Life is presented as eggs in the innovative film A Rose Reborn, how about death? In this creative collaboration of Ermenegildo Zegna and director Park Chan-wook, the figurative resurrection from death is a major theme. Inspiring us with his camera, director Park shows us that life and death are not independent but co-existing. It now becomes the turn to find out the set up for death.
When we start to watch the episodes, we realise that on one hand Stephen succeeds in innovating his new technology, on the other hand he is facing the potential “death” of his business. Do you feel the pressure of death there? Try to review his video-conference with other investors. They leave him one after one; their faces on the screens are replaced with strong waves. Director Park has subtly related the possible closing of business to being drowned to death.
But when there is hope, there could be a way out. Although it seems unusual to start a business talk at 3am, 200 metres underground in a mine in Wyoming. You might as well experience the kind of fear by closing your eyes and imagine going down in the cage lift - space enclosed, falling speed, a place associated with limited air flow or even fatal accidents and hinting burial of corpses. The damp and muddy smell of death is almost at your nose.
Death is everywhere – from a mine to a museum in Shanghai. A museum functions to conserve relics or artifacts of history, culture, arts, connecting us with the past. It is also the place for the dead, such as mummies. Do you still remember the piece of carved rice grain Stephen studies, what’s on it? If you don’t, watch back – 3 fabulously sculpted skulls, an aesthetic idea and philosophical association of the director.
We come to the end of the enlightening journey with Stephen and stop in Milan. You might at first think death is the ultimate outcome in a cemetery. But life is always about exception and death is not necessarily an end. Director Park brings us to a mournful place but what has he done? He magically changes our old ideas. Every time you watch the film, you are refreshed.