[Dispatch=Reporter Jung Tae-yun] "Do I have the right to tell their story?"

He found the story he wanted to make. The interview was complete, and the screenplay was done. But director Lee Chang-dong stopped. He wasn't certain whether he had the right to tell this story when he wasn't the person directly involved.

That question was never erased for 10 years. The long journey to find an answer led to the Netflix film "A Possible Love."

The question he had held onto for so long expanded into multiple layers of stories within a single film.

It is his first new work in 8 years since "Burning." At the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, it became the first Korean film ever to win the Jury Prize.

Dispatch recently met with director Lee Chang-dong. He spoke about 10 years of hesitation and the "A Possible Love" he found at the end of it.

◆ "To that question, I could not find an answer"

He didn't fold the film in the sense that he abandoned the story. In the meantime, labor began to be not just dismissed from positions but disrespected, and AI started to take those places. The question grew heavier.

The breakthrough came with a new character. When a documentary filmmaker couple entered the picture, the story began to move again. During the period when Korean film investment was most frozen, he met Netflix and the film came into the world.

Q. The starting point of the film goes back approximately 10 years. At the time, you went through interviews and screenplay work and even proceeded to pre-production, but stopped just before filming. What was the reason?

Lee Chang-dong: I wanted to be confident in the question: whether this story has meaning for me and for people living together in today's world.

I thought that the value and rights of labor are fundamental issues not just for Korean society but for humanity. What laid-off workers struggled with most was not having their rights recognized.

Workers ended up fighting each other, and there were cases where people couldn't endure that pain and took their own lives. I thought it was a story worth telling at least once.

But even right before filming, the doubt didn't disappear. Do I have the right to tell their story? Since I'm not these people, from what position and how honestly could I capture it?

As I looked at the pain more closely, that question grew larger. In the end, I couldn't find an answer, so I put the film aside.

Q. What was the impetus to start making the film again?

Lee Chang-dong: While I was contemplating the story, the issue of labor became increasingly severe. It became a situation where labor itself was being disrespected, regardless of whether it was dismissal or not. With the AI revolution intertwined, it became an era where people have difficulty asserting their existence and role.

At that time, writer Oh Jung-mi suggested the story of a documentary filmmaker couple. I thought that if I could tell their story together, I could also address my own concerns within the film.

What position should someone in have when conveying the lives of others? How well can I properly convey their story? I thought it would actually be more honest to deal with that problem together within the film.

Q. Why did you go with Netflix?

Lee Chang-dong: I think that time was when Korean cinema had its weakest condition. Money that was invested got tied up, and there was a situation where we couldn't do anything no matter what we tried.

The content of the work must have had an impact too. If this were a work that could give confidence that it would absolutely do well, there might have been places willing to invest.

Nevertheless, we deliberated until the end. Netflix, from the beginning, saw the screenplay and wanted to work together. Even though the domestic film market was more difficult than overseas, they waited.

But there came a point where we couldn't wait any longer, and when Netflix said they would work with us at that time, production proceeded.

◆ "Yeji's position is my position"

In the film, there is a person holding a camera. Documentary filmmaker Yeji (played by Jo Yeo-jeong). She tries to record the suffering of laid-off workers, but she herself lives with a wealthy husband.

Lee Chang-dong overlaid himself in that position. It is the irony of a creator who cannot make films without capital. And he did not divide that contradiction into good and evil.

Q. It seems that in Yeji's position, not only the ethics of a creator but also the relationship between capital and creation are projected.

Lee Chang-dong: The setting that Yeji is someone married to a wealthy husband might be a special case. But I think that position itself is connected to the position of me making films and many other people.

Making films cannot be done without borrowing the power of capital either. It's even more so when working with massive capital like Netflix. While doing work that requires borrowing the power of capital, I try to find independence and my own voice within it.

Yeji's appearance of applying for subsidies while living with a wealthy husband also touches on such irony. She thinks that subsidy will guarantee her independence, but in reality, she is placed in a position subordinate to capital.

That said, my intention was not to portray Yeji critically. I wanted to show the nature of people living with such contradictions.

Q. The film deals with the lives of laid-off workers while also encompassing the story of the creator trying to capture those lives on camera. In what way did you want to combine these two stories?

Lee Chang-dong: Because Yeji tries to convey their lives through documentary, naturally the form became a combination of narrative film and documentary.

What was important was how to show it. I didn't want to simplify it into a conflict between the wealthy class and those who are not.

That era has passed. I wanted to show through the details of everyday life how the power of capital that disrespects the value of labor dominates our daily lives.

If you expect a structure where good people overcome bad people, you might be disappointed. It's easier to divide things into good and evil, and the greater the confrontation, the greater the catharsis.

But our lives are not that simple. A person being oppressed doesn't mean they are only virtuous. Various emotions and thoughts must coexist, and our film couldn't help but be that way.

