ONLINE PROGRAM

Summer Film Series: The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016, 145 min.)

11:00 am film screening via Blue Jeans                                                 

1:30 pm film discussion via Blue Jeans

Presented by Christopher Llewellyn Reed, chair, Film & Moving Image Department, Stevenson University

Park burst onto the international scene with his 2003 Oldboy (remade by Spike Lee in 2013), a violent meditation on sin, vengeance and the cost of both. Since then, he has remained an intriguing and eclectic filmmaker, whether it be in Hollywood (where he directed the 2013 Stoker) or back home in South Korea. A master visualist, Park creates evocative cinematic landscapes where everything is loaded with portent and meaning. In The Handmaiden, he throws us into a three-part historical thriller laden with surprising twists and turns, and flashbacks revealing earlier hidden truths. Explicitly sexual and violent at times, the film is always engaging, and, with its shifting points of view, redolent of movies like Citizen Kane (1941) and Rashomon (1950). Bring all your senses, you’ll need them.

$15 fee for guests and subscribers