Word: camera
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During the decades he has labored behind the camera, Kwon-taek has amassed considerable critical acclaim: he has won every prize offered by South Korea’s three annual film awards ceremonies; received countless laurels from major international film festivals; and in 2002, he added a Best Director prize from Cannes to his trophy case for his film Chihwaseon...
...focus is used expertly to draw attention to the myriad details that comprised village life in nineteenth century Korea: the glowing embers of a tavern hearth, the massive earthen pots keeping sentry at the portals of village hovels, the snow-speckled and hard-trod paths interlacing peasant dwellings. The camera moves deliberately, often pausing over a stark landscape seconds longer than is customary, allowing the beauty of each scene to resonate with the viewer...
This is the very crux of the movie’s success: it demonstrates the incoherence and illogic of war from a soldier’s perspective. The Gunners themselves are familiar to us. Their early awkwardness in front of the camera is reminiscent of an eighteen-year-old asking for a first date. They live in the bombed-out pleasure palace of Uday Hussein, and if not for the uzis and the uniforms, some of the scenes almost evoke Animal House—pool parties, death metal T-shirts, rat chases around the cluttered floor of what looks like...
...footage of reality to communicate the surreal situation of war? Documentary footage rarely affords the evocative ambience and haunting images of fictional war films. Palace is neither structurally nor visually slick, partly because the footage was kept mostly chronological, and it was captured with a hand-held camera. Although this contributes to the sense of authenticity within the film, there are times when the conspicuous sound editing and self-conscious narration take the viewer out of the narrative...
...even as these young soldiers take the opportunity to tell their story to the camera, they are skeptical about its impact on audiences: “After this you’re going to get your popcorn out of the microwave, and maybe talk about what I said,” one said in the film...