Park Chan-Wook’s latest film, “No Other Choice”, follows an average man (star of “Squid game” Lee Byung-Hun) who puts himself in desperate efforts to get a job after being unexpectedly drawn from the paper society in which he worked for 25 years. It is almost the same time that Park spent the story, adapted from the mystery novel by Donald E. Westlake in 1997 “The Ax”, on the big screen.
“We all host this deep fear of employment and security,” said Park through a translator at the film’s official film press conference. “I was able to work on this film for 20 years because it doesn’t matter who I told in two decades, they always relate and said:” It’s such a timely story “. It gave me the confidence to know that it is a film that will eventually do. »»
Park, a legend of Korean cinema known for writing and realizing “Oldboy”, “Thirst” and “The Handmaidé”, as well as to produce “Snowpier”, appeared for the last time in competition in Venice with “sympathy for Lady Vengeance” of 2005. “So what took so long for Park to return to Lido?
“There is a very short answer, a word in fact,” joked Park. “It’s money.”
He added: “As the fate of a film always tends to be, it is not that we did not have any budget, but I wanted to make sure [it was] A budget that I felt was sufficient. It took 20 years to create this film, and after all this time, I was able to create this incredible distribution. »»
The sprawling ensemble, most of which were present at the Friday’s press conference, includes his Ye-Jin (“Crash Landing on You”) Lee Sung-Min (“Handsome Guys”), Yeom Hye-Ran (“The Glory”), Cha Seung-Won (“believer 2”), Yoo Yeon-Seok (“Hospital Playlist”) and Park-Ef Lee, The casting, described this as a “dream” to work with Park Chan-Wook and described “no other choice” as one of the director’s “most commercial films”.
“Any Korean actor would be happy to jump on the opportunity without second reflection,” he said. “Regardless of the kind of film, I would have always said” yes “.”
Given that “no other choice” follows the protagonist of a professional crossroads, Park was invited to what he would do with the career if something happened to the film industry.
“I don’t think the format of art as a film will shrink,” he said. “Maybe the culture of going to theaters to watch a movie could End. But I suppose that if the moment comes when I am unable to obtain the budget I would like, I will continue and create movies on my smartphone. I have already done that.
Although the subject was not resisted during the press conference on Friday afternoon, the director recently made the headlines because he and his writing partner Don McKellar were expelled from the Guild of Writers of America for having violated the rules of the Union who prohibited to work during the union’s strike in 2023. Park denied the statements that he wrote for “The Sympathizer” HBO based on the 2015 novel of Viet Thanh Nguyen, while the industry was picking up.
“I have never raped any rule,” said Park in a statement. “I seriously considered attractive, but I finally decided not to appeal because I wanted to focus on” no other choice “, which was in post-production in Korea at the time, and I could not afford to spend as much time as the audience on appeal.”
In a column of guests for VarietyMcKellar called their condemnation “intentionally anti-democratic, deliberately cruel and exaggerated” and described it as a “frightening tactic to intimidate their membership, in particular” hepretians “(Showrunner-Director-Writers).”
