Scott Caan and Elizabeth Debicki join Once Upon A Time In Hollywood sequel

Lifting the mask: Squid Game's villain Front Man reveals (almost) all

The Age

4 hours ago

The Age

Lifting the mask: Squid Game's villain Front Man reveals (almost) all

There's a superb moment in the third and (ostensibly) final season of Squid Game when our hero Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), aka player 456, comes face to face with masked villain the Front Man. As the person in charge of the sadistic, bloody and fight-to-the-death competition removes his mask, Gi-hun realises he is in fact Oh Young-il, player 001 in season two, a man Gi-hun had thought of as a colleague, a co-conspirator and a fellow rebel – until the awful moment he realised he was actually just a traitor. Gi-hun is, understandably, furious. And not for the first time, the mild-mannered former autoworker finds himself with a knife in hand, and the opportunity to wreak vengeance. But is it in his nature to do so? For the Front Man, the question is both academic and inconsequential. 'Go ahead,' he taunts Gi-hun. 'If you kill me, it will make no difference. Someone else will take my place.' And in that line, we have creator Hwang Dong-hyuk's central and deeply pessimistic thesis: it's the system that's the problem, more than any individual. It is brutal, self-perpetuating, and essentially unbeatable. And as the final series of six episodes drops, we finally get to see how Netflix's massive breakout hit from Korea will end. 'Even though it's taken to the very extreme and it's portrayed in a very dramatic way, I believe Squid Game is a metaphor for the current society we live in, a condensed version of society,' Lee Byung-hun, the respected Korean actor who plays the Front Man, says through a translator. 'I think through that scene and through the overarching theme, we just wanted to raise the issue of unfairness and the other challenges that need to be addressed in the current society. 'Of course, the show is packed with a lot of entertainment and excitement. There's never a slow moment, and you're glued to the screen from start to finish because of all the intensity,' he continues. 'But at the end of the day, I think the series is trying to tackle the theme of loss of humanity. To what extent can people lose their humanity, what's the lowest point we can reach, and how do we find momentum to create a better world? I think this series creates room for us to have that conversation.' For Lee, the role offered a unique set of challenges. For starters, he's not playing one character, but three – Front Man, Oh Young-il and Hwang In-ho, the older brother of policeman Hwang Jun-ho, who was shot by the Front Man at the end of season one (but not, it transpired, fatally). Loading For another, a good chunk of his time on screen is spent with a mask over his face. And that, he admits, presented some issues. 'As an actor, you're really used to expressing your emotions through your facial expressions, your gaze and dialogue. But here my emotions had to be hidden. At first, it was a little frustrating, but as we went along, I found that acting behind a mask was also strangely fascinating because it had the viewers guessing what his expressions would be behind that mask. And as the viewers find out more and more about the Front Man, they get even more intrigued about which face or which emotions he might be having behind that mask. So I thought there was a weird charm to that.' Oh Young-il, player 001, reveals his backstory to Gi-hun in season two. He had a wife with a life-threatening medical condition, and she was pregnant and determined to go through with the birth even if it killed her. He borrowed money for treatment, but it wasn't enough. Eventually, he took a loan from a 'vendor'. When that was discovered by his employer, the loan was seen as a bribe, and he was sacked from the job to which he had devoted his life. 