The Day He Arrives
Directed by Hong Sangsoo
High Modernist master of contemporary South Korean cinema Hong Sang-soo returns, and then returns again, to his cherished tableaux of endlessly looped and ever loopier time travels in his latest tale of Seoul and its sad sack cineastes. A black-and-white variation on Hong’s now-trademark twice-told tales about increasingly drunken filmmakers (this time incarnated by actor Yu Jun-sang) embarking on doomed journeys to reunite with mistreated old flames, the movie is both a comedy of errors (men rarely look more foolish than under Hong’s withering eye) and a nightmare vision of a tormented creator ten times darker than Barton Fink. For long-standing Hong fans, many of The Day He Arrives’s eccentric and occasionally surrealist mannerisms may seem all but folkloric: characters who double one another or scenes that recur with varying conclusions. Even the flaky Euro-zoom-ins Hong has been using since 2004’s Woman Is the Future of Man now feel like auteurist flourishes, though they’re even funnier this time around, a bit like the zoom-ins in Buñuel’s final films, tightening in on characters as they begin to narrate us off on some new plot tangent, never to return.
TRAILER
“A must-see for fans ... it’s a rich and rewarding piece of art house cinema that sees him furthering his reputation as one of Korea’s top and most enduring talents.” -— Beyond Hollywood
“Hong's playful approach could well be an impish rejoinder to those critics who have accused him of solipsistically making the same film over and over again. Yet it also captures a sense of generational inertia, of drifting idly through life, that audiences in their 20s and 30s may recognize with a wince.” —Variety
Book chon bang hyang, South Korea 2011, 79 min. Written by Hong Sangsoo. Photographed by Kim Hyungkoo. With Jun-Sang Yu, Sang Jung Kim, Bo-kyung Kim, Seon-mi Song. Cinema Guild. In Korean with subtitles.
Tickets $9 for SFFS members, $11 general, $10 senior/student/disabled. Box office opens March 2 online at sffs.org and in person at SF Film Society Cinema.
TRAILER
“A must-see for fans ... it’s a rich and rewarding piece of art house cinema that sees him furthering his reputation as one of Korea’s top and most enduring talents.” -— Beyond Hollywood
“Hong's playful approach could well be an impish rejoinder to those critics who have accused him of solipsistically making the same film over and over again. Yet it also captures a sense of generational inertia, of drifting idly through life, that audiences in their 20s and 30s may recognize with a wince.” —Variety
Book chon bang hyang, South Korea 2011, 79 min. Written by Hong Sangsoo. Photographed by Kim Hyungkoo. With Jun-Sang Yu, Sang Jung Kim, Bo-kyung Kim, Seon-mi Song. Cinema Guild. In Korean with subtitles.
Tickets $9 for SFFS members, $11 general, $10 senior/student/disabled. Box office opens March 2 online at sffs.org and in person at SF Film Society Cinema.
May 4–10
Showtimes 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00
SF Film Society Cinema
1746 Post Street (Webster/Buchanan)
Showtimes 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00
SF Film Society Cinema
1746 Post Street (Webster/Buchanan)