 And movies we can learn from the handmaiden today with George Casey and me here on ThinkTech. I'm Jay Fidel. We're going to talk about a movie that we cannot discuss in great detail because this, may I say, there's pornography. So, you know, viewer discretion advised. George, let's take first part of the show and you can do your monologue, if you will. Jay Leno, a monologue about how this thing goes. Suffice to say, it's a long movie. It's a beautiful movie. Production values are off the charts. And the quality of it. There's the poster for it. And the people are absolutely beautiful women. Oh, God. Anyway, so George, tell us what's going on here in the hand. What is a handmaiden? Handmaiden is like a servant that specifically is like a valet for a woman, you know, like takes care of all the woman's needs, right? And where and when did this movie take place? 1930s. Japanese occupied Korea. That's where it took place. And it's on this mansion, this beautiful mansion that was filmed in different places in Japan and in Korea. And it's, yeah, it's in the 19th. Beautiful is the word. I mean, this is the most extraordinary mansion you ever saw. Yes. It looks like something out of Victorian England. The whole thing is internal. It's got wood, oak all over the plate, the floors, the walls, the ceilings. It's got fantastic chandeliers and oak cases and furniture. It's like you say, God, I don't think a place like this exists in the world, much less, you know, in Korea, I guess, is where it happens in 1930s. It's amazing. And these people had had pretty much played ball with the Japanese when they took over Korea. And that's why they were given this, you know, affluence. They helped the guy, the uncle, Kochi is his name. Yeah. They helped the Japanese occupy. Kozuki. Yeah. Kozuki. Yeah. He helped the Japanese occupy Korea. And as a result, they gave him a mine. It was some kind of natural resource. And this made him very, very wealthy so he could afford this fantastic mansion. And it goes from there. He has unlimited money. Yes. Yes. And he's a very sick individual as well. Sometimes unlimited money makes you sick. Yeah. Well, case in point of what we're dealing with in the world today. So basically what happens, there's three parts to this movie. And as you like, Jay, some of the pieces are not there in the first part. So you see this young woman in a poor fan, from a poor family of pickpockets, right? And she's called to go by Count Fujiwara, who was a, we find out later as a con man, to come to that mansion and be the handmaiden for Lady Hideko, who is the niece of, where is he? Yeah. Uncle Kozuki. Kozuki, whatever. Uncle Kozuki. And basically, as the show progresses, she comes in, she's sort of naive and young. And you see her being very gentle with Lady Hideko, who she's the handmaiden for, the servant for. And as this progresses, they become closer and closer and closer. And this is sort of maybe a love relationship begins between them. Wait, before you rush off there. So Lady Hideko is wealthy. Oh, yeah. She's the niece or something. She's the niece, right? Of Kouchi. And in her own right, she has tons of money. Exactly. And the handmaiden who is the young girl, who is the, I guess it's Korean young girl. Yes. The family itself is Japanese, but the handmaiden is Korean. Yes. She's actually a pickpocket. I don't know if you caught that. Yes. She's a pickpocket. And she, you know, she was out of money. And so she took this job. And she, she was my favorite, by the way. I sure, she's so beautiful, this woman. And, you know, they think she's a quiet, demure handmaiden. She's actually a pickpocket. And they're all doing deception. Every one of them is doing this kind of deception on the other ones. Yes. I mean, the nobody is safe from the deception. And Fujiwara, the, what does he call himself, the noble? A con man. He's a con man. He calls himself a nobility of some kind. Counts, yeah. A count. It's a made up title. Exactly. And he's smooth. I just love the way he moves around. But meanwhile, he's trying to marry Hideko for her money. And he tries to get the handmaiden. What's her name now? Suki or Tamako in Japanese. Oh, yeah, Tanaka. The actress is Kim Tyree. Yeah. She's really something. So he tries to get the handmaiden to convince Hideko to marry him. It's sort of making the match. And that's the way the plot starts. That's the simplest part of the plot. Because then there are subplots upon subplots. Go ahead. Okay. So basically, you've got the basics there, Jay. Right? So this sort of progresses. And in the first part, you really still think that the pickpocket, the handmaiden, is going to be, you know, fooling Lady Hideko so that she marries this con man, so-called count, right? And so she's going to be put into an insane list. They're going to make it that she's crazy. And then she's going to go into it. Hideko, the handmaiden is going to get some gift. I forget what it is. A lot of money for helping him. But only after he's able to marry Hideko. And when he does, then the handmaiden gets the money. And Hideko winds up in an asylum. In an asylum. And he walks away. Fujiwara walks away with all the money. It's simple. But it's not simple because it's completely dynamic and fluid. Yes. Things change, little by little things change as these two women become affectionate with one another. And yet they still have their interests. You know, each one has their interests. And each one thinks that the other one is going to be fool. Each one thinks that, I mean, the handmaiden still thinks she's going to get the