'These games,' he tells Gi-hun, 'were my last hope.' Is any of it true? 'Everything he's saying in that scene is a fact, except for one thing,' Lee says. 'The wife and their child passed away years ago. But aside from that, everything that he's saying is genuine, authentic Hwang In-ho.' Playing those scenes meant performing a subtle dance between the 'true' Hwang (who, like his brother, had been a policeman) and the invented Oh (whose name subtly echoes that of the old man creator of the game, Oh Il-nam, who wore 001 in the show's first season). As his brother discovered in the files hidden in the island complex's storage facility in season one, Hwang In-ho was the winner of the 2015 edition of the games (blink and you might have missed it). Now, in season three, we get a flashback to In-ho's time as a genuine player – and it offers some insight into his state of mind in the present day. 'When he first joined the game as a player, Hwang In-ho could have had some shred of compassion or hope left in humanity,' says Lee. 'But I believe the current Hwang In-ho is closest to the Front Man, who has zero hope in humanity and the world, a true pessimist.' When he enters the game as Oh Young-il, he tries to assume the persona of 'the most average person'. Lee concedes he had trouble envisaging how someone so bereft of faith in humanity could reconnect with that, until writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk encouraged him to loosen up, to allow Young-il to be seduced by the pleasure of playing the games. Loading 'It added an eccentric, even a creepy, eerie, touch,' Lee says. 'I guess it all started off as an act. Take the pentathlon, for instance – I bet he started off acting and performing those emotions, but at a certain moment in time he got really immersed in those games, and once he was in the moment, he started feeling fear, joy and relief for real. Once he was in the moment, those emotions that he felt when he was actually a player in the game back in the day were really brought back.' What about his relationship with Gi-hun? Does he actually care about him, in a positive or a negative way? After all, he does spare him at the end of season two, though you could read that as an act of cruelty rather than mercy. What is really going on here? 'I think Gi-hun's success or failure or even death doesn't really matter much to the Front Man,' he says. He sees some element of himself in Gi-hun perhaps – of the self he once was – and 'he wants to break Gi-hun's spirit. 'You just wait and see, you're gonna make the same decision as me.' So he just wants to observe Gi-hun from his side, to see what happens.' Is there, though, a part of him that maybe hopes Gi-hun doesn't go down the same path, as a demonstration that not everyone is corruptible? 'As I was playing the Front Man throughout season three, that was what I had in mind,' Lee admits. 'I believe there were a lot of mixed emotions in his mind, like envy or jealousy … because he is a little ashamed about how he compromised and gave up at a certain point, but Gi-hun manages to hold on to his hope and humanity very persistently. Loading 'So even though the Front Man wants to break Gi-hun, I do believe there is a little shred of compassion left in him that still believes in human beings and just hopes that Gi-hun is right. So I believe one part of the Front Man is at least rooting for him. So I tried to express that, slightly.' Assuming Gi-hun survives to the end, do you think he would go into the game a third time, perhaps as player 001? Do you think he would choose survival at all cost? Do you think he might even take on the role of the Front Man himself? 'This is not a spoiler, this is just me speaking as a viewer,' says Lee. 'If I were given a choice between Gi-hun just participating in the game once again as a player with a different number and Gi-hun becoming the Front Man of the game, I think the latter option would be much more fascinating to watch.'

