Fantasia Report: Crying Fist
I will resist the urge to refer to him as our Mann in Montreal. Here's Mark Mann with his thoughts on Crying Fist.
The Fantasia Fest kicked off this year for me with Korean director Ryoo Seung-wan's new boxing drama Crying Fist. Producer Syd Lim introduced the film by saying, “This film is about hope, and I hope that after watching this movie you will have this word ‘hope' in your hearts." For someone who is deeply suspicious of any form of high-impact melodrama, especially when the emotional climax revolves around one guy clobbering another guy, these are not promising words. I was much mistaken – this film is no Cinderella Man.
Crying Fist progresses like your average underdog story, however it deviates from the traditional little-guy-yanking-on-his-own-bootstraps theme in one crucial sense: instead of one underdog, there are two (and not really any ‘overdogs' in sight). This idea might seem somewhat simple and obvious at first, but to see it played out so brilliantly on screen makes for a very emotionally complex and intellectually engaging two hours. Of course, they are pitted against each other in the final scenes (they don't interact before the last fight), and by the end of the movie everyone is left reeling, both viewer and actor alike.
The film opens with Tae-shik (Choi Min-sik, Old Boy), one-time boxing silver medallist in the Asian Games and washed-up, brain-damaged, alcoholic divorcee, as he sets up shop with his gloves in crowded square. “I will be your human sandbag," he proclaims to passers-by, inviting them to work out their frustrations on him for just a few dollars. These scenes recur throughout, and they make for some of the funniest and most depressing moments in the film. Elsewhere, the very cool and very frustrated punk Sang-hwan (Ryoo Seung-bum, the director's brother, Arahan) is thrown in jail for a violent crime, where he almost immediately bites someone's ear off. After a stay in solitary confinement, a guard invites him to join the prison's boxing club, and the stage is set. What ensues is even more scraping of the bottoms of barrels, many choked sobs and violent outbursts, the odd training montage, and a climactic final bout.
The world Ryoo Seung-wan depicts is one of utter desperation, a world composed of creditors and debtors, of losers and losers. Ryoo does the viewer the honour of not over-simplifying the lives of his characters. The two protagonists are not mere victims; they're assholes who are largely to blame for their own problems (though sympathetic assholes at that). While they batter each other in the ring for the sake of their own dignity, the viewer is left to fight with a jumble of conflicted feelings and intuitions. This darkly inspiring film simply does not resolve into any tidy morals or bleached emotions. It takes as much scrutiny as you care to muster, and continues to deliver long after the film is over.
Reviewed by Mark Mann.
