‘The Art of 7 and 3’ contains the lives of artists who left beautiful music and outstanding paintings. 7 and 3 are the 7th gradation of Doremi Fasolashi, and the ‘three primary colors of light’ of red, green, and blue. All works that move and move people’s hearts are born from these seven tones and three primary colors. Thinking regarding how to combine them, and unfolding the results is art.
Whereas Season 1, which was previously serialized, introduced the lives and philosophies of artists, Season 2, under the subtitle ‘Cinematic Art’, tells stories of various arts such as classical music, art, and dance in the film.
Conductor Juanho Mena and the BBC Philharmonic performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, 4th movement ‘Adajieto’./ BBC YouTube Channel
Detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) climbs a rocky mountain in search of the truth. This is the mountain that the deceased husband of the suspect Seo-rae (Tang Wei) climbed on the day of his death.
He is on a tight-knit between suspicion and interest in Seo-rae. Hae-jun starts climbing the mountain with a complicated mind. What truth is hiding here? No, Hae-jun wants some truth.
This is a scene from the movie ‘Decision to break up’, directed by Park Chan-wook, who won the Best Director award at the ’75th Cannes International Film Festival’ held in May. At this time, music that seems to represent Haejun’s feelings flows. Austrian musician Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)’s Symphony No. 5, 4th movement ‘Adagio’. It’s beautiful, but somehow it feels lonely.
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The movie, which was released on the 29th, begins when detective Hae-jun, who is investigating the case of the death of the deceased, meets Seo-rae, the wife of the deceased. Hae-jun is suspicious of Seo-rae, and watches her, and he becomes more and more drawn to her.
The work exudes a very different atmosphere from Park’s previous works. It’s not cruel and the level is low, but only the eyes and psychological description of the two characters cause a great deal of emotional agitation. The texture of the familiar yet unfamiliar language contained in Seorae’s poor Korean language is also impressive. About her dead husband, Seorae says: “I was worried if I didn’t come to the mountain. I was afraid that I would eventually die.” The bizarre and excellent combination of the words ‘worry’ and ‘finally’ is astounding.
I am still amazed at the feast of mise-en-scène (arrangement of visual elements such as sets and props on the screen) created by Director Park and the excellent cinematic aesthetics. Mahler’s music is the main device to accomplish this. Director Park is also well known as a ‘malerian’, which refers to maniacs who like Mahler’s music.
Mahler’s Adagio used in this film was previously featured in Lucino Visconti’s ‘Death in Venice’ (1971). The protagonist of ‘Death in Venice’, composer Aschenbach (Dirk Bogard) is fascinated by a boy Tagio (Bjorn Andreessen), whom he meets before his death. The more you try to avoid it, the more you fall for the other person, and the fact that the story of death and love harmonizes is similar to ‘decision to break up’.
Director Park explained that he used the same song as ‘Death in Venice’. “I didn’t like the feeling of being imitated by using something similar, so I searched for alternative music for a long time, but in the end I mightn’t find an alternative.” It is said that Mahler’s music is the song that best expresses the emotions of the characters in the film.
If so, what kind of heart did Mahler have in creating Adagio? He wrote this song when he was 41 years old. This was a very meaningful time for him in many ways. His health deteriorated due to severe intestinal bleeding, but he gradually recovered and became known as a conductor.
Then he met Alma Schindler, a woman who was 19 years younger than him, and fell in love. Adagio is a work that she created with her heart for Schindler. Adagio is a musical term meaning to play a little faster than ‘adagio’, which means ‘very slow’. Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 4 movement received a lot of love, and this piece became synonymous with Adagio.
According to Mahler’s disciple Willem Mengelberg, the song was a kind of love letter from Mahler to Schindler. Without any explanation, Mahler is said to have sent the sheet music for the piece to Schindler. He was a brilliant composer, and Schindler immediately recognized the meaning of the music and sent a reply asking him to come. So the two fell in love and got married.
But when you listen to this song, you come face to face with multi-layered emotions. At first, you can see Mahler’s affection for his lover and his desperate heart. Then, gradually, I feel darkness and solitude seeping out of the melody. Mahler quoted his own song for the bass performance at the end of this movement. The song is ‘I am forgotten in the world’ out of ‘5 songs by Rückert’. It’s hard to understand why you put this together while writing a song for the woman you love.
Surprisingly, their stories also resembled music. Mahler wanted Schindler to quit his songwriting career and stay true to his family. Schindler accepted it at first, but gradually felt frustrated. Then came great sorrow. Two daughters were born to them. The eldest daughter, who was 5 years old, died suddenly of scarlet fever. Schindler was shocked by the death of her daughter, and this triggered an even greater distance between the two.
Schindler was a person who received attention and love from so many people that he was selected as the muse of many famous artists working in Vienna at the time. There is also speculation that Schindler was the model for Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece ‘The Kiss’. It is impressive that Mahler and Klimt, two ‘Gustavs’, loved the same woman. Oscar Kokosuga’s painting ‘The Bride of the Wind’ is also a work of Kokosuga’s love for Schindler.
Schindler had an affair following the death of his daughter. I met the architect Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus (Germany’s representative art school). Mahler was shocked to learn that her wife was having an affair, and even went to Sigmund Freud for counseling. Eventually, following Mahler died of heart disease, she remarried Schindler to Gropius. She later married the poet Franz Werpel for the third time.
After knowing Mahler’s love story, I think we can guess the meaning behind his adajietto. Each of Mahler’s nine symphonies is a huge world and universe. Mahler expressed various themes in his symphonies from human emotions to love, death and nature. And he seems to have put some kind of microcosm in even a single movement within it. The complex emotions contained in one word, love, unfolded like a panorama.
The ‘decision to break up’ is similar. In particular, ‘turquoise’ appears frequently and is emphasized in movies. The wallpaper of Seorae’s dress and Seorae’s house are all turquoise. Turquoise looks blue to some and green to others. Director Park explains the duality contained in turquoise like this. He said, “Sometimes when you approach one person, you appear to be another person. I wanted to visualize that through color.”
Could it be the same with love? I thought I was excited, scared, and full, but at some point an emptiness came over me. Very slow but a bit fast, beautiful but lonely Mahler’s Adagieto seems to be a must for Park’s film.
By Kim Hee-kyung, staff reporter [email protected]
