고미슾 (aka Spider Forest 2004)

In the middle of our walk of life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Dante, The Divine Comedy

What’s so frightening about a forest? Are we simply programed to be afraid of it because of fairy tales? Or is it more that we’re no longer connected to the land as were our ancestors? Even back then there was fear of the Dark Forest. But why?

Is it just a creepy setting for moody stories? Is it because forests are uncultivated and we associate that with being uncivilized? Is it the fear of physical danger from its inhabitants? Is it something ingrained into us by religion to make us feel since we lost Eden that we are forever not to feel comfortable in nature anymore? Is it Jungian? Is it Freudian? Is it bullsh*t and we’re just big babies afraid of the dark?

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No matter what it is that makes us fear it, The Dark Forest is a powerful archetype throughout narrative history. Beowulf has to enter the dark forest to pursue Grendel after pulling off his arm. Snow White finds herself banished there. It’s a place Young Goodman Bown finds out some unpleasant information. Katniss has to enter it in The Hunger Games. Even Harry Potter’s world has the Forbidden Forest with dire consequences for those who enter there.

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As a metaphor, it’s multifunctional. In the Korean film 고미슾 (aka Spider Forest) the dark forest is a metaphor for memory. A man wakes up in the forest and stumbles into a cabin where he finds another man hacked to death by a scythe and his girlfriend in another room dying and whispering, “Spiders, Spiders” again and again before she dies. He thinks he sees a shadow figure and he picks up the scythe and runs after him only to be hit in a road by an oncoming vehicle which kind of scrambles his brain. After coming around he tries (with the police’s encouragement) to piece together exactly what happened, but he feels there are gaps and he just can’t grasp the whole story. He shouldn’t feel alone because even though this film is beautifully filmed and acted…one reviewer said it was a jigsaw puzzle missing too many pieces. And that about sums up the whole shebang.

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Though this movie was NOT a hit in Korea, I find it still interesting and provocative years after I saw it the first time. It got WAY more attention on the International Film circuit than it did in its own homeland. It’s well worth a watch just for the atmosphere created by the director. A viewer unfamiliar with these actors’ past roles would not know how much different they are here than what they had become famous for. And good for them.

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The dark forest will always scare us because it touches something deep within that’s unexplainable, unidentifiable, and ultimately inescapable. The modern dark forest may be Wall Street; it may be Congress; it MAY BE ANYTHING…. That’s the power of an archetype!

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Correspondences

By Baudeleaire

Nature is a temple in which living pillars
Sometimes give voice to confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with understanding eyes.

Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
In a deep and tenebrous unity,
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day,
Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.

There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
— And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant,

With power to expand into infinity,
Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin,
That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.

(translated from the French by William Aggeler)