About The Host
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Chances are, if you’re in Asia, The Host did not arrive quietly at your local multiplex. The latest film from up-and-coming South Korean director Bong Joon-ho has been so far the biggest Asian blockbuster of the year and deservedly so. It is not only a highly entertaining creature feature but also an intelligent film laced with potent human drama, witty socio-political commentary and dark humour. The Host is one of the best pictures of the year.
If you have seen the advertisements and the posters and were interested enough to have gone to this picture, expectations for a big, slimy monster with a vaginal-looking, chomping, sucking orifice to appear on the screen were a given. And so it does, though probably not as much as you’d like it to. The film has been described as a monster movie and that is what the film’s promotional campaign has promised. But though it does feature a monster, it appears for only about a third of the running time. It is for exactly this reason that many audience members have felt disappointed with what they have seen. In my opinion, I can gladly say that they deserve their disappointment as audience members for expecting so much less for a film that turned out to be so much more.
 The central core of the film presents itself in the plight of the five members of the Park family in result of the appearance of the monster. There is the patriarch, Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong); his two sons – Gang-du (Song Kang-ho) and Nam-il (Park Hae-il) – and daughter, Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na); and Gang-du’s young daughter, Hyun-seo (Ko Ah-sung). Hee-bong, who in his younger years was an absent parent, runs a food stand in the Han River Citizen’s Park with the bumbling Gang-du, who is a divorced single parent, while Nam-il is a bitter, unemployed graduate who used to be a rioting rascal, and Nam-joo is a competitive archer with a lack of self-confidence. One day, the creature finally decides to get out of the river and make a public appearance in broad daylight, trampling civilians left and right while picking up a few with his long, protracted tongue and swallowing them up. Amidst the commotion as the civilians try to escape, Gang-du loses Hyun-seo in the crowd and picks up another girl’s hand. When Gang-du realises that the hand he’s holding is no longer her daughter’s, we witness a terribly frightening scene as he turns around to face his unsuspecting daughter before she is abducted by the monster.
Even before the monster appears, the family is dysfunctional and distant, and though they seem to drift further away from each other because of the disappearance of Hyun-seo, eventually we begin to see that their predicament actually brings them closer together. Without each other, they wouldn’t have a chance in getting little Hyun-seo back. What gives the movie its weight is that these characters seem real to us and it’s not hard to relate to their problems. Their internal conflicts are made visible to us, and the film also allows us to witness throughout the film as they live through them and gradually change. There is a deep sense of sadness when Hee-bong regrets his past short-comings as a parent, which is partially why the family came apart, and a great feeling of victory when Nam-joo finally makes a good shot (you’ll know what I mean when you see it).A humorous aspect of the film is that, in the end, a dysfunctional but loving family saves the day rather than all the heavy artillery the American army can muster. Furthermore, one of the family members used to be an anti-establishment rioter. Not that it’s a bad thing, but its funny how a ‘monster movie’ turns out to be something like propaganda for the middle-class. The monster, it seems, is only an excuse for the film’s real story of family, unity, loss, and also human stupidity.
The set-up of how the monster was created is ingenious in its simplicity. The film begins at a Korean research facility lab where an American doctor and his Korean assistant are cleaning up. The American doctor discovers dust on bottles of chemicals. He blames the Korean assistant for not cleaning up the lab well enough and punishes him by appointing him the task of disposing of every single bottle of that chemical into the sink. The assistant hesitates as the waste of the facility goes to the Han River. The American, with all of his foreign superiority, threatens his assistant with his job if he does not do what he says. So down goes the litres of toxic chemicals... A few years later, a group of fishermen fly-fish in the Han River. One of them discovers an unusual-looking sea creature with more tails than it should have... A few years pass once more and a man about to commit suicide by jumping into the Han River from a bridge, his reason being his discovery of something terrible that lies beneath the river. Before he jumps, we see a hint of what lies beneath. What caused the creation of this monster? Is it prejudice or irresponsibility? Ignorance or plain fate?
It is surprising and really quite wonderful that the creators of the film have chosen such a simple yet controversial reason for the creation of their monster and used it to exploit the presence of government irresponsibility and manipulation that exists in various areas of the modern world. The American army later interferes when the appearance of the monster has been reported throughout the world. They tell the media that those that have been in contact with the creature have been infected with a virus, but we do not see any side effects on those who have been touched by it. We are reminded of the curious news reports during the war between the United States and Iraq that state that the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which the Americans stated as their reason for declaring war, may have never existed. We are also reminded of how careless disposal of chemicals by American companies in the Middle East have caused its native people to suffer from diseases, birth defects and blindness as we watch the disturbing opening scene. Near the end of the film, when the American-manufactured anti-viral gas does not successfully kill the creature, the occasional fallibility and harmfulness of Western medical drugs is also brought to memory. But the film attempts to suggest that it does not point a finger only at America (there is a heroic American civilian who is killed by the monster while protecting other civilians), but rather on the ever-increasing group of invasive and terrorist foreign countries. The film also makes us think about when your own country crosses the line between protecting its people and terrorising them. Why does the monster not appear for much of the film? That’s because the main characters are already fighting another adversary: their own government. The United States’ news reports have encouraged the Korean government to quarantine the so-called ‘victims’ and that is what keeps the Kang family from rescuing the abducted Hyun-seo. They aren’t allowed to leave the medical facility they have been kept in even when Gang-du receives a phone call from his believed-to-be-deceased daughter about her whereabouts because they think that he’ll contaminate more people. There is another scene in the film where a man spits into a puddle of water next to a sidewalk amongst other people waiting to cross a road at a zebra-crossing. Because it is raining, a truck splashes the puddle of water all over them. adding further to the contemporary realism of the film is also enhanced. Though the relevance of these events is frightening in their accuracy, all of this is depicted in a rather relaxed and a humorously sardonic manner rather than self-conscious heavy-handedness which would have hindered the audience’s interest and enjoyment of the film. The humour in the film is enhanced by the wonderful score by Lee Byung-woo which resembles what I can only describe as rambunctiously carnivalesque. Lee also did the music for the films A Tale of Two Sisters, Untold Scandal and The Red Shoes, all of which are also wonderful.
Granted, the presence of controversial political and social commentary within a monster movie, though rare, is not highly original. We’ve witnessed in Gojira/Godzilla that it was American nuclear experimentation that created the famed lizard monster which destroyed Tokyo and its inhabitants. Jaws was an example of how despite occurring crisis’, the big guys with power could care less about the public so long as they reap benefits. But no film like this has ever been so fulfilling and affecting.
Note: According to IMDb.com, the event described in the beginning of the film is actually based on an actual event: “In February 2000 in a US military facility located in the centre of Seoul, US military civilian employee Mr. McFarland ordered to dispose formaldehyde into the sewer system leading to Han River despite the objection of a Korean subordinate. Korean government attempted to prosecute Mr. McFarland in Korean court but US military refused to hand over the custody of Mr. McFarland to the Korean legal system. Later, a Korean judge convicted Mr. McFarland in absentia. Public enraged at the Korean government's inability to enforce its law on its own soil. In 2005, nearly five years after the original incident, Mr. McFarland was finally found guilty in Korean court in his presence. He never served the actual prison sentence, however.”
Written by: Lim Lung Chieh
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