money. And Hideko, Lady Hideko is going to be in an asylum. But then after 45 minutes or so, you go into part two. And part two starts showing things before part one. I mean, there's no consecutiveness this year. This is before. And then things start falling into place, right? That this whole thing with the handmaiden, this is a whole plot that the count, so-called count Fujiwara and Lady Hideko have concocted to get this poor wave, right, handmaiden, and that they're going to trick it so that she ends up in the mental in the mental institution. And then Hideko and Fujiwara can split whatever, you know, they can both get away, you know. And Lady Hideko wants to get away from her uncle, the sicko, right, psycho uncle, who's Hizuki, right? And basically, because he's such a sicko, she wants to get away from him. So she'll do anything because her aunt, her mother's sister, her mother died in childhood when she was born. And the mother's sister was there, but the uncle, the sick uncle, she wanted to run away from the sick uncle. So he tortured her and in the basement. And then she hung herself because she went to kuku. So she's really unhappy with the uncle. Yes. And she has a side deal with the count. And her side deal is that instead of, she knows about the plot between the uncle and the handmaiden. Instead, they're going to undermine that plot. They're going to run away. They're going to actually get married. They're going to run away together and spend all her money. And they're going to put the handmaiden in the asylum in a last minute switch and sort of bury the evidence in the asylum. Let me just stop for a minute and tell you about the production values. There wasn't a scene in this movie, two hours plus, there wasn't a scene in this movie that wasn't beautiful. The people were beautiful. The clothing they wore, the count wore western clothing, kouji wore, I guess, traditional Japanese clothing. The buildings, every building was it was just beautiful. And they were beautiful. And the way the camera framed the scenes, it was beautiful. There wasn't one frame in that whole movie that wasn't beautiful. The Japanese, I'm sorry, the Koreans really know how to make a movie. This was an extraordinary, extraordinary art movie in that sense. You couldn't take your eyes off it. But then, of course, the action, you had to watch it carefully, figure out what the plots were. Now, from our rendition, somebody listening, watching our discussion here today, they may say, hey, this is so complicated. You need a yellow pad and a chart, figure out who's with who and who's against who and all that. Not really, not really, because the way they unfold it, like in that chapter two you mentioned, you begin to understand chapter one. And then all of a sudden, the thing takes on a new dimension. And what becomes central is the relationship, you know, the lesbian relationship between these two women and how the handmaiden is actually the leader. He's the one who teaches Hideko about sex. Hideko is naive. He doesn't know what's going on. But it's all kind of a strange arrangement where the handmaiden says, you know, do you know what you want to do on your wedding night? No, I don't. I have no idea what to do. Let me teach you. And then we have these really smoldering scenes that are really, they are more than soft pornography. They are full tilt pornography. And they're beautiful. And you say, this is becoming the center of the movie, because their relationship is secret. And it's, you know, being frustrated by all these plots around them. So query, are they going to be able to realize their love? And you don't know. And for me, I was asking and answering that question for the rest of the movie, this is the romance between the two women. Are they are they going to be able to carry this off or not? And when, and when, okay, now you can talk about when they went to the asylum, the moment of truth, the moment of truth at the asylum, we should have named our show this the moment of truth at the asylum. What happens? Somehow when they get to the asylum, I don't remember exactly how they did this, but they sort of, they were switching identities. So basically, the the handmaiden became Lady Hedeko. And the people at the asylum grabs grab her to take her into the asylum. And he and the real Lady Hedeko is becomes free, right? She's freed because because now they can say to the uncle, you know, Hedeko's in the asylum, right? They did a switch. They did a handmaiden who, you know, is your natural favorite because she's so good looking. Exactly. Standing there ready to, you know, ready to run off with the count. Exactly. Leave town with the count. No, at the last minute, the count says something to the the guys in the white suits. Exactly. The asylum. And they go and they pick up the handmaiden and drag her in. Jesus, the one who's nuts, not me. Exactly. That scene was pretty, pretty interesting too. Yeah. That's exactly what would happen at the at the. Now, part three is where you see this relationship between Lady Hedeko and Tamako or what was her Korean name, Suki. No, all the Korean names, the surname is first. So it would be Terry Kim is Suki and Minhee Kim is Lady Hedeko. Okay. So you could and bottom line is you start in you see by the way that both languages are working in this movie. Yes. Yes. In fact, three languages. There's some English, there's some Japanese, there's some Korean and they're switching back and forth. Yes, you can do is turn on the titles and try to follow it. Exactly. It's a complete mixture of three languages. