How fitting then, that my interview with him should feel like a feverish hallucination.
Congratulations onStoker, first of all.
Do you think that outsider perspective was important?
Well, not particularly.
It wasnt the case.
The movie he wanted to make has a universal story.
And a fairytale travels all over the world, and crosses borders.
In much the same way, [Stoker] is a fairytale, a universal story.
Its a detailed film, as your films always are.
Of course, back in Korea, he would have many more days to shoot with.
Did he have ample time in pre-production?
He doesnt really think so.
Maybe its because of that.
I was wondering if there was an underlying thinking behind details like that.
Just like being a chef, you use ingredients to create something that wasnt there before.
How you use it as a means of expressing an idea.
Its the same thing for a filmmaker.
Not one thing that you see or hear in the film is there randomly.
Everything is designed, everything is intended, everything is there to perform a function.
But could you give me an idea of their underlying meaning, in these instances?
What sort of function do these patterns serve?
So it if it functions in any of these ways, it deserves to be there.
And the wallpapers in Indias room, for instance, speaks to her character.
She likes things to be in order.
She likes things to be in symmetry.
If his memory serves, the script prescribed piano music a la Erik Satie.
And through signature repetitions in his music, but with variation in each repetition.
They came to Philip Glass one day, and said, This is what we did with your music.
Did you realise you could do this?
So that immediately made changes to the script.
Park Chan-wook, thank you very much.
Stokeris out in UK cinemas on the 1st March it’s possible for you to read our review here.
