Park Chan-wook‘s latest film “No Other Choice” follows a middle-aged man (“Squid Game” star Lee Byung-hun) who goes to desperate lengths to gain employment after being unexpectedly fired from the paper company he worked at for 25 years. That’s nearly the same length of time that Park spent bringing the story, adapted from Donald E. Westlake’s 1997 mystery novel “The Ax,” to the big screen.
“We all harbor that deep fear of employment and security,” Park said through a translator at the official Venice Film Festival press conference. “I was able to work on this film for 20 years because no matter who I told over the two decades, they’d always relate and say, ‘It’s such a timely story.’ That gave me the confidence to know it’s a film that will eventually get made.”
Park, a Korean cinema legend known for writing and directing “Oldboy,” “Thirst” and “The Handmaiden,” as well as producing “Snowpiercer,” last appeared in competition at Venice with 2005’s “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.” So, what took so long for Park to return to the Lido?
“There’s a very short answer, one word in fact,” Park quipped. “That’s money.”
He added, “As the fate of a film always tends to be, it’s not that we didn’t have any budget, but I wanted to make sure [it was] a budget I felt was sufficient. It took 20 years to create this film, and after all that time, I was able to create this amazing cast.”
The sprawling ensemble, most of whom were in attendance at Friday’s press conference, includes Son Ye-jin (“Crash Landing on You”) Lee Sung-min (“Handsome Guys”), Yeom Hye-ran (“The Glory”), Cha Seung-won (“Believer 2”), Yoo Yeon-seok (“Hospital Playlist”) and Park Hee-soon (“The Policeman’s Lineage”). Lee, who leads the cast, called it a “dream” to work with Park Chan-wook and described “No Other Choice” as one of the director’s “most commercial films.”
“Any Korean actor would be happy to jump on the opportunity without second thought,” he said. “No matter what kind of movie, I would have always said ‘yes.’”
Since “No Other Choice” follows the protagonist at a professional crossroads, Park was asked what he would do career-wise if something happens to the film industry.
“I do not think the format of art as film is going to shrink,” he said. “Maybe the culture of going to theaters to watch a movie could come to an end. But I guess if the time comes where I’m not able to get the budget I would like, I’m going to continue and create films on my smartphone. I have already done that.”
Though the topic didn’t come up during Friday afternoon’s press conference, the director recently made headlines because he and his writing partner Don McKellar were kicked out of the Writers Guild of America for violating union rules that forbade working during the union’s 2023 strike. Park has denied the claims that he wrote for “The Sympathizer,” an HBO series based on the 2015 novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, while the industry was picketing.
“I have never violated any rules,” Park said in a statement. “I seriously considered appealing, but I ultimately decided not to appeal because I wanted to focus on ‘No Other Choice,’ which was in post-production in Korea at the time, and I couldn’t afford to spend as much time as the hearing on an appeal.”
In a guest column for Variety, McKellar called their sentencing “intentionally undemocratic, deliberately cruel and over-the-top” and described it as a “scare tactic to intimidate their membership, particularly the “hyphenates” (showrunner-director-writers).”
