Michael Hanake meets the Blair Witch Project in Kim Gok's Exhausted, a vicious kick in the pants to everyone in the audience, all in the name of "style." A man meets a mute woman, and as any reasonable person would do in such a situation, makes her his prostitute. But the pimping is the least of our problems. As we get exhausted by the grainy faux-16mm camerawork, the film gets increasingly deranged. The closest thing we get to a sympathetic character is the pimp, simply because he's got too much self-respect to fuck a mute whore. Everyone else is either a gory mess, or a gory mess in disguise. Even the prostitute, which even a thug like Lars von Trier would make likeable, comes off as a delirious scary woman whose shrieks strike like blows to the jugular. Kim Gok has seemingly abandoned the Marxist critiques of his short films, going instead for mindless brutality which culminates in an endless bloody freak-show involving, among other things, a pair of scissors going where pairs of scissors should not go. In the middle of the bloodbath, we get an extended long take of the beaten prostitute's near-dead face, but it does not elicit sympathy or pity. In fact, images of the victim only make us shy away in shock. (Indeed, the extended sequence led to continuous walk-outs during the Pusan screening.) The long take invites us to stare, but it assumes we're as sadistic as the victimizer (and the film) is. Meanwhile the sound-effects (mostly a rumbling bassline that shakes the theater) pulsates with pure wickedness. With Hanake, shock creates reflection, which asks that we be critical. Here, we only want to escape. I suppose Exhausted has some virtues; the shots of drilling machines and factories provide a mesmerizing phallic backdrop to the pimp and prostitute's pursuits. But everything else hurts too much. At least Kim Ki-duk lets us breathe. Exhausted makes Bad Guy look like Lady and the Tramp. (asiaarts.ucla.edu)《枯竭》是一部优秀的故事片影视作品,提起韩国电影,人们就肯定会想到《枯竭》,这部由金曲导演,张利雨,Keun-young Oh,朴智焕主演的《枯竭》,在剧里,每一个演员出色的表演将剧中角色形象呈现得栩栩如生。无论是剧情、演员的表演还是剧中歌曲,都是该片的美妙亮点所在。真正是成为一匹黑马,创造了一个奇迹。为何这么说,我想,就连大伙们都没有想到这部故事片会得到这样好的反响。金曲先生拼凑大家到一起创作出来一部作品,也真是缘分!所以,正是这样的团体感和强烈的自尊心,他们在电影中投入的热情,是我们难以想象的,其实枯竭中的人物心理历程和逼人的剧情,何尝不是现实中的真实写照呢?所以,他们怀着一腔心有不甘的英雄气,用他们的实力和人情成就了这部经典的故事片,也成就了他们自己!