Read the full article on Firstpost, here: https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/park-chan-wooks-2016-korean-thriller-the-handmaiden-shows-how-we-react-differently-to-physical-and-emotional-violence-7444131.html
Park Chan-wook likes his violence. In one of the most memorable scenes in Oldboy, a man cuts off his tongue. He’s asking another man for forgiveness. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll do anything. I beg you… If you want me to be your dog, I will.” On all fours, he wiggles around like a dog and wags his bottom, like a dog wagging its tail. It doesn’t work, so he licks the other man’s shoe. It still doesn’t produce the desired effect, so he picks up a pair of scissors and sticks out his tongue. The scene makes you wince because the close-up is not on the face or the tongue but on the hand holding the finger holes of the pair of scissors. We know the snap is going to come, but we don’t know when, and that’s the agonising part.
The Handmaiden is a gentler movie, in the sense that only fingers end up being chopped off and dropped into a bucket. Of course, this happens in a room whose shelves are filled with severed genitals (male and female) preserved in formaldehyde-filled jars, and there’s even a live octopus (an apparent hat tip to the one in Oldboy), but I guess one can’t have everything. In any case, the emotional violence in this director’s cinema is as excruciating as the physical violence. It’s just that spurting blood and dismembered body parts (i.e. the results of physical violence on screen) make us cover our eyes, whereas the results of emotional violence produce reactions that are far less extreme. Think about it. When Ingrid Bergman is being gaslighted in Gaslight, we say, “Oh, poor thing!”, but aren’t we really watching a mind being dismembered, as opposed to a body part. Why, then, this diminished response?
Continued at the link above.
Copyright ©2019 Firstpost.
Baradwaj Rangan 
rahultyagi
October 4, 2019
are you sure you don’t misremember the beginning, Brangan? I thought Sook-Hee’s theif-family background was shown right at the beginning, before she joins as handmaiden and certainly before the “Count” arrives at Hideko’s place.
LikeLike
rahultyagi
October 4, 2019
By the way, very glad to see you write about this. I found it one of the more “entertaining” foreign language movies from recent years. As in, the sort of movie that I frequently recommend to those friends who don’t usually see foreign language movies. A gateway drug to foreign films. Similarly “12 Angry Men” and “The General” are among my recommended gateway drugs to old black and white films and silent movies.
LikeLike
brangan
October 4, 2019
Gateway drug. Great phrase 😀
Which part/sentence are you talking about, rahultyagi?
LikeLike
Sai Ashwin
October 4, 2019
I am a little disappointed you didn’t mention the two versions of the film.
Both are brilliant but both have the narrative structured in different ways. In one cut the Sook-Hee reveal as a thief and co-schemer is revealed very early in the film, in the other it comes after around 40 minutes when the Count comes to the Mansion and meets with Sook-Hee alone.
Or were you not aware of them?
LikeLike
rahultyagi
October 7, 2019
oh wow! Sai Ashwin’s comment clears up our confusion. I had no idea about the two versions. Clearly Brangan and I have seen different versions. In my version, the movie starts with us seeing the thief family and the Count hatching the plan.
LikeLike
rahultyagi
October 10, 2019
Brangan, looks like the version you saw was the “extended version” released after the movie released. They added some scenes and edited it again to moved many sections around. Park said they decided to release an extended version just for fans who kept asking for more stuff from the movie. The version I saw (on Amazon Prime) is the theatrical version. Where did you get hold of the extended version? on a DVD?
LikeLike