The easiest way for me to sum up The Doomsday Book would be as follows: two world end disaster comedies book ending a somber meditation on our awkwardly progressing relationship with artificial intelligence. Made up of three films, the first and last by Im Pil-Seong, and the middle by the maverick genre contortionist Kim Jee-woon, it offers a rare venture by Korean cinema into the realm of science fiction, with visions of the future that are alarming,thought provoking, and some would argue not too far off. The first story, Brave New World, takes a stab at the zombie genre. Here zombie epidemic is linked to gross mass consumption, disposal and the spread of germs and contamination that come about as a result, making it a far more tangible threat than other more fantastical versions have shown. There is great attention to creating visuals that are both comic and stomach churning, as scenes of overflowing trash containers, a cattle slaughter house, Korean bbq dining, and even facesucking kiss causes many of the senses to bristle.
The film starts out with a joke-y sitcom vibe before shifting towards more panic stricken epidemic mode, as the rabidly violent infected citizens begin to twitch into undeadly activity, including the main character, a scientist who’s been left at home to babysit the family apartment. But tongue remains planted in cheek throughout making this story an entry into the realm of zomedy. There is cutting satire, characteristic of Korean films, especially when a live news broadcast of politicians and assorted experts weighing in on the crisis is shown. Even in the absence of infected attackers, nobody keeps their head, as the show devolves into screaming, propagandizing, and Russian folk songs.
There are rousing scenes of destruction and human carnage, much of it shown in the club district Hung Dae, with still uninfected drunken revelers being hard to distinguish from those that have transformed. While this and the satire make things fairly entertaining, there is some loss of engagement when the spectacle of society’s demise replaces any human drama. We’re left with some exciting visuals, and a hint of deeper meaning, but little else before shifting to the next story.
The middle piece, The “Heavenly Creature” is the most philosophical of the three and the only one that I feel fans of ‘hard’ science fiction will find legit. It is a minimally told exploration of the idea of artificial intelligence surpassing its intended function of unquestioningly carrying out humankind’s commands. Readers of PLUTO, Urasawa Naoki’s excellent manga re-envisioning of the Tezuka classic ATOM, will appreciate this for delving into similar territory, looking at opposing reactions to an evolution of consciousness within one of our own creations. There are those that are open minded and sympathetic while others are fearful and suspect of malintentions.
This story takes places at the earliest stages of such kind of potential robot revolution. Here, though, the sympathetic side is represented by a group of Buddhist monks who believe they may have found the embodiment of Buddha within one of their monastery’s worker droids. After a technician called to the scene is baffled by the robot’s complexity of responses to a routine battery of tests, the opposition enters the picture in the form of the robot production company’s wheelchair bound CEO and a team of armed soldiers.
What follows is a growingly intense conversation between the executive, the monks, the robot, and technician, who finds himself in the pivotal point between the job he is familiar with and a developing empathy for the creations he has been working throughout his career. The question remains: should this abnormally functioning robot be classified as transcendent or defective?
Aside from the monastery, the story’s only other setting is a cold, cubicle-like apartment complex where the technician lives and experiences an instance of humans’ growing inhumanity, as a young and unmannered woman demands he repair a robotic pet only to callously dispose of it when dissatisfied with the results. Within this simple story an impressive number of themes abound: the aforementioned question of how to respond if our technology achieves equal intellectual footing, human’s growing attachment to and immersion amidst non-sentient robotic companionship, and the notion of spirituality being an exclusively human quality. On this last point, the film quietly raises an astounding ‘what if’...: What if an android could flawlessly embody and deliver religious sentiment the same if not better than an ordained priest or minister could? It is striking the way the modest tenets of Buddhism match with robot’s minimal expression and appearance.
The confrontation also calls to mind paranoid notions of large corporate entities controlling government and military complexes, to an end that seems more of a risk to our freedoms than that posed by artificial life forms. Indeed this minimalistic venture from the very talented Jee-woon provides much to think about.
For the third and final piece of this trilogy, scientific explanation is out the window. So too are any philosophical ponderings. Once again, this is a humorously rendered tale with catastrophic results directed by Im Pil-Seong. This story plays for bigger laughs than the first, putting earth as the destination for a giant, hurtling something (best left as a surprise), which was unwittingly ordered by a girl killing time on the internet. The televised response to the ensuing end of the world is hilarious, pitting infomercials for rapidly conceived of and very faulty products delivered with rampant enthusiasm versus newscasts run by a dull and listless anchor. This broadcast devolves, like in the first story, but this time it falls into a more universally understood soap opera that plays out among the self-absorbed broadcasters. This film is less about the public falling into a panic and more about the charming persistence of the Korean family unit, but this story really doesn’t sufficient time to develop this theme to any great effect.
While there are many good ideas throughout this trilogy, a few things don’t sit well with me. The fact that the first and third parts are so similar in theme and structure, yet the middle piece is so different might have came about effectively, but to me it made everything feel like it dragged on longer than it should. Had there been some effort to cleverly transition from one story to the next, I might have felt a stronger reason for them all to be packaged together. I might’ve forgiven the disparity more if Jee-Woon’s piece was more interesting. While effective, I found it did not reach the level of awe I associate with just about every feature film I’ve seen him direct.
A different setup would have given the collection some symmetry. If it was three completely different visions, each piece might stand more powerfully on its own. Instead, the Jee-woon directed middle piece made me feel more like I was being taken out of the mode of the first two stories. Alternately, three cohesive stories that all shared a common thread would have been successful as well. I’m reminded of an independent science fiction triptych from 2003, Greg Pak’s Robot Stories. Shot on a very modest budget, each story (all of them directed and written by Pak) stood on its own as unique, but shared similar themes and aesthetics with one another. It gelled together without seeming so disjointed. For Doomsday Book, then, could Im not have put together 3 stories of flashy apocalypse scenarios? Might Jee-Woon’s far more “The Heavenly Creature” have better fit another assemblage of short films, or perhaps stood on its own? Reports hold that the final piece was completed to make up for another director’s short film that could not come to be, and was collaborated on by both Im and Jee-Woon. However, while it does have something of a tacked on feel, it really doesn’t bear much of Jee-Woon’s mark either.
A part of me laments that such great ideas were not worked into something that was molded into a more cohesive whole, one that could have made the same heavy impact as other films that have born Jee-Woon’s name. Still, there are few trips to the cinema that offer zombies and spiritual robots, outlandish visions of world destruction and serious contemplation, in one sitting. This makes Doomsday Book at the very least worth skimming through.
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