3-Iron (2005)

★★★½
This review was written years before Ki-duk Kim's passing in 2020.

Ki-duk Kim is fast becoming one of the most interesting foreign directors (foreign to the U.S.) working today. His Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring was my pick for the best movie of 2004. In that film, he showed a fascination with the passage of time. He found interest in everyday actions, because it's the little things in life that can have a profound effect on how we mature. Kim's follow-up film, 3-Iron, also utilizes the passage of time as a way to develop a character, but he takes that growth one step further by giving it a metaphysical quality.

Tae-suk (Hee Jae) is a vagrant and a recluse. He puts food flyers on people's doors, then when he feels he's waited long enough, he lets himself inside the house if the flyer is still there. This is his daily routine. He doesn't have a home of his own, so this method of moving from one residence to another is the only way for him to get a roof over his head. He plays back the answering machines to hear the recording and ensure that no one will return for at least one day.

While inside these strangers' homes, he makes himself comfortable and helps himself to the refrigerator. In order to return the favor, he fixes broken objects (clocks, stereos), cleans the dishes and washes the clothes. He doesn't steal anything. To remember the homes in which he stays, he takes a picture of himself in front of a family portrait.

It's uncertain how long he's been doing this, but he's at the point now where he can do this fairly comfortably. He walks up to a door with an undisturbed flyer and picks the lock, confidant that nobody will catch him in the act. However, in one residence, he has an unexpected visitor.

Sun-hwa (Seung-yeon Lee) hasn't left her house for days, her reclusiveness the result of an abusive relationship. As a result, the flyer on her doorknob remains hanging there, and Tae-suk lets himself in. For at least a day, Sun-hwa watches this intruder, but doesn't confront him. She watches with curiosity as he washes her clothes and plays golf in the backyard. Eventually, she walks in on him, but instead of yelling, she just stares. He hastily packs up his stuff and leaves.

Tae-suk returns later that night, concerned that Sun-hwa's husband might hurt her even further. Upon returning, he challenges the husband (Hyuk-ho Kwon), performing an act both heroic and criminal, and runs away with Sun-hwa tagging along. In the coming weeks, they never speak to each other, but she stays with him. He accepts her, and even enlists her assistance in his quest to enter other people's homes.

The film takes a strange turn after the cops arrest Tae-suk and hold him indefinitely. The cops retrace his steps and investigate every house he has entered, but to their dismay, they discover that he never stole anything. Still, they keep him locked up due to his defiance to their authority. Throughout the entire film, Tae-suk doesn't have one single line of dialogue. He carries with him a quiet nobility that is hardly challenged when sitting in a jail cell. His nomadic days have trained him to avoid contact with others, so he frustrates his guards when they try to question him.

Even stranger, he undergoes a metamorphosis in his cell. At first, it seems like he's toying with the guard, but it becomes clearer that he's completing the final steps to alienate himself from society completely. The details of this transformation are murky, but intriguing in how they reveal themselves slowly and through the use of deceptive photography and sly humor. Tae-suk loses all connection to the real world and enters a kind of self-imposed dream state that allows him to escape and revisit those homes where he had stayed during his travels. He wants to take with him the only friend he ever knew, so with his newfound existence he takes Sun-hwa to a world only he inhabits.

This all sounds pretty vague, but the movie only gives us the slightest indication of what's going on. The first two acts are straight forward but powerful due to the haunting silence. The third act takes Tae-suk's wandering nature and perfects it, so that even in his confined existence, he still has the power to elude detection. The only reason he was captured in the first place was because he allowed it to happen.

3-Iron, which refers to the golf club that Tae-suk carries around with him, doesn't resonate as strongly as Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring. It becomes nearly impenetrable at times, but it's a quiet character study, a fascinating examination of how a man completes a life cycle beginning with adulthood and ending with a higher state of being.

© 2005 Silver Screen Reviews