The Bow – 2005 - Kim Ki-duk

In his follow up to the critically acclaimed 3-Iron, Kim Ki-duk continues in the realm on non-verbal communication for his leads. The two main characters do not speck aloud for the audience to hear. Rather they only talk in the occasional whisper in someone's ear. Those two near mute lead are an old man and young girl. They live out on a boat together where the man rents out space to fishermen in order to make a living. We are told through one of these fishermen that the man "found" the girl ten year pervious, at age six, and is intending on marring her when she turn seventeen. There are not a lot of details given but, it is obvious that this is an inappropriate relationship and the man is to some extend a predator. On the other hand we see that the girl seams happy for the first part of the film. She wears a constant smile and has a sort of carefree existence that one can only achieve through solitude and naivety. Even an attempt rape by a pair of fishermen does not do much to dull the cheery disposition of the girl. As in any self created paradise the trouble comes from the influence of outsiders. When a boy roughly the girl’s age comes to fish one day, we can see that she is intrigued to see someone her own age, possibly for the first time in a decade. The boy is also interested in her and ends up giving her a gift as he is leaving. The old man reacts in the way you would expect a man that has kept a girl locked up on a boat for ten years to react, wild jealousy. This is the end of his dream. His perfect innocent has been corrupted by the outside world and that can never be repaired. They continue to live on the boat with a new found distance between them, she smiles a little less and he is more overtly controlling. Then the boy comes back for a second visit. This did not make a lot of sense to me because the old man seems like the type that would use isolation to his advantage and not give his rival an opportunity to steal the girl’s affections. More fighting ensues and the old man kicks the boy off the boat only to have him return a third time leading into the last act of the film. There is a struggle over the girl, though it is not physical for the most part, at that lead into a bizarre ending that is wide open for interpretation.
Just to get it out of the way, I love Kim Ki-duk! He is one of my favorite directors working today. Kim brings a singular view of humanity to the screen. I think I understand most of the time yet there are point I come to watching his films that I wish I had a little more knowledge about Korean culture that did not come from watching movies and professional Starcraft. At the end of Hwal I had the feeling that there was more that I was not getting and of course I am sure that it is my fault. Kim is an accomplished filmmaker, this being his twelfth film, so I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt when I feel like there is something missing. The old man’s fortune telling is the recurring theme that I struggled to understand. I am sure it goes beyond the phallic symbolism of the arrows being fire at the young girl but, I do not know how shooting three arrow at her leads to her whispering something to him and then he whispers something to the person being read. I am sure there is a cultural context that I am lacking.

There is much to love about The Bow. The cinematography is hauntingly beautiful, consisting entirely of short on boats with no land to be seen. The bow music score set a tone that matches the camera work in ability to set the mood. None of the characters are named and the two leads never speak yet all of the actors bring performances that convey all that is needed. There is an abundance of ambiguity in the three central figures that in less skilled hands would have been smoothed over. I could see an American adaptation of this movie turning the old man in to a cartoonish child hungry pedophile, the girl into a pure innocent without the capability to do wrong and the boy in to the white knight hero that comes to save the damsel. Thankfully a man like Kim Ki-dux can get a million dollars in funding and make something considerable more interesting and worthwhile.


If you are looking to dig deeper into Kim’s conman themes of isolation, love, sex and violence this is a definite fit in his greater body of work. Korea’s new wave of the decade or so has lead to a much needed burst of attention from the rest of the cinema world. Kim’s place in the pantheon of directors in this movement is definitely not as flashy as someone like Park Chan-wook with the Quentin Tarantino seal of approval but, his work is the most striking and thought provoking. The Bow is absolutely worth seeing, maye even more than once.