Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay that looks at the color theory in Bong Joon-ho’s 2003 serial killer thriller, Memories of Murder.
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but Bong Joon-ho is kind of a good director.
In all seriousness, if you haven’t seen Memories of Murder yet (and you clicked on this link for some reason), I hope that you either drop everything and check out a bonafide masterpiece or watch the video essay below … and then check out a bonafide masterpiece.
Memories of Murder was Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to his 2000 debut, Barking Dogs Never Bite, and is loosely based on the first confirmed serial killer in South Korea, whose notoriety and evasiveness drew comparisons to the Zodiac Killer. The 2003 film follows the police investigation, which continually fails to catch their man due to a spicy melange of incompetence, bull-headedness, and violence.
The video essay below underlines several ways in which Bong Joon-ho uses visual storytelling to underline some of the film’s core themes. There’s a focus on the film’s approach to color theory, which will be more informative if you’ve already seen the film. (As you watch the video, try to remember if you picked up on these visual cues — cause I sure didn’t!).
Be wary of some light spoilers ahead after the jump.
Watch “The Queue: Memories of Murder | Hidden in Plain Sight”
Who made this?
This video essay on the color theory of Memories of Murder is by Spikima Movies, a Korean-Canadian who’s been dropping gems on YouTube since 2019. You can subscribe to Spikima’s channel for more incredible essays here. And you can follow them on Letterboxd here.
More videos like this
- For more Bong Joon-ho-related content, here’s Masters of Movies on how the films of Bong Joon-ho tap into the tricky art of transnational cinema.
- For another taste of Spikima Movies’ work, here’s their look at what makes the Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie Cure one of the scariest movies of all time.
- And here’s another sample of Spikima’s work diving deep into the symbology of Bong Joon-ho‘s 2019 Best Picture Award-winning film Parasite.
- And here’s their video essay that takes a look at how Jonathan Glazer’s sci-fi film Under the Skin uses non-verbal storytelling to put us in an alien’s shoes.
- And finally, here’s Spikima Movies’ video essay on how artificiality is central to the horrific heartbeat of The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Related Topics: Bong Joon-ho, Memories of Murder, The Queue
