in water (2023, Hong Sang-soo) (Patreon)

73/100

Without a trace of snark or facetiousness, I ask: Is Hong okay? Much more than Melancholia, this genuinely feels to me like the filmmaker's own struggle with depression, all the more potent for how little it foregrounds that subject (except of course formally; I'll get there); rather than a grandiose declaration that the Earth is evil and deserves its impending destruction, we get someone joining his friends in amused bewilderment about who might have inexplicably screamed "Snap out of it!" in the middle of the night, plus various scenes in which he simply looks disengaged, as if his batteries are running low. Caught myself above as I started to write "crippling depression," since Hong, if he's indeed having a rough time, apparently can't help but compulsively shoot his way through it (with Kim Min-hee still on hand in various capacities)...and his young alter ego here, whose working method sounds a whole lot like Hong's own in recent years ("He said it's so simple, there's no need to write it"), has committed himself to making a short that might be called "Anhedonia: The Way of Water" as what may or may not be a valedictory gesture. Significantly, the one scene we actually see being filmed is a painstaking facsimile, in everything from location to costumes, of an earlier, seemingly spontaneous encounter he had on the beach, but whether the sad denouement he describes in his scenario likewise reflects reality, we never learn. What initially felt frustratingly aimless to me gradually accrued tremendous power as I intuited the film's stealth subject, and while the final shot has precedents, those don't render it any less poignant.

Okay, and also 95% of the film is completely out of focus. Understandably, this will itself be the focus of most reviews, just because it's so aggressively unusual (though I assume that, too, has precedents, particularly in the avant-garde); I'm treating it as secondary because the key question—"thematic correlative or annoying gimmick?"—can't be extricated from what the film is about. Certainly, it's not too hard to make a case for the blurry visual field as representing how a deeply depressed person experiences the world, though it's by no means as simple as that: Shots remain indistinct even when Seoung-mo is absent, and the focus is actually wildly variable throughout, including a few shots that look more or less "normal" (within the limitations of a crappy digital camera). For a while, I thought Hong was only fuzzing exteriors, which proved not to be the case. He's apparently claimed to have made that decision on a whim, without any grand design, which I somehow at once do and don't believe. In any case, overall I feel as if it "works," which is not the same thing as enjoying it aesthetically; some shots possess a hazy beauty (usually when the actors are distant from the lens), while others just reminded me of the fucking Sony PD-150 (as utilized in many atrocious-looking movies from early in the century, most notably Inland Empire). Pays off huge in the aforementioned final shot, which is perhaps justification enough. Plus you only have to endure it, should that be le verbe juste, for an hour, as Hong continues his admirable, commercially suicidal practice of making films no longer than they need to be. Seriously, I hope things aren't as bleak as in water suggests. Were he not so prolific, I'd spend a few years being worried.

ANAL-RETENTIVE TITLE CORNER: I ignore lowercase titles (and other unorthodox casing, like TÁR) unless I find some clear indication that it’s what the filmmaker wants, as opposed to just “that’d look cool on the poster” or whatever. In this case, both the Berlinale website and I think it’s Cinema Guild’s website make a point of always calling it in water, no caps, so I grudgingly follow suit.