Director Jonathan Demme's <The Silence of the Lambs> is one of the three films that won five main categories (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor and Actress) in the 100-year history of the Academy. Director Bong Joon-ho's <Memories of Murder> is worthy of being placed at the top of the 100-year history of Korean film history.

Director Kiyoshi Kurasawa's 1997 film <Cure>, which was officially released in Korea for the first time after 25 years of production, is an unfamiliar name to light movie fans, but it is a horror film that is not enough to stand side by side with the previous two works. It is a masterpiece. It is said that director Kiyoshi came up with the idea for <Cure> within an hour after watching <The Silence of the Lambs>. The criminal is tracked down and arrested, but they have one thing in common: the criminal escapes again.
 
Detective Takabe (Yakusho Koji) has a headache. His wife (Anna Nakagawa) is mentally ill and needs Takabe's care. At work, while tracking down the culprit of a series of bizarre murders, ordinary people such as office workers, teachers, police, and doctors kill family members or colleagues without a clear motive. Those who seem completely unrelated commit murder in the same way in the shape of an X with a knife from the bottom of the neck to the bottom of the chest. Takabe started investigating the mysterious case and found out that they all committed the crime after meeting a young man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara).

As for the hint , there are different opinions about guessing what the title <Cure> means to the victim . The clue is surprisingly held by the victim, not the murderer. Mamiya, who claims to have amnesia, continues to ask questions. where is this who are you The killer who will be hypnotized answers. This is OO Beach and I am a teacher and I am the husband of the woman sleeping upstairs. I am a cop and this is a police station. Mamiya lights a lighter and asks another question to those who talk about location and place, occupation and social role. tell your story And always a god ends in this question and a terrible murder takes place.
 
Only those who cannot tell 'my story' are hypnotized by Mamiya. Those killed at this time have one thing in common. Those who are hypnotized are the ones who are not conducive to telling 'my story'. Although hypnotized persons can be identified by a profession, family or social role, it is not possible to know how they differ from other husbands, teachers, police officers, or doctors. When I can't think of my story that is different from others. Hypnotized people kill people by cutting their throats in the shape of an X as if their existence is denied. I don't know exactly, but they probably had their own deficiencies.
 
It is highly likely that the person who killed the prostitute at the opening had difficulty finding satisfaction or security in their sex life at home. The teacher, who turned down her wife's offer to give Mamiya a drink and served her coffee, would have noticed the crack slowly opening. A co-worker who is picky about cigarettes, but the police, who have not liked him since 3 years ago, indifferently shoots him in the head. A doctor who peeled off a man's face in a public bathroom has been discriminated against within the profession because he is a woman. Murder, in which indifference, alienation, meaninglessness, and disconnected relationships are condensed one after another, becomes a 'natural' routine, like throwing trash into a trash can.
 
It is also connected to the reason why murders occur in broad daylight when they have to fulfill their social role. Mamiya's hypnosis, on the other hand, takes place at night when she can drop her social masks and explore her inner world. The difference between the culprit and Takabe opens here. If the criminals meet Mamiya only at one point of time, day or night, Takabe encounters Mamiya both day and night. Takabe, who is self-aware that he is neither a cop nor his husband, is already an empty figure. He cannot empty what is empty. Mamiya and Takabe, who say that she can understand others because she is empty, are synchronized by sharing like this day and night. The fact that the original title of the movie was 'The Evangelist' is creepy.

 

'Memories of Murder'
 
Director Bong Joon-ho said that <Memories of Murder> was greatly influenced by <Cure>. What stands out about <Memories of Murder> is the fact that the perpetrator is not caught and, furthermore, does not even appear. More public power was invested in maintaining the regime of the military dictatorship than in the search for serial killers, and they did not hesitate to make fake criminals through tortured confessions for show briefings. In the end, it is the special time and space of Korea in the 1980s that encouraged and neglected crime in <Memories of Murder>.
 
Says Takabe's friend and psychiatrist Sakuma. Even if you are hypnotized, if you have a sense of ethics that murder is bad, you will never commit murder. <Cure> uses Tokyo as the main background, but the characteristics of Tokyo are not revealed much. It is just a landscape that can be seen in any city in Japan. However, the inside of the characters that can be seen anywhere in the city is not ordinary. The customer of the laundry is talking to himself in a very angry tone, saying that he will kill someone, and then calmly takes the laundry back. The fact that the most frequent location in the movie is a hospital seems to be irrelevant to this.
 
There are two scenes in which the film, which persistently pursued gloomy gray Tokyo, falls into a strange time and space. When admitting her wife to a psychiatric hospital, she tracks down her escaped Mamiya to the old hospital building. Takabe moves on a bus full of clouds beyond the window. Buses of the same design may be heading to the same destination. And two murders take place at the place they arrive. Takabe's wife is found with a characteristic X-shaped wound and a skinny figure like a mummy. Mamiya is shot by Takabe and dies drawing an X in the air. Takabe is arrested in a place that looks like an imaginary place, and after the two people who understand each other meet their end, Takabe is reborn as a new missionary.
 
Even if Mamiya meets her end, her killings do not end. More importantly, Mamiya is not a monster that fell from the sky. Since the 1900s, the teachings of xie jiao represented by mesmerism have been spread through voice messages through gramophones and video contents through VHS.

If there is no demand, there is no supply. The same method of murder must have continued before Mamiya appeared, and there is an implication that it will continue through Takabe after that. The ending of <Memories of Murder> in which a person with an ordinary face recalled the past and looked at the drain of the rice field where the body was. The ending of <Cure>, in which a restaurant employee suddenly disappears with a kitchen knife, is a terrible preview of an eternally repeating and unstoppable spinning

A masterpiece of an empty washing machine that never stops
 
dissolves the times, but masterpieces transcend the times. <Cure> was released for the first time in 25 years in Korea and surpassed 10,000 viewers despite the disadvantages of art house screenings. In an interview with Extreme Movie, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa responded to the question, "The situation that an ordinary person can become infected and become a murderer reminds me of the fear of the early corona crisis." I think you can see it while doing '.
 
Takabe's wife, who suffers from mental illness, has a habit of running her washing machine even when her laundry tub is empty. Takabe works busily at her home after work with her exhausted body, but she hears the noise of the washing machine that does nothing. Takabe turns her washing machine off 'naturally'. Beyond that daily life, the lethargy and meaninglessness enough to imagine her wife's suicide, and the roar of the severance of relationships is tumultuous. However, trained not to let her emotions shine, he does not scream even in the face of the vision of her wife who hangs him.
 
It is difficult to taste a sense of accomplishment in labor that has become meaningless as the rate of wage growth has failed to keep up with the rate of inflation. Due to a relationship that has not yet been restored after being severed due to distancing, the voiceless clamor increases. It is said that the number of people seeking psychiatry, especially those in their 20s and 30s, has increased significantly during the corona era. Like an empty washing machine making noise without stopping, we who repeat meaningless repetitions may hope for terrible healing.