The film production horror stories - either rumored or reported - were firmly documented in an art space that required so much manpower and talent. Of course, it’s not just targeted upon a specific person but also a lot of the staff and crew within those productions. Their toxic and obnoxious attitude rubs off everybody else and can turn the everyday job in film production to be so tiring and draining. While those stories won’t ever go away as every individual will eventually head off to another film shooting where the chances of encountering some dipshit in the set might be up to chance, it’s important to take note of the sometimes irate nature of film production can be at spots, from the higher-ups that have all the power to be abusive to the lower crew that may have their own insensitive actions shown in the spot.
Intrigued by those stories himself, Kim Jee-Woon locks into that maddening process of filmmaking in Cobweb. Mainly shot in a storage warehouse, it serves to platform the ridiculous dynamics between the characters, the indulgent showcase of the creative flow of filmmaking, and the hideaway from the higher executives who only serve to stifle the thought-provoking and sometimes controversial ideas in a timeframe when expressing such ideas are considered to be against conservative political systems that are still being held up. And despite being mostly filmed within this location, it doesn’t cut away from the sheer bulk of attentive and stunning cinematography work on display, especially with how it subtly uses zooms and color grading that accentuates the tone appropriate in a scene, and with that also makes for the film to engage you through and through with a lot of striking sequences and mise-en-scenes.
The satirical potshots within the intoxicating process of filmmaking & appreciation and dissection of tropes that this film leans into starts and ends with a lot of bewildering successes carried through with an abundance of comedic motifs that never fizzle out as you get hit with another burst of laughter a couple of minutes later. So much so that even with the pacing getting so quick despite the 2-hour and 15-minute runtime, it makes sense thematically when the film emphasizes the 2-day hairpulling incidents surrounding haphazard management to satiate the director’s vision of his film. The success of this film’s punch is carried further through the casting where all of them stepped along to match their performances with the script’s tripped-out satirical comedic tone and the shambling character archetypes alongside it, highlighted even further with absolutely phenomenal performances from Krystal Jung, Lim Soo-Jung, and of course, Song Kang-ho.
Yet even with the bursts of laughter that Cobweb pulls off, there are deeper wells of thought surrounding the director’s point of view to try to convince everyone to immediately work on his film filled with pompous ambitions in order to put away his self-doubt as a director despite other perspectives that will derail the completion of said film. It’s that manic creative drive specifically that takes focus throughout given that the film takes place in the 1970s full of restrictions to put the mind-boggling ideas in the open. Yet it does question the director’s doubt about making something outstanding and mind-boggling. When it does manage to be out, how much of that will eventually stick into everyone’s mind? But, if it doesn’t even stick to the masses, it may as well be something that everybody will forget, stuck on the shelves collecting dust and cobwebs.
Within the compact limits that this film goes through ends up stumbling into a lot of comedic moments that become long-lasting laugh riots, poking through self-indulgent visions of the director that affects everyone on board. It may end up shaking things way too much at spots, but there are enough insights about the creative process going overboard that’s worth thinking about, especially about breaking away from the usual norms and personal doubts that are eating up on the creative mind. A chaotic rollercoaster that manages to keep the satirical romps and deeper insights into great execution, where even when it does get stuck in a cobweb, it’s going to stick further down the line.