Thanks to Curzon, Bong Joon-ho’s debut feature film (first released in 2000) is now available to watch in the United Kingdom for the first time. Arriving hot on the heels of a deserved Oscar win for Parasite – and the re-issue of Memories of Murder (director Bong’s first masterpiece) – British Bong completists have a treat on their hands.
Now really is the best time to watch Barking Dogs Never Bite, not because it is especially brilliant but because hindsight has made it fascinating. This is an uneven and flawed film, but it is also a fascinating film in which you can see early indications of everything director Bong would become. It is your classic debut film in which there is a lot of experimentation, and in which some of this hits and some of this does not. You also have clear examples of Bong Joon-ho setting out the foundations for themes, narrative beats, metaphors shots and approaches that he would return to – and master – in later works. As previously mentioned, for fans of the director, this is a must.
Barking Dogs Never Bite tells the story of a part-time college lecturer who is trying to become a professor. The narrative rotates around his unenviable existence in which he struggles to get by and is irritated by a local yapping dog. This leads to the inciting incident in which he murders a local dog in the hope of stopping the noise. This, inadvertently, sets into action a semi-surreal spiral set inside a brutally real setting that facilitates dark social satire and the anti-capitalist politics you expect from a Bong Joon-ho film. Our protagonist has a pregnant girlfriend, who becomes increasingly frustrated at him, and his path crosses with a young girl who is also scraping by. There is a lot of blunt metaphor here, transgressive acts of violence used to accentuate how the system dehumanises people, forcing them into an underclass and this pressure resulting in desperate acts. It also highlights the inherent cruelty of the systems and showcases how they cultivate a dark human desire for power and control. There are also much more subtle moments that show these themes and though the overall narrative is no way near as elegant as his later work, the intertwining characters do a good job of widening the film’s critique. Here we have the necessary positive portrayals of those pushed down by society – characters filled with compassion that are wrongfully treated – but we also see a darker side of this. Much like how Parasite avoids simple reductionism, Barking Dogs Never Bite avoids simplistically deifying the unfortunate and villainising the rich, it is a rounded portrait that therefore exposes a system as opposed to merely spotlighting individuals. However, one could argue that the satire and critique here more exists as a by-product of the drama, or exists in addition to the narrative, as opposed to feeling like an integral part of it.
The issue is, perhaps, that this critique doesn’t exist alongside filmic brilliance – like it does in works as early as Memories of Murder. Barking Dogs has the tonal shifts, dark humour and quirky characters you expect out of a film from director Bong but it does not feel as natural. Films such as the Host, Parasite and Memories of Murder have these perfectly balanced tones that oscillate between pathos, humour, absurdity and harsh reality while never feeling uneven. Barking Dogs does feel uneven. This doesn’t feel down to a poor script but more due to execution. The pacing is uneven and the editing unrefined: some scenes end abruptly or fit together clumsily, again evoking the feel of a more experimental work. This links back to the less natural societal critique. The lack of elegance, and the sporadic plotting, means the metaphors do not always fully coalesce and never quite feel endemic. You can articulate the intent but that does not mean the potential is fully realised in the end product.
To return to the tone, there is also an edginess here that does not always work. Bong Joon-ho’s other work often exhibits a slyness and an authentic darkness while this feels more blunt. There is darkness here but it feels more forced, edging into the territory of shock tactics as opposed to intelligent subversions. However, the edge does work in places. There is an audacity on show that is often very commendable, sometimes accentuated by wonderful camera work. A lot of the cinematography here is functional – which makes sense for an early work -but there are some moments of sheer brilliance. One particular moment involves a dog, a well chosen angle and a metal pole. The result is wonderfully audacious and is a reminder of a clear influence on this film: J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise. This is no work of speculative science fiction but the apartment block setting – and its use as a symbol for class politics – definitely evokes Ballard’s seminal novel.
Overall, Barking Dogs Never Bite does not exactly hold up. The characters are unlikeable, which is not uncommon in Bong Joon-ho’s work, but they aren’t always compellingly unlikeable. Song Kang-ho’s detective in Memories of Murder is an awful person but he’s a brilliant character – our protagonist here feels like a pawn for the plot and is not of inherent interest. The character work is, like so much else, very uneven. Some of the secondary players are compelling but nobody is particularly well fleshed out, especially when you consider how real ever single character feels in Parasite (and how effortlessly and quickly they are all established). All of this being true, the film is still very much worth watching. It is a fascinating film that gives a wonderful insight into the director’s obsessions and shows you where later ideas came from. A perfect example is when our protagonist is walking a street before being overwhelmed by gas from a mobile fumigator. It is a moment Bong Joon-ho returns to at the beginning of Parasite; in that film he has the characters construct pizza boxes while sitting in a toxic cloud, here he has a character lean down, pick up a scratch card and start to scratch away – it is a moment that, like the one in Parasite, hits very hard. This is why the film is very much worth watching: there are inspired moments of social satire and consistently you see the rough sketch of something that would come later – contextualising the director’s later work and also evoking greater appreciation. This is a faltering first step but a compelling one – one in which the joy is in knowing what comes next, knowing what experiments would stick and seeing how the uneven craft develops into real mastery.
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