In my personal regard, there are few things that are truly deserving of the label, “enigmatic”. The word might be thrown around fairly often for the sake of novelty, but there are few pieces of media that strictly adhere to the English definition of said word.

Oxford dictionary defines “enigmatic” as follows.

Enigmatic

/ˌɛnɪɡˈmatɪk/

adjective

difficult to interpret or understand; mysterious

That said, there are few modern film-makers working today who I would consider “enigmatic”.

Impossible to decipher movies expounding the ‘human condition’, the French extremity movement’s shlock that sought to disrupt the film scene, the noisy, mind-altering, downright unpleasant indie arthouse flicks that want to challenge the form and convince audiences the director is poking at some amalgamous blob lying deep within every person’s subconscious? These films might be weird, God-forbid, Quirky (help), but they aren’t enigmatic.

Bicker and cope all you like in the comments of a 20-minute ending explained youtube video, but it is clear that at the end of the day, the one thing shared between myself and the average Gaspar Noé enjoyer after a viewing of LUX AETERNA (2019) is a throbbing migraine.

With that cold open, it wouldn’t be unfair to assume I despise all movies that want to challenge the form any more than Avengers Civil War (2016). To the contrary, I write today to draw your attention to the still incredibly underrated Park Chan Wook, whose latest stunner Decision to Leave (2022) deserves much more attention than its currently receiving.

Upon catching Decision to Leave’s premiere at the Projector (shoutout to the golden mile homies) last Sunday, I was immediately taken aback to how tightly the film adheres to the Film noir genre, to a lesser extent in its pacing and content, to a greater extent in its tone and cinematography.

Park Chan Wook is seriously hamming it up from the minute the film begins. The entrancing flute that introduces the ethereal backdrop within which Detective Hae-jun and the widowed Seo-rae contend is formalised by the accented strings that semi-solidly ground the film in its own dream-like reality.

As a result, Park presents audiences with a seemingly simple whodunit mystery (that is perfectly functional as a whole piece in its own right), before gradually introducing layers of uncertainty laced with romance, until the scale of the film has grown way out of proportion, and the consequences come crashing down upon our ill-fated lovebirds.

Take away the sexy, surreal cinematography that Park imprints on Decision to Leave however, and what you’re ultimately left with is a story of two people unable to genuinely communicate on equal terms due to the social constructs that separate their union.

In this manner, I’m reminded of another recent work by a Japanese director who wears his influences on his sleeve. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 Drive my car (taken some reference from Murakami’s short story of the same name, within the anthology ‘Men without Women’ (2014)) while paced much slower, and seemingly antithetical in both pace and tone to Park’s Decision to Leave, seems to take inspiration from the same source despite being a peninsula away, namely the innate human longing for connection with others, and the layers of self-imposed artifice that obfuscate such relationships.

I’ve recently taken an interest in the indie horror scene, and one drastic piece that hasn’t quite left me yet is Christopher Frey’s prolific 2019 game, The Space Between. More a narrative horror experience on rails than a fully explorable game, Frey uses the small confines of his pixelated world to facilitate his inexhaustible examination of the impenetrable walls that separate genuine human exchange. Intercourse (less the sexual kind, more the ideological), is a theme Frey isn’t exactly sparing with in The Space Between, though the more vital idea pulasting beneath said intercourse, is seperation. Seperation, as Frey understands it, exists in many forms. A curtain, a wall consisting of dry plaster, towels draped on laundry poles, the doors of a cremator clanking shut, the lid of a coffin. In these modes of separation, Frey’s deeply troubled protagonist, Martin, finds solace. He is able to be intimate with the ones he truly cares about. Tear back the artifice and try to get any closer however, and as Frey posits, there only lies a raw unbridled violence, hellbent on destroying any entity capable of assaulting one’s innermost ego.

As Martin (or perhaps his neighbour cum lover Clara [the game lacks any delineation regarding the orator of its dialogue, yet another of Frey’s thematically onpoint design choices that poke at the inability to truly understand other people]) points out, “sometimes closeness comes through separation”.

This idea that “not all walls are made of matter” rings terribly true in Park’s Decision to Leave (don’t worry, I haven’t completely forgotten what text I’m writing on).

We see it in Hae-Jun’s gradual estrangement from his wife. Perhaps what was keeping their fraying marriage together was the physical distance that separated their serrated personalities.

We see it in Seo-rae’s murders of her second husband in her attempt to draw Hae-Jun back to her. In the brief time they can conceivably spend together as suspect and detective, she can be close to him, even as Seo-rae cleverly keeps up her artifice of being one step ahead, for fear of revealing her vulnerability to Hae-Jun.

We see it in the small things, the over-the-phone calls that mask the true intentions of both parties, the recorded interrogations that prevent Seo-rae and Hae-Jun from baring their true selves for each other.

We tragically see it, in an almost too on the nose fashion, in Seo-rae’s death. Seo-rae finds she can be her closest to Hae-Jun through her death, the one barrier he himself cannot cross, by living on as a memory he cannot escape from.

Vitally, Park strays from both Hamaguchi’s Drive my car and Frey’s The Space Between in one small (but notable) way. Despite Decision to Leave’s bittersweet end, Hae-Jun and Seo-rae, for a moment, are able to tear away the separations that they have respectfully kept in place for the entire film. In doing so, they declare their love for each other, and acknowledge the other’s feelings.

This one act, in my opinion, raises Decision to Leave high above its contemporaries. Park acknowledges that people make stupid mistakes trying to protect others from themselves, but in this confusion, Park also suggests the possibility for honesty and candor. In a world where we accept contradiction and anonymity, preferring to keep others at bay for fear of rejection of our true self, Park calls audiences to know and express themselves for who they really are. It might feel like we give too much of ourselves up for judgement by being honest with who we are, but the joy of genuine relationships is more than worth it.

I’ll end with a short exchange (no, maybe monologue is a more fitting term) between Martin and Clara from Frey’s The Space Between.

Do you want to be close?

It is not easy to trust.

I think, trust is a decision, an act.

Is it acting?

What’s the difference between the audience and the actors?

What separates them?

The curtain I guess.

And after the play has started?

Sometimes walls don’t have to be out of matter

And sometimes closeness comes through separation

I am glad, we know each other.

I am glad too.

I want to be close.

(That’s it! Thanks for reading!)

Soli Deo gloria