BRIAN: One scene that I love that gets some interesting audience reactions is when the family sits down for a seo-ri dinner in the abandoned foodstand, and out of nowhere, the daughter joins them. For me, that was incredibly touching and bittersweet. For others, it seemed to be a joke. For really annoying others, it was a puzzle, prompting one jerkass to repeat out loud several times, "Now I'm confused."

MIKE: I know I didn't laugh, but within a moment, it's pretty obvious it's a dream/imagination piece. I can't believe that someone didn't get it, who was intelligent enough to seek out a Korean monster movie!

But then again, I think of the reaction you talked about to Romeo & Juliet, where someone in the audience really didn't know that they both die at the end...

BRIAN: I love that nothing is wasted in the film. At the start, we see dad Gang-dul asleep in the food stand, and a little urchin of a kid attempts to steal a candy bar or something. Before he can manage it,he's whisked away by a big brother type, dressed in fatigues. These are the brothers who get snatched by the creature after seo-ri/robbing the locked up food stand later in the film.

MIKE: Ah, I'd have to see that again to catch it. Missed it the first time. And I thought they were father/son, not brothers...

BRIAN: The beer. The wanted poster. The bucket of change.

MIKE: "If you put a gun on the mantle in Act 1, it needs to be fired by Act 3." I think Chekhov (the playwright, not the starfleet officer) said that...

BRIAN: I like that what would be the subtext in a typical monster film is just plain text for the most part. The political stuff is political stuff, no metaphors. I'm eager to see how an American version of the film frames things, particularly the origin of the beasty, and the activist brother's character/motivation. Perhaps he's a dot-com refugee, overqualified yet unemployable.

MIKE: True, no Godzille=atom bomb here. Here, it's chemicals=chemicals. Is there actually going to be an american version? American movies tend to have no problem with the government being the bad guys. Or, it may be Industry/Capitalism, which works too...

BRIAN: I hope Sam Raimi's involved in bringing it over. He's had a hand in bringing over THE GRUDGE films and they've been solid.

MIKE: I haven't seen any of those. With Sue not being a real horror nut, my viewing of them has been cut down. At Dartmouth, there were a few people into horror, so I could go with them, but no people here are good movie buddies.

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There you have it. A conversation for the ages... We'll have more dialogues on this blog in the future... It saves me the trouble of writing.