Production Diary: Night Fishing (Park Chan-wook, 2011)

Night Fishing (Park Chan-wook, 2011) is a South Korean 33-minute short film of the fantasy/horror genre. The film entails a man who reels the seemingly dead body of a woman during a evening fishing trip. After suddenly rising from the dead, the man and woman symbolically swap clothes, before the fisherman is killed and his spirit enters the woman. Afterwards, the scene starkly changes – we cut to the woman who we can assume is a spirit channeller, rising from a bath. The man speaks to his family using the woman as a vessel, begging his estranged daughter for forgiveness at his own funeral.

The film’s main ‘gimmick’ is the fact that it was shot entirely on an iPhone 4, perhaps Park’s way of displaying the advancement of digital technology throughout the modern age. However, due to this, the film’s resolution is of a low quality and hasn’t particularly aged well. The digital grading employed by Park throughout the film is also highly prolific, with the colours appearing to be overly saturated particularly during the opening sequence. This saturation is later juxtaposed during the ‘night fishing’ scene where the opposite is apparent – colour appears to have been digitally drained from the setting.

The narrative structure of the film is also very convoluted. Although the events seem to play out in chronological order, the sheer nonsensicality of the plot instils an acute sense of disorientation within the viewer, albeit an extremely memorable viewing experience. The non-diegetic composed score featured throughout the film also accentuates the dramatic events on-screen.

Personally, I enjoyed Night Fishing for its highly idiosyncratic means of storytelling but was however slightly disillusioned by the actual events of the narrative. The aforementioned choice by Park to film entirely on an iPhone 4 now seems incredibly gimmicky rather than revolutionary, and the film shows its age in this regard. The film demonstrated to me how an unorthodox narrative structure can disorient the viewer in an effective and meaningful way.