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, basically, you have to look at the titles to understand the dialogue between them. So, so basically, part three is where these two pretty much decide that they want to be together, right? Oh, the handmaiden is is is one of her friends was able to start a fire there at the at the at the institution and in the chaos, she's able to escape, right? So she escapes and and then the two of them get together, the lady Hedeko and Tamako, right? They get together and they concoct now because the pickpocket had a lot of criminal learning had to be criminal criminal. She's able to forge Lady Hedeko's passport to make her into a man, right? So so they they put a mustache on her, you know, and make her into a man and then they're able to get through customs, right? And get through out of out of Korea and then they get on a boat. I don't remember where the boat was going, but they're able to escape. Probably going to Japan. Yeah. But, you know, somewhere else in Asia. What was striking about that is that she it was a plan. The fire was a plan. That was her way of escaping. Exactly. And Kouchi, I hope I was name right, the uncle. Kozuki, Kozuki. He began to search for them. He wanted he wanted to get hold of them. He wanted to have them arrested and he was very powerful. He wanted to bring them back. He was angry because they, you know, they had run away together and and that's why the phony passport because he was looking for them. His agents were all over town trying to find them. So they had they knew they had to disguise themselves to get out of town and they successfully did that. And you they showed them on the boat when the lady Hideko takes off the mustache, you know, and the two are in love. And then the the the uncle is able to find Count Fujiwara who hasn't escaped, right? And his agents go and and find him and bring him back. And then he puts the count in the torque because he's upset what happened in his torture chamber in the basement where he had tortured Hideko's aunt who commits suicide later. And and and he's this is the part of the movie I don't really like, you know, and we've gotten into this before. I don't like all this blood and gore. And he's with with his book. And he had talked about quote the basement and quote. Throughout the movie. And you know, everybody was terrified of the basement and he threatened the basement on a number of people. And you didn't know what was going on in the basement. What was so threatening about the basement? Finally, he gets Fujiwara in the basement and you begin to understand because he's got torture and horrible devices down there. And he's ticked off at Fujiwara for all the for the I'm not sure. Well, I guess the failure of the marriage. Exactly. The failure of the marriage. And he he's interrogating Fujiwara. He's torturing him. He's maiming him. And it was very uncomfortable because he used a big paper cutter to cut Fujiwara's fingers off. Exactly. And more. And he did other things to them too. I don't remember what they were. Hard to hard to wrap your mind around. So it was a torture chamber. Go ahead. Fujiwara had initially given Hideko, I think, a vial with opium that if you take too much of it, you'll die. So if your uncle ever gets you in that basement, take this and you'll die. You won't give him the satisfaction of tormenting you, torturing you. You'll pass on. So as Fujiwara is in the basement, he's pretty sharp and he's undergoing horrible torture, right? And maiming his finger cut off. He keeps and this sicko, the uncle, who's into all kind of porn sicko, kinky pornographic shit, right? Keeps asking him things about about his niece about what kind of sex he had with the niece, right? And in reality, they didn't have any sex because she masturbated and then she cut her hand. It was an unconsummated marriage. Exactly. They were married, but it was never consummated. Exactly. She didn't want it consummated and I guess he didn't either. It was only for the money. Each one of them thought that they would benefit in the money. So that was no real, there was no real marriage, just a formal marriage. Yeah. And she cut her hand to simulate, she did masturbation, so that the other servants would hear her moaning or whatever. And then she cut her hand to show them on the sheets that there was blood on the sheets because she was a virgin and she had sex with her husband. But that was all, as you said, it was all simulated. It wasn't the reality. So getting back to Count Fujiwara, he was back to the basement. Back to the basement. He was pretty sharp and he keeps asking the uncle for another, he wants to get into his cigarettes and smoke his cigarettes. So he keeps asking for another cigarette, wanted more and more cigarettes. And then he says to the uncle or he says to him, talks to himself and says, there's no windows here. So as he's getting the fifth or sixth cigarette, the cigarettes were leased with mercury. And as he's smoking, it fills that basement room and they both died. He kills himself, but he also kills the evil uncle. And that's pretty much, pretty shocking scene where he really knows what to do. But first with the vials, he was giving Hideko and then with the mercury. So that was pretty sharp thing. There's one other thing that we haven't touched on. And that is in all this flashback, we find that Hideko, the uncle trained Hideko to read pornography from a very young age, from like five years old. And she was a professional pornography reader, which she resented greatly. And there was a room in