“Actors don’t work to win prizes”: an interview with Song Kangho
Having won the Best Actor award at Cannes last year for his performance in Koreeda Hirokazu’s Broker, the Korean film star talks to us about acting, cinema in his homeland, and what it was like to work with the Japanese maestro.
Song Kangho has been an integral part of New Korean Cinema since the movement’s mid-90s beginning – he started his career performing in debut films by Hong Sangsoo and Lee Changdong, before becoming a stalwart in the films of Bong Joon Ho and Park Chanwook. Now he joins forces with Japanese auteur Koreeda Hirokazu for Broker, playing Sanghyeon, someone who sells children on the black market (hence the film’s title). Yet despite this weighty topic, moments of bittersweet joy characterise this story of a misfit group becoming a found family on the roads of Korea.
Sight and Sound: Sanghyeon in Broker has a very complicated relationship to children – he is both a father and a ‘broker’. Did your own experiences of fatherhood influence your performance?
Song: I think the filmmakers wanted to say something more general about the human experience through my character, rather than exploring fatherhood as an identity. The relationships [in the film] are constructed to convey the misfortune and irrationality of life. My character is the least rational – a good-looking actor would not be suitable for this role, it simply wouldn’t make sense. An actor who is very ordinary-looking, like me, is much more effective at communicating this [irrationality] with the audience.
Working with Koreeda Hirokazu on Broker was your first time working with a director who wasn’t Korean. What was that experience like?
I’ve actually known Koreeda for some time – we’ve met often and I really like his work. So when I first met him, instead of feeling slightly fearful, I felt like I knew him and was quite familiar with him. The language barrier was slightly challenging, but because Japan and Korea share some kind of emotional understanding, it’s not that different between the two countries.
Did you feel that Koreeda had a different way of looking at Korea to other directors you’ve worked with?
Koreeda really knows Korea well, he loves Korea. I don’t think he was seeing it as an outsider in any way. He has a lot of respect for, and really appreciates, Korean culture, Korean food, Korean society. So I’m not sure what is shown in the film – both the landscape and the way that the frame is constructed – is the gaze of an outsider to Korean society.
Would working in a different language be something you’re interested in pursuing in the future?
Honestly speaking, I think only working in Korean would be better. I believe in telling stories that can be universal to create variety for film fans across the world, rather than working in different languages to create that variety – I don’t think I would work to my highest ability in a different language.
You won the Best Actor award at Cannes, among other awards, for your performance in Broker. How do you feel about winning prizes?
That was a huge honour for me, really one of my best moments. But actors don’t work in order to win prizes, and I think that goes for me, too. We simply continue doing good work with good people – then we get invited to all these amazing festivals and receive this massive encouragement through awards. It’s a singular point in an overall process, but it cannot be the final goal for an actor.
It’s interesting, given Korean cinema’s growing appreciation in the West, that films like Broker can win these kinds of awards. What do you think it is about Korean cinema that now has started to be appreciated across the world? Has something changed, or is it simply that the West has finally caught up?
I started working in Korea towards the end of the 90s, so that would be 25 years ago now, and I think that’s when the renaissance in Korean cinema started, when it became completely different from what it was before. Korean society became more politically free, less repressed, and therefore the social environment became more creative too. During this time period we had these excellent writers and artists debuting in Korean cinema – Lee Changdong, Park Chanwook, Bong Joon Ho, Kim Kiduk, Hong Sangsoo.
I debuted as an actor around the same time. I think these very free-spirited and creative writers and artists added much needed vitality and vigour to the Korean cinema, and that’s been coming to fruition, really blossoming in the last 25 years.
► Broker is in UK cinemas from Friday 24 February.