◆ "Not a white horse, but a man in a white car"

The title is itself a question. Love stories typically depict love that cannot be realized. Then what is a possible love?

Lee Chang-dong's answer was relationship. The heart wavering over a man from a different world, a couple who have been together so long they don't even know if it's love. Two loves are placed side by side in a single film.

Q. Ultimately, it comes back to "relationship." How was the film title "A Possible Love" decided?

Lee Chang-dong: It was a title we reached consensus on relatively easily. I thought it was a title that, while being words everyone knows, felt somewhat unfamiliar.

I thought it could be a question in itself. What is a possible love? What is possible and what is impossible?

Usually love stories often presuppose love that cannot be realized. Then paradoxically, what is a possible love? I thought it could pose that fundamental question.

This film is also a story of two couples meeting, but ultimately it is a story about relationships. Relationships between people, relationships between workers and their workplaces, relationships between colleagues.

When such relationships disappear and are disrespected in an instant, what can sustain those relationships? I thought that was love.

Q. The relationship between Mi-ok (played by Jeon Do-yeon) and Sang-woo (played by Cho In-sung) tells another kind of love. What story did you want to tell?

Lee Chang-dong: Mi-ok meets a man, Sang-woo, whom she would normally have had no reason to meet. He's charming and even kind. He even stirs her heart. In that sense, it could be a story about romance.

Romance is not an easy issue, especially for women. There are fantasies about a knight on a white horse, and there's the question of how much one can resist such romance. Not a white horse, but a man in a white car, so to speak. (laughs)

I like him, but it's my feeling—why does this person stir my heart? Sang-woo has no particular purpose. He simply makes people like him.

I thought that resembled the nature of capital as well. Capital also expands following profit, not out of necessity, and in that process sometimes engages in mass layoffs and restructuring.

Sang-woo too acts without particular intention, but for the person receiving it, it's usually not a small matter. Even the fantasy of romance can be a kind of love if love it is.

Q. On the other hand, Mi-ok and Ho-seok (played by Seol Kyung-gu) are a couple who have been together for a long time. In the final scene where the two sit on a wooden platform drinking alcohol and gazing at the moon, what heart did you put into it?

Lee Chang-dong: They've been together since they were so young that they live like family, not even thinking about whether they truly love each other. Still, that love is precious.

I hoped that in the final scene, that love could be confirmed. Could that too be a possible love? I hoped viewers would feel that way.

Q. Did you think of that scene as the ending from the beginning?

Lee Chang-dong: Our film can be said to show the process of a documentary filmmaker trying to convey the suffering and lives of a laid-off worker family. The primary goal of the film is also to convey their lives and stories.

But you can't take a documentary's story and compose it freely like a narrative film or create a plot, right? It has to be documentary precisely because it takes things as they are.

I thought narratively embellishing that story would go against inner necessity. Within the bounds of not heavily fictionalizing their story, I deliberated on an inevitable ending.

◆ "What film can do is that much"

The story returns again to labor. An era where AI does people's work. How can people prove who they are?

And a final question: what can film do? Lee Chang-dong did not draw a conclusion. He only spoke of one man who cried for the first time in front of a camera.

Q. Why is it important for you to talk about the value of labor?

Lee Chang-dong: Labor is not just an economic issue. It is a fundamental problem of our lives. Even if an era comes where we can live without working, what would happen if we don't know and are not recognized for what kind of work we do?

When Ho-seok says "it feels like my insides are empty," that's what he means too. It also means not knowing what kind of work he must do to live or who he is.

AI has no self and no identity. Then what is self, what is identity? What distinguishes me from another being? At the center of that is labor.

Our lives are already changing. You might still think it's not your issue yet. But it's worth thinking about at least once.

Q. It ultimately leads to the question of what film can do. Do you think the act of capturing someone else's story on camera can bring change to that person?

Lee Chang-dong: I cannot draw a conclusion about what role film can play or whether it can restore relationships.

But the fact that while Yeji was filming the documentary, Ho-seok ended up telling his story is important. Ho-seok is a person who buried his anger and despair deep inside.

It seemed so precarious that if he had let it out of his mouth, he would have done something reckless, and he hadn't even received psychological treatment. Yet in front of the camera, he eventually lets the story out.

He explodes and cries too. That alone could be called healing. Of course, it's unclear whether that documentary would have been completed to the end.

But at least in the process of making it, it was healing for Ho-seok. Even if doubt sets in about his work, if he finds hope within it, that's what film can do.

Q. Finally, the moment where Yeji says she loves the lives of people who have no relation to her is also striking. Do you think love is necessary for someone who conveys the stories of others?

Lee Chang-dong: I think that even people who aren't creators but work with the stories of others cannot help but have that kind of heart.

Don't reporters have to try to love their subject for the meaning of their work to change? I think it ultimately comes down to the effort of creating a relationship. Of course, the question of how much that's possible remains.

<Photos provided by Netflix>