this fantastic mansion where she would read to his friends and they would come over in black tie and apparently pay him a lot of money to see her reading the pornography. She was doing his reading the pornography. Exactly. But it was very weird. And that's kind of how she grew up. Well, the handmaiden didn't know. And one day she found out that this whole big library affair was a library of Asian pornography, Japanese, Korean pornography. And it offended her because she was the lover of Hideko. And he found Hideko was flawed in her upbringing in pornography. So she began to destroy the library by kicking the books, tearing them off the shelves. And there were a lot of them, whole huge library stacks after stacks of this pornography. And she kicked them into a kind of a pond under the floor and destroying them. And this is what made Kawuchi so angry, because his lifetime collection of pornography had been destroyed. That's why he was so ticked off at Fujiwara. Yeah. And Hideko was also helping her, Lady Hideko, to destroy all that. And one of the things, when they had that room with the reading, Kawuchi was one of the men sitting there. And this is how he sort of decided that he was going to get Lady Hideko out of this by proposing to her a deal to get her out of that where she was unhappy being what her uncle was doing. So he was one of those guys sitting there listening to the pornography that she was reading. That does hang together. What I mean is the timeline and the flashbacks. Obviously you have to watch it. And you have to make mental note of where they've been and where they're going and how the relationships are changing and what is being revealed about their scheming and plotting and what have you. But at the end, it all makes sense somehow. You have these two women who are lovers. You have Fujiwara who is a con man. He gets his. And you have Kawuchi who is a nutcase. And he gets his. And the collection is destroyed. And they escape is the point. They are escaping from this very bizarre world, very rich bizarre world at a time in the 30s when there was a lot of bizarreities going on. There was some kind of diplomatic agreement back in the 1860s between Japan and Korea that allowed Japan to occupy Korea to make it part of the imperial empire. And this was a continuation of that. Things were not all quiet in Asia in that period. It had the Russo Japanese War 1905. And as time went by, historically Japan took greater and greater control of Korea. And this was part of that. And the whole thing in Korea was controlled by the Japanese imperialists. And this was before the war. It was an example of Japanese imperialism into Korea. So, you know, we hear about the comfort women during the war and all the atrocities the Japanese visited on the Koreans. Oh, it started a long time before the war. It was going on. This was an example of a society in flux. Of a society that we didn't know which way it was going. And of a blending of the cultures that was, I don't know, we must say imperfect. So, you have to look at it from the historical point of view and see there's this engagement between the Japanese culture and the Korean culture in the Japanese business, Korean business, between Japanese art and pornography and Korean art and pornography. And this love affair was between a Japanese royalty, I guess, and this Korean handmade. And that was also an example of the blending of the cultures in the 30s. That was happening. And you really have to know the history of their national engagement to know the implications of what was going on in this movie. And, Jay, the Japanese royal family biologically are Korean. They're not Japanese. They're originally from Korea. So, that is not really well known by a lot of people that that royal family genetically is Korean. So, that's another factor that plays into all this, right? And the book on which this is all based, this is so interesting and knocks your socks off. The book was by a Welsh writer by the name of Sarah Waters. Exactly. And it was a novel written in 2002. And it was called Fingersmith. And you really have to, I haven't read the book, but you have to guess that that had to do with the finger maiming that went on in the basement. This old guy was into fingers. Now, I can say that those scenes between the love scenes between the two women, very sensitively done. What was his name? Something, Park Woo, the director. Park Chan Woo. He's really a very good director because those scenes were done so sensitively that it's like softcore pornography or even more, but it's just done so beautifully. I mean, it's not done in a vulgar way. No, it was love. It was love. It was love. And he really, he's just excellent directing, just excellent directing. And that whole movie, as you said, the scenes, the mansion, the gardens, the clothing of Count Fujiwara, everything, is so well done. It's all well done. So really, very well done movie. Well, the thing is, it's attention to detail. That's why I think it won some awards. Oh, yeah, it won. The British Academy of Film Awards. Oh, right. For the best film. The best film, not in the English language. Exactly. It was also in the Cannes Film Festival. Exactly. And it made money too, probably because of the soft money. But the point I make is that the attention to detail was extraordinary. The cultural detail, the costumes, the guard, you talked about the gardens, they were unbelievable. The home, the mansion was unbelievable. Even their time on the ship, if you remember, I don't know how they got that footage. Unbelievable. It's not