Memories of Murder is, above all, about the corrosive effects of passing time—and how time renders an already ambiguous, uncertain serial murder case even less fathomable and detectable. Like in the work of one of his masters, Billy Wilder, Bong ‘unfolds' the true themes of each of his films slowly—returning us, at the end of Memories of Murder (as in Mother, 2009), to the exact same spot—but with our understanding of what is at stake, and what has vanished, now considerably deepened.
Cristina Álvarez López & Adrian Martin
July 30, 2016