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Earlier this month, Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s\u00a0Detroit\u00a0<\/em>opened in theaters across America, dramatizing an increasingly oft-referenced eruption of violence in relatively recent American history. At just about the same time, Jang Hoon\u2019s\u00a0A Taxi Driver<\/em>\u00a0(\ud0dd\uc2dc\uc6b4\uc804\uc0ac) opened in theaters across South Korea, dramatizing an increasingly oft-referenced eruption of violence in relatively recent Korean history. The tagline of the American film\u2019s poster insists that \u201cit\u2019s time we knew\u201d exactly what happened during the\u00a012th Street Riot<\/a>\u00a0that accelerated the Motor City\u2019s long decline to come in the summer of 1967; the tagline on the Korean film\u2019s poster needs to invoke no more than \u201ca taxi driver going to Gwangju in May of 1980\u201d for everyone to know exactly what he\u2019ll drive into.<\/span><\/p>\n
Having described Bigelow\u2019s film as about \u201cpolice violence \u2014 the violence of white police officers against black residents of Detroit,\u201d\u00a0New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0film critic Richard Brody\u00a0dissents from its widespread acclaim<\/a>, calling it not just a failure but an atrocity. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that Bigelow intended to present a set of historical facts that would offend viewers\u2019 sensibilities, spark righteous outrage at the brutality and the injustice inflicted upon the movie\u2019s main characters, and induce viewers to reflect on the persistence of racist injustice in the United States today,\u201d he writes. But the movie\u2019s presentation of what happened in Detroit, especially a \u201cprotracted scene of captivity, terror, torture, and murder in the Algiers Motel,\u201d makes him wonder how Bigelow and her collaborators could have filmed it at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow could a director tell an actor to administer these brutal blows, not just once but repeatedly?\u201d Brody asks. \u201cHow could a director instruct another actor to grimace and groan, to collapse under the force of the blows? How could a director even feel the need to make audiences feel the physical pain of the horrific, appalling police actions?\u201d\u00a0Detroit<\/em>\u2018s \u201cmeticulous dramatization of events intended to shock,\u201d he writes, \u201cstrikes me as the moral equivalent of pornography.\u201d It makes me wonder how he\u2019d judge\u00a0A Taxi Driver<\/em>\u2018s less aggressive but similarly unsparing depiction of the\u00a01980 massacre in the city of Gwangju<\/a>, whose still-unknown death toll, as against the 12th Street Riot\u2019s 43 (along with more than a thousand injured and near-apocalyptic property damage) ranges from 144 to 2,000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n