Most filmmakers are fortunate in the event that they make one masterpiece of their lifetime – Park Chan-wook can’t appear to cease doing it. No Different Alternative is his long-awaited adaptation of Donald Westlake’s 1997 company satire-thriller ‘The Ax’, a few laid-off worker who decides to skinny out the job pool. Reuniting with main man Lee Byung-hun, director Park executes a sharp, well timed and blisteringly humorous story of non-public greed, whereas pondering the lurking evil of AI.
LWLies: You’ve spoken about your want to adapt ‘The Ax’ right into a movie a few occasions through the years, however I marvel how your understanding or notion of that story has modified because you first learn it?
Park: I don’t precisely keep in mind, as a result of it’s been so lengthy since I learn the novel – I assume it was round 15 years in the past – however a latest revelation I did have is that I felt that it was mandatory to incorporate the introduction of AI know-how. I felt that was the one method to correctly replicate the realities of right now.
Is that one thing that you’re personally involved with each within the filmmaking world and within the wider world – the prevalence and velocity at which AI is turning into extra accepted?
Sure, I’m significantly involved about it. After all, it could possibly be a know-how that would turn out to be helpful and enhance our lives. Particularly within the context of filmmaking, for younger filmmakers with no cash and simply creativeness, I assume it could possibly be a useful instrument to simply and affordably realise their imaginative and prescient of, as an example, a future society. So there are these advantages of AI know-how, however my concern is certainly larger than the advantages I see in it. Three years in the past, a buddy began utilizing AI, and he now not noticed a want for his secretary, so he fired his secretary. Contemplating the velocity of growth of AI, who may inform how shortly they’ll develop within the subsequent yr or within the subsequent two years, and the way many individuals will lose their jobs due to that? I’ve additionally heard stories of AI within the gaming trade, the place AI has refused the consumer’s instructions. Even individuals round me, at any time when they ask AI questions, they at all times obtain deceitful solutions, and that alone scares me significantly. Contemplating all of that, in contrast to one thing just like the washer, I don’t assume it is a instrument that may merely make our lives extra handy.
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One other aspect of No Different Alternative I discovered fascinating is how a lot the idea of well-paid employment is tied to masculinity – actually for Yoo Man-su, but additionally for the opposite males that we meet within the movie, a lot of their id is tied to their jobs. I’m curious if it is a reflection of the way you understand trendy South Korean work tradition.
Actually, I did emphasise that aspect extra within the movie than within the unique novel. I do assume this aspect works higher for the viewers in Korea since Korean society does have stronger traces of patriarchy. However you mustn’t neglect that the problem of masculinity and such already featured within the unique novel, which is an American novel. After exhibiting this movie to audiences from completely different international locations, they have been all equally nodding and laughing and sympathising with what’s taking place on the display screen. So I imagine that it’s a related situation for anyplace within the world.
The movie to me additionally appears fairly involved with how egocentric capitalism forces us to turn out to be, or tries to power us to turn out to be.
Sure, the rationale I instantly knew I needed to adapt this novel right into a film, even earlier than I closed the guide, was as a result of I significantly empathised with these components. Man-su will not be in a state of affairs the place he instantly has to go and stay out on the streets and starve. He simply doesn’t wish to fall beneath the middle-class way of life that he’s been sustaining. When he says there’s no different alternative, that’s merely his excuse. So within the scene the place Man-su is telling Beom-mo that if he doesn’t have cash, he can simply promote his home or go and work in a grocery store, the viewers turns into conscious that Man-su is conscious of this truth. Why doesn’t he observe his personal phrases? His entire course of of constructing a pretend firm and a job posting and gathering resumés to kill his potential rivals is a very capitalist methodology in nature. The businesses choose superior candidates to rent at their firm, and Man-su does one thing worse by choosing out these superior candidates to kill them.
