Park Chan-wook's Thirst

Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook's foray into the Vampire Genre, Thirst, will quench the insatiable appetites of horror fans. It is a cinematic feast not for the timid at heart or mind, nor is it for moviegoers looking for cheap thrills nestled in predictable plots. Thirst is gloriously gory, but not since Interview with a Vampire, has the blood sucker genre seen such invigorating and sensual scenes.

Anyone familiar with Park Chan-wook's films, (the Vengeance Trilogy including the acclaimed Oldboy), can imagine the creative boundaries he would push with vampires. Park Chan-wook has pushed those boundaries with Thirst, yet with his own subtle artistic integrity, so as not to make a mockery of the genre. With the blood-suckling frenzy over Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, it may be easy to dismiss Thirst as just a dewdrop in a saturated genre. Though it is highly doubtful that Korean studio executives persuaded Park Chan-wook into leaching off "what's hot" in America.

The vampire element in Park Chan-wook's Thirst is more a physical manifestation of his source material's plot and characters. That source being the 19^th century novel, Therese Raquin, by the French pillar of naturalism, Emile Zola. Fantastical vampires aside, Thirst's writers Park Chan-wook and Seo-Gyeong Jeongborrow heavily from Zola's plot in Therese Raquin. A major theme within Zola's work is the animal-like behavior of humans, sometimes called "Human Beast" (an actual title of Zola's 1890 novel) or "Human Brutes."Vampires offer a tasty symbolic representation for human brutality; the carnal desires of a beast fueled by conniving human intelligence.

Within the tight confines of three characters, a priest lusting after a housewife desperate from the care of a sickly husband, Thirst closely follows Zola's original study of disturbing human behavior. Zola's original character was an artist, but Park Chan-wook converted the artist into a priest. Layer the priest with being turned into a Vampire by a blood transfusion gone wrong and Thirst erupts into a Shakespearean throne of blood.

All the while a fourth character, in both Zola's and Park Chan-wook's adaptation, is watching judgingly at the beastly affairs of these humans. It is the sickly husband's caring, albeit overbearing mother, who becomes paralyzed with shock. The cause of her shock is the sudden death of her son, who she later learns was murdered by the priest and daughter-in-law. Park Chan-wook makes Zola's plot even more horrific by the murderous entanglements of vampires and the overtones of religion.

The religious overtones immerse the priest as a martyr for the repressed urges of clergymen. This complex character transformation is captured by the dynamic and tragic-comic subtleties of Song Kang-ho. A leading man of great versatility, Song Kang-ho has brought forth tremendous roles of fatherhood before. As the vengeful father in Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and as the bumbling father in Bong Joon-ho's The Host. In a performance perfectly personified, Song Kang-ho balances the role of altruistic priesthood burdened with the sexual blood-lust of Dracula. The priest is no Dracula though, as his soul is still torn between love and lust then murder and martyrdom.

As with Zola's Therese Raquin, the priest in Thirst has his repressed desires aroused by lust for a married woman. As his vampire ways emerge, the lust grows into a maddened love for a woman with an increasing curiosity for this mysterious beast. He is a priest trying to save himself, yet his innate desire to help others is crossed with a bloodlust for this vulnerable woman. She in turn is desperate to be saved and searching for escape, yet only finds salvation in being consumed by a ravenous vampire.

Their suffering is linked throughout the film, especially through self-inflicted wounds on their inner thighs. As a commitment to his celibacy the priest lashes his thighs whenever his desires awaken. The young wife stabs her inner thighs to fake her husband's abuse, intended to enrage the priest. They're complex psychological torment escalates into a bloodbath of sin and lust, haunted by a dead husband.

All the while the paralyzed mother watches as the priest kills his adulterer, but then infects her with rebirth through his vampire blood. Her awakened thirst for life through blood is the salvation she was seeking, as her eyes blaze with blackness. The priest has created a monster and a twist on the old adage of becoming responsible for the life you save becomes his new torture.

Their bloody entanglements eventually leave the priest no choice but to prepare a dramatic dual suicide, which the wife battles in resistance to rousing comedic ends. It is an ending also highly reminiscent of David Slade's vampire film 30 Days of Night, where lovers return to stardust, awash from the sun's rays.

All throughout the bloody climax of the lovers' last stand, the watchful knowing eyes of the mother stare on in literal paralyzed horror. Her eyes watch the bloodlust, penetrating the screen as a reminder that we are witness to these mortal (or immortal) sins. Audiences, and Zola's 19^th century readers, are much like a mother seeing her children do the unspeakable while paralyzed to do nothing about it.

There is so much more symbolism to explore within Park Chan-wook's Thirst. From the medicinal aspect of Vampire mythology to the corporeal connection of blood and thirst. There is martyrdom, marriage, melancholy and mayhem, all within an exceptionally Korean horror film adapted from 19^th century French society. The human affairs of beastly love transcend cultures and centuries, assuring us that we will always be tormented by a thirst for life.