Extreme hardship or the will to endure agonising pain is certainly a preoccupation with the celebrated director. The Buddhist monk who self-immolated in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring is proof of Kim's intense tackling of themes close to Buddhist practices in certain parts of the world that extol values of penitence and suffering. But then violence and bestiality are bound to exist where there are depictions of extreme pain. Meanwhile, some western critics have made it a habit to compare him with other Korean filmmakers such as Bong Joon-ho (maker of Parasite) or the much more disciplined Kim Ji-woon, besides others. I may have been tempted to believe them had I not watched his Arirang (2012), which gets its name from the eponymous Korean folk song, which is a sort of anthem in the country and has some 3600 variants. This is a self-documentary of his own life after his 2008 movie, Dream, during the making of which his lead actress almost died by hanging, throwing Kim into depression and guilt. Some of his friends left him shortly afterwards. Shattered, Kim retreated to a cold, forlorn outpost where he had to set up a tent within a cabin to be able to sleep. For almost nine minutes into the film, nobody speaks. It shows his morning routine. He eats a bit and then we are back to the dark night during which time he hears knocks on the door. When he opens the door, there is no one there. Yet the knock continues. Minutes later he starts conversing with himself, first through 'ready action' directorial dialogues and then taking videos of himself playing the sober self as well as the melancholic, drunk self, one explaining his position as a depressive man and the futility of it, yet the other is inconsolable. The discussion between his two selves touches upon friendships, human nature, bonding, human inclinations, goals, aspirations and other profound subjects. He also talks about a movie he wanted to make, with an American soldier who participated in the Korean War returning as an old man to find the dead body of the person he had killed during the war, and about having had a chat with American actor Willem Dafoe about the project.

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