vox populi : Park Chan Wook ’s new picture show is n’t afraid to have smartphones front and centre , and it ’s the mellow - tech update we ’ve been waiting for .

After more than a hundred of go steady our submarine immortalised on celluloid , there are certain objective that just seem inherently cinematic . The curling smoke of a cigarette or the squealing Sur of a sports car lend themselves to the big filmdom with consummate ease , but one of our mundane staples has sometimes seemed strangely resistant to these charm .

Even though we utilise our smartphones all the time – even to watch motion-picture show on – I ’ve establish that director often seem a little reluctant to feature this technology quite so conspicuously in their movies as you see in real life .

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There could be a few unlike reasons for that . For one matter , filmmakers may not wish to see their movies soon relegated to being a mere Cartesian product of their prison term , in the same way of life we now see the like of cockamamy answerphone shenanigans in dated 90s situation comedy . They may be modern for now , but who knows how long it will be until they ’re visualise as unsalvageably fuddy - duddy .

For another , it ’s hard to make a character stare at a static , rather featureless calamitous slab appear to be seductive on the silver screen . More often than not , after all , we go to the movie house for escape and for visual delight , and it ’s hard to replicate that even with the newest and shiniest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy .

lastly , it ’s even more likely that smartphones simply reduce the patch possibleness of characters in a movie . How many times have you observe a TV series while anxiously wanting to scream out to the persona in peril to order them to call someone on their telephone set , or look up a all important piece of information , or find their location on a map ? It takes a talented writer to get around these obstruction , given that such a simple solvent was never at deal in previous decades .

That ’s why , having late look out Park Chan Wook’sDecision to give , I was refreshed by his portrayal of smartphones in this movie , where the technical school almost becomes a fiber in its own right hand .

Without giving too much off about the plot , smartphones are always centre leg of this Hitchockian investigator dramatic play . They ’re used to make calls and write messages , record sound and video , perform language translation , map locations , and even track daily stone’s throw counts , without ever having to be clunkily bring in ; here they in reality aid the intrigue of the plot of ground rather than impede it . They ’re seamlessly interwoven so as to never finger out of place , forever crucial to the whirl of the taradiddle , but only ever as a agency of chew over the characters themselves .

The devices may be in the middle of the screen , or razz out of shot , or we may even await through the point - of - view of the covert as a reluctant SMS is haltingly composed , but they ’re never used merely as exanimate props , and I consider this holds the key to Park ’s success ; he embraces smartphones as a part of life , where other director have written them out altogether hop we would n’t notice .

Not everyone is as talented as theOldboydirector of course , and it ’s not an loose trick to pull off . What ’s more , as acknowledge earlier , in the hereafter we may see films such as this one as being hopelessly one-time - fashioned , when the smartphone is no longer the transmitter of so much of our spirit and we alternatively while our hour away in a Metaverse or – god forbid – a Muskverse .

There may be a time when the presence of a smartphone instantly dates a moving-picture show to the early twenty - first hundred , but even if this were to be the casing then I would suppose that the machination and hurt romance ofDecision to Leavewould still make it a flick for the ages .