I'd heard of Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk before last year, thanks to the notoriety of his film The Isle, but my first firsthand experience with his work was with his astonishing Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring. That film achieved some degree of success here in the US; it was well deserved. I'm curious as to how many filmgoers went back after seeing Spring - as I did - and watched The Isle; and how many of those were unaware of, and thus shocked by its explicit content - which at its most cringe-inducing finds common ground between heartbreak, sexuality and fishing hooks.

While I'd be the first to argue the merits of such content, I do think that Kim must enjoy manipulating his audiences, provoking reactions with punctual occurrences of the extreme. Manipulating an audience is easy, of course, whereas justifying it is not, and where Kim' artistry comes in, where his skill as a filmmaker is most apparent, is in his ability to develop layers of rich emotional development between the peaks of those extremes. The contrast is obvious in The Isle (which, I must admit, is the only previous work of his I've seen yet), but harder to detect in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring. There, the subtleties remain the same but an elemental, mythic context is substituted for shocking content. His latest film, 3-Iron, takes a middle ground between the two; gone is the explicit horror, still present is the mysticism, but more prevalent than in either of these prior works is a sense of Kim's hand; his directing the audience towards a particular feeling.

Its story concerns a young man, referred to in the credits simply as Guy Who Stares (played by Hoon Jang), who posts handbills on doorknobs for a living. When he notices a house or apartment where advertisements have accumulated, he presumes the owners are on vacation and breaks in. Generally, the houses belong to wealthy people; he occupies these empty homes for a night or two, enjoying them as if he owned them, and then leaves. He takes nothing, except for snapshots of himself posing in front of whatever family photographs he might find hanging on the wall; and in recompense for his host's unintentional hospitality, he does their laundry and resets the scales in the bathroom, so that they might appear lighter upon their return home.

One of these houses belongs to a man whose battered wife (Se-Jin Park), also nameless, is still there when the young man breaks in. She watches him discreetly for some time, and when she finally makes her presence known, she shows no sign of wanting this intruder to leave. When he does leave, she accompanies him. He takes something this time: a golf club, the titular 3-iron, which at first seems a symbol of pointless wealth but eventually develops into a representation of unbridled agression.

Although it eventually takes on other properites, the film at its simplest level is a love story between this young mand and woman. It is told in Kim's recognizable style of long static shots, evocatively photographed, and with almost no dialogue to move the plot along. The Guy Who Stares never utters a word throughout the entire picture, and while his paramour does break the silence, it is only in the last few minutes; her voice effectively serves as the climax of the film. Kim is a master of letting pensive stares and body language - and the flawless structure of the shots that capture them - tell his stories. He uses silence to beautiful effect - but not to the same effect as in his previous pictures, where one could ascertain a reason for it.

Here we can initially assume that the woman is too shell-shocked from her abusive marriage to speak, and that the young man is simply too mysterious to be troubled with words; but what at first may appear to traits of the characters gradually reveal themselves as traits of the filmmaker. There's no reason for these people not to talk, other than that Kim doesn't want them to for purely symbolic reasons.

Compare this to the films of Tsai Ming Liang, who also trades in overwhelming silence, but does so in a completely objective manner; there are simply no opportunities for his characters to converse. If any symbolism is to be found, it is up to the viewer to find it.

This artifice I speak of is not necessarily a fault with the film, mind you; but it is indicative of what might otherwise be considered a misdirection on Kim's part. For what seemed at first to be an austere urban drama, set squarely in the real world, makes a surprise turn towards the supernatural in the third act, eventually abandoning any trappings of reality and becoming a rather sentimental ghost story of sorts.

These mystical qualities that become so prevalent may remind some viewers of Spring (which was nonetheless more subtle in these matters), but the extremity to which Kim takes them is actually far more reminiscent of the shock value present in The Isle. Consider the first kiss between the characters, which is anticipated and then accompanied by a swelling of strings on the soundtrack. Do we need to be told so officiously that the characters are in love, and that their first attempt at intimacy is a moving experience, for both them and ourselves? Well, for that matter, did we also need to see a man swallow a string of fish hooks and pull them out of his mouth? If there's any difference between these two instances, it's that, in The Isle, the shock is so great that the manipulation is cleverly hidden. In the case of 3-Iron, it's all a bit more blatant; and, I might say, a bit more disappointing.

Don't let me lead you into believing, however, that the film is not worthwhile; it is, very much so. It contains little truth, but much beauty, and this beauty is of a sort that should not be ignored. While Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring could be considered a timeless fable, this film is best viewed as a fairie tale; it is lovely and moving - Kim's manipulations do work, despite their transparency - but of surprisingly little consequence.