don’tremoved, don’t carry out terrorism on innocent civilians

The right way was using the internet and global attention, which Palestine was doing, raising awareness of how they are suffering and gaining sympathy for it. They should’ve adopted more Western ideals, or maybe liberalism, encourage foreigners to come and stay. The West Bank and Gaza near Rafah were also doing decently well in terms of growth, labelling itself as a trendy tourist destination.

Unfortunately, Hamas decided thatremoved women and killing innocent civilians was a better method of resistance, even going so far as to film themselves carrying out the massacre and taking hostages – Which incurred the Israeli military and ended up with Gaza being turned to rubble. Sure, people are much more aware of Palestine now, but only the most radical of “progressives” think Israel can be defeated and that Palestine can do no wrong. These people are vocal minorities and hold no power.

The whole relationship between Israel and the US isn’t as buddy-buddy as people think it is. Israel previously attacked US forces and regularly threatens US personnel. No clue what goes on behind the scenes, but clearly Israel has something major on the US, or the US sees Israel as a base for Middle-East operations and considers the chaos that comes with it as a necessary sacrifice. Or maybe it’s both, or maybe it’s neither.

Is the movie supporting Sang-Hyun's final act of obliterating himself and Tae-Ju? I think there's clearly a bit of a Christian redemption subtext that suggests that this was a noble act. He's sacrificing his life and the life of the one he loves to save the world from their sin. This was originally how I saw the ending, with the subversive element being that the film is ironically landing on a Christian message despite being a very horny movie about a vampire priest.

But I also was reflecting now on an alternate way to see it, borrowing from Nietzsche: Tae-Ju is the one who understood the assignment. Being powerful, beautiful, strong, and eternal is an ontological good that's worth sacrificing the life of mortals for. Sang-Hyun is only clinging to slave morality because he's unhealthy, sick with the virus of modernity. This kinda makes sense because vampires are a pretty obvious symbol of the aristocracy. But obviously the movie wouldn't exactly be straightforwardly endorsing this will-to-power kind of worldview given the triumphant ending, which isn't exactly a Hegelian synthesis either so I don't really know what the movie is saying about the slave-master dialectic (or slave and master morality) if that is what it's intentionally about.

What do you think? Do you like this movie? It offers a lot to think about but it's one of the less impressive ones Chung Seo-Kyung wrote for Park Chan-Wook IMO. It's also interesting to think about what is going on with gender in this movie and Decision to Leave! Very Pandora/Adam and Eve stories, do these filmmakers hate women?