Tribeca 2007: A Dirty Carnival

A Dirty Carnival is Korean writer/director Yu Ha’s fourth feature film, a gangster film revolving around 29 year old Byung-du, a career criminal struggling with his role as a son, brother, friend, and a member of Korea’s own generation X, as he fights to rise in the ranks of organized crime. It is screening in competition at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.

The film opens with Byung-du moving quickly through the Korean streets, homing in on his younger brother, who he proceeds to beat the hell out of in the middle of an arcade. Apparently, his younger brother has been hanging out with “scamps,” petty criminals, and Byung-du wants to keep his brother from walking through life on a path similar to his own. Despite being a criminal, Byung-du is extremely idealistic with a strong sense of honor and integrity. He lives with a group of newbie gangsters, whom he mentors, stressing loyalty to one another, dignity (“Polish your shoes, even if you can’t afford to eat.”), and discipline. As far as gangsters go, this group is living the most meager existence of organized criminals ever shown on screen. No expensive suits, no wads of cash, no girls, no parties (though they do occasionally get drunk and sing karaoke, but only when a celebration is in order). They are hard pressed for cash to pay the rent, the majority of their profits going to the higher ups, who claim to have financial struggles of their own, but who spend most of their time in expensive suits dining at exclusive restaurants.

This is a similar theme to another recent Korean import, The Host, which, in between the monster action, gave screen time to commenting on the struggles of Korea’s twentysomething generation – growing up, finding a career, and nostalgia for a the simpler days of being a student. This is the film’s most interesting theme, and really, what sets it apart from other gangster films. This element to the story evolves through Byung-du’s rekindling of a friendship with an old classmate, Min-ho, now an aspiring filmmaker, who has sought out Byung-du for research on a gangster film. This leads to Byung-du becoming romantically involved with another classmate, Jong-su, the girl he’s had a thing for since school, but has never gotten over. Like Byung-du and Min-ho, Jong-su is struggling with the transition into adulthood, supporting herself by working in a bookstore.

The literal translation of the film’s Korean title is “mean streets,” an obvious nod to one of the earliest films of director Martin Scorsese. Like Scorsese, Yu Ha’s film lacks a clear plot in favor of a method of storytelling that takes a group of characters and follows them from one point in their lives to a later point, and explores the various themes, subplots, and conflicts that arrive during that time. The core of the plot is Byung-du’s transition into adulthood. When the film begins, he is on the cusp of becoming a gangster, he’s at a point where he can still walk away, or can choose to go all in. He chooses the later, and the rest of the film deals with the consequences of that choice. Yu Ha’s style is much less flashy than Scorsese’s. The camerawork is straightforward and for the most part objective, though Yu Ha has an obvious visual flair and a knack for both delivering a scene in a few quickly edited shots, and for bringing the audience into a moment and holding it (particularly a nasty, eye-to-eye murder scene about halfway through the film). He also delivers a gang war with bats, clubs, knives, and martial arts that comes close to rivaling the iconic fight scene in Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy.

With the combined popularity of being an Asian import and being one of the most brilliant gangster films of recent memory, this should prove to be a popular and crowd-pleasing release if and when it finds a U.S. release.