only inside, the inside spaces, but it was the outside spaces too. There was a street scene where they met in a back alley after she escaped from the asylum. I said to myself, this is the 1930s in Korea, in some village in Korea, this is it. They managed to capture exactly how that would look. So it was like great art is really attention to detail. And that's what this director did. By the way, he was also one of the writers. There were two writers, and he was one of the writers. The screenplay. Yeah, the screenplay. Right, right, right. Yeah. So, okay, we learned a lot from this movie. I mean, I don't know about you, but I was transported into that time. And I was transported into the complexity of this weird family combination of things, combination of deceptions. And said to myself, at first it seemed so millions of miles away from our lives here in Hawaii. But then I said, no, no, it's just it's humanity. It's just in a strange time in the history of that clash of cultures. And you begin to understand what was going on and believe that it could happen. Of course, it's just a novel. So we learned, George, right? We learned from this movie. What was your essential lesson from this movie? Well, basically, you learn that things are not always what they seem on the surface, right? And that in some ways, good wins in the end, you know, because all these evil people get killed. And the victims, you know, the two victims of beautiful women, both beautiful women, remind me of former girlfriend of Okinawan American woman I was dating. So I mean, it's just that, as I said, good wins, right? And that's pretty much why I wanted to wear the I like to read the book. I wonder where that boat took them. That boat was going somewhere far away. Exactly. Where was it going? And what were you going to do after that? And this is the thirties. And, you know, we're about to have a world war not too long after. I wonder where the writer, the writer of the novel anyway, would take them after that. So you mentioned that you were, you know, disturbed by the violence in the basement. I don't know if I would call it cabalistic. I mean, it was sort of necessary to the plot. It gave weight to the plot. It showed you what the uncle was really like. You didn't know what kind of a madman he was. And it showed you that Fujiwara was, you know, sort of a pathetic on man figure with no real substance that showed you that. So maybe there was a purpose within the plot to do that torture. But I know you didn't like it. And it made me nervous, too. And that would affect your that would affect your rating on the movie. Exactly. So it's all that we have talked about. What is your rating on the movie? I still think it's nine and a half. I still think this movie is phenomenal in every way. The scenes, the directing, the acting, superb acting. The only thing, as you as you mentioned, is I don't, in a broader perspective, which we've discussed before. I think that not only Hollywood, but all these movie producers around the world have really got to lessen all this blood and gore because it's really impacting the minds of some very, very sick people. So I'll give it a nine and a half with that, you know, thing that the only reason is not going to be a ten is because of that last scene that I didn't like. Yeah, I'm really tossed about it. I totally agree with you. We don't need that kind of violence. On the other hand, you walk away from this movie. That's what you remember. You remember the soft porn with the two women. You remember how absolutely beautiful they are. They never smiled, by the way. Never smiled. They're so dead serious. Nobody smiles. Nobody in the movie smiles. It's interesting. And it leaves an impression on you. So I don't know, I think I come down with, I give it more for the production values. I give it more for the memorable story and memorable connection with what was going on in the world. You know, I give it less for the violence, which is questionable in terms of whether you need to have that to achieve the values. But I come down with a plus and a minus and I'm writing the same camp, George, 9.5. That's where I am. I wouldn't give it a 10. I wouldn't give it a nine either, but I'd give it a 9.5. And I'd say that the big lesson for me was that we need to be transported. And we in our lives need to have the life experience of watching other people far away, you know, geographically and in time. And we need movie producers and writers that will take us there, that will give us a glimpse of another world that expands our own consciousness. And I look forward to more movies like this one for that purpose. Definitely. I mean, what left me, that face of Lady Hideko for days, I kept seeing that beautiful face. I couldn't get it out of my mind. I would be eating if we'd come in. So that even left more of a thing with me than the bad scene in the basement with cutting off the fingers. I sort of blocked that out and only looked at the beautiful parts of this movie. So a good movie. I would suggest anybody to watch it. And even that soft porn is beautiful the way it's done. So good movie. Excellent movie. Yeah. Yeah. I was starting to look through the newspapers if there are any ads for handmaidens who would like to get a job, but I don't think there are any. Not like that. Not like that. In this day and age. George Kasin, learning from the movies, movies we can learn from the handmaid. Thank you. I'll see you again soon, George. Thank you, Jane. We'll see you again soon. Two weeks. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.