HOW THEY BECOME SPECTRAL FLANEURS: WALKING THE CITY HAUNTING THE CINEMA IN KIM KI-DUK'S 3-IRON

Abstract

This article examines Kim Ki-duk's 2004 film, 3-Iron through the lens of spectral flanerie. Each of his films evinces a disjuncture in the reception of the controversial director at home and abroad the bind Kim gets caught in as a filmmaker who has garnered accolades and moderate box office successes overseas while failing time and again to appeal to local critics and audiences. Interestingly, this predicament of Kim is in the manner of palimpsest aligned with the ways in which he makes films at a tangent to the film industry he inhabits like a ghost and he makes the spectral possible in a way that only a spectral flaneur-character can embody in his eleventh film 3-Iron. A space opened up by this flaneur enables Kim to operate both within and astride the cracks of the film industry. The spectral flaneur-character comes to stand in for Kim and 3-Iron becomes a bizarre but ultimately compelling allegory of the ghost-like director who has made a film about ghosts.