It seems that North America has picked up Kim Ki-duk's latest movie 3-iron. I had the privilege of watching the movie last January, and I consider it to be one of Kim's better works, but not his best (my favorites from his oevure are still his 2002 film Bad Guy and last year's Samaria.)
The film, which clocks at just about 90 minutes, basks in silence. Kim makes the silence an allusion to the detachment our two protagonists have from the rest of the world, and the attempts they make to maintain this detachment. Invisibility is their aim, and yet ironically their lack of invisibilty was the thing that made them find each other in the first place.
But perhaps that could be explained by another thematic element that Kim tries to promote though his movie: perspective. He makes this clear throughout the movie, with various references to eyes and sight (not to mention the words he flashes at the end, which some may consider a bit of overkill). The houses the two protagonists invade may serve as a small window of perspective to the lives of their occupants; every house has a distinct quality that says something about the family living there.
Kim's protagonists are often misunderstood characters, some living on the fringes of society, with some of his movies portraying that isolation (The Isle comes to mind) visually. In 3-iron, this convention stays, but instead of an isolated place, the characters do their activities in an 'empty,' ironically 'personal' space.
The film never drags, thanks to relatively snappy editing and pacing. Kim definitely knows how to build atmosphere visually, making the entire 90 minutes an interesting experience into a more mature work of a prolific director.
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