아피찻퐁 위라세타쿤의 영상 미학 개요 －로베르 브레송과의 비교분석을 중심으로－

Abstract

The objective of this essay is to perform a detailed analysis on the greatness and importance of Apichatpong Wheerasethakul’s film within the film history by performing a comparative analysis on his film with that of Robert Bresson’s. Under this objective, this paper will compare and contrast the differences and similarities of the content and form of the two directors’ films. To compare the two director’s differences in formality, this paper has used style, narrative structure, repetition and variation, and editing style as the analysis standard. Wheerasethakul tends to emphasize mixed genre, double narrative structure, experimental editing, and repetition in the form of décalcomanie and dejavu, while Bresson explains his film’s characteristics through direct linear structure, clear emotion curve, and repetition of ‘pleaonasm’. To show their difference in contents, this paper compares the two director’s viewpoint on the world and religion. Wheerasethakul expresses the reminiscence and Buddhist ideology of metempsychosis on nature using the motive of folk tales and legends, as well as homosexual identity of the individual. Bresson mortifies and contemplates in his films on human beings’ sin and conscience, redemption of original sin, absolute faith on God, and rational thinking. For the part of formal similarity, this paper seeks their similarities by actively using visual devices and sounds that break the films’ fabrications as well as using the correlation function of ‘entropy’ and ‘neg-entropy’ explained by the book of Joong-Kwon Jin. Especially, the ‘estrangement effect’ is well emphasized in both directors’ films. In particular, in Weerasethakul’s films, letterism, actors looking at the camera, deviation of sound and image, and ambiguous actions and lines are used for the estrangement effect, while fragmentation of image, active use of sounds, excessive repetition of pleonasm, and ascetic, minimal plot and actors’ movements are used in Bresson’s films. In both aspects of content and form, this essay makes the analysis on their films from the viewpoint of poetic cinema and authorism. While analyzing the diverse differences and similarities of the two directors’ films, this essay also shows how Apichatpong’s films were influenced by post-modernism and how Bresson’s films were influenced by modernism. As much as Bresson’s films were influenced by modernism, Wheerasethakul’s films were highly influenced by post-modernism in terms of deconstructive and acentric narration, letterism, estrangement effect, possibility of polysemic comprehension of the audience, and experiment for the form itself.