Sydney Morning Herald

4 hours ago

Sydney Morning Herald

Lifting the mask: Squid Game's villain Front Man reveals (almost) all

There's a superb moment in the third and (ostensibly) final season of Squid Game when our hero Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), aka player 456, comes face to face with masked villain the Front Man. As the person in charge of the sadistic, bloody and fight-to-the-death competition removes his mask, Gi-hun realises he is in fact Oh Young-il, player 001 in season two, a man Gi-hun had thought of as a colleague, a co-conspirator and a fellow rebel – until the awful moment he realised he was actually just a traitor. Gi-hun is, understandably, furious. And not for the first time, the mild-mannered former autoworker finds himself with a knife in hand, and the opportunity to wreak vengeance. But is it in his nature to do so? For the Front Man, the question is both academic and inconsequential. 'Go ahead,' he taunts Gi-hun. 'If you kill me, it will make no difference. Someone else will take my place.' And in that line, we have creator Hwang Dong-hyuk's central and deeply pessimistic thesis: it's the system that's the problem, more than any individual. It is brutal, self-perpetuating, and essentially unbeatable. And as the final series of six episodes drops, we finally get to see how Netflix's massive breakout hit from Korea will end. 'Even though it's taken to the very extreme and it's portrayed in a very dramatic way, I believe Squid Game is a metaphor for the current society we live in, a condensed version of society,' Lee Byung-hun, the respected Korean actor who plays the Front Man, says through a translator. 'I think through that scene and through the overarching theme, we just wanted to raise the issue of unfairness and the other challenges that need to be addressed in the current society. 'Of course, the show is packed with a lot of entertainment and excitement. There's never a slow moment, and you're glued to the screen from start to finish because of all the intensity,' he continues. 'But at the end of the day, I think the series is trying to tackle the theme of loss of humanity. To what extent can people lose their humanity, what's the lowest point we can reach, and how do we find momentum to create a better world? I think this series creates room for us to have that conversation.' For Lee, the role offered a unique set of challenges. For starters, he's not playing one character, but three – Front Man, Oh Young-il and Hwang In-ho, the older brother of policeman Hwang Jun-ho, who was shot by the Front Man at the end of season one (but not, it transpired, fatally). Loading For another, a good chunk of his time on screen is spent with a mask over his face. And that, he admits, presented some issues. 'As an actor, you're really used to expressing your emotions through your facial expressions, your gaze and dialogue. But here my emotions had to be hidden. At first, it was a little frustrating, but as we went along, I found that acting behind a mask was also strangely fascinating because it had the viewers guessing what his expressions would be behind that mask. And as the viewers find out more and more about the Front Man, they get even more intrigued about which face or which emotions he might be having behind that mask. So I thought there was a weird charm to that.' Oh Young-il, player 001, reveals his backstory to Gi-hun in season two. He had a wife with a life-threatening medical condition, and she was pregnant and determined to go through with the birth even if it killed her. He borrowed money for treatment, but it wasn't enough. Eventually, he took a loan from a 'vendor'. When that was discovered by his employer, the loan was seen as a bribe, and he was sacked from the job to which he had devoted his life. 'These games,' he tells Gi-hun, 'were my last hope.' Is any of it true? 'Everything he's saying in that scene is a fact, except for one thing,' Lee says. 'The wife and their child passed away years ago. But aside from that, everything that he's saying is genuine, authentic Hwang In-ho.' Playing those scenes meant performing a subtle dance between the 'true' Hwang (who, like his brother, had been a policeman) and the invented Oh (whose name subtly echoes that of the old man creator of the game, Oh Il-nam, who wore 001 in the show's first season). As his brother discovered in the files hidden in the island complex's storage facility in season one, Hwang In-ho was the winner of the 2015 edition of the games (blink and you might have missed it). Now, in season three, we get a flashback to In-ho's time as a genuine player – and it offers some insight into his state of mind in the present day. 'When he first joined the game as a player, Hwang In-ho could have had some shred of compassion or hope left in humanity,' says Lee. 'But I believe the current Hwang In-ho is closest to the Front Man, who has zero hope in humanity and the world, a true pessimist.' When he enters the game as Oh Young-il, he tries to assume the persona of 'the most average person'. Lee concedes he had trouble envisaging how someone so bereft of faith in humanity could reconnect with that, until writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk encouraged him to loosen up, to allow Young-il to be seduced by the pleasure of playing the games. Loading 'It added an eccentric, even a creepy, eerie, touch,' Lee says. 'I guess it all started off as an act. Take the pentathlon, for instance – I bet he started off acting and performing those emotions, but at a certain moment in time he got really immersed in those games, and once he was in the moment, he started feeling fear, joy and relief for real. Once he was in the moment, those emotions that he felt when he was actually a player in the game back in the day were really brought back.' What about his relationship with Gi-hun? Does he actually care about him, in a positive or a negative way? After all, he does spare him at the end of season two, though you could read that as an act of cruelty rather than mercy. What is really going on here? 'I think Gi-hun's success or failure or even death doesn't really matter much to the Front Man,' he says. He sees some element of himself in Gi-hun perhaps – of the self he once was – and 'he wants to break Gi-hun's spirit. 'You just wait and see, you're gonna make the same decision as me.' So he just wants to observe Gi-hun from his side, to see what happens.' Is there, though, a part of him that maybe hopes Gi-hun doesn't go down the same path, as a demonstration that not everyone is corruptible? 'As I was playing the Front Man throughout season three, that was what I had in mind,' Lee admits. 'I believe there were a lot of mixed emotions in his mind, like envy or jealousy … because he is a little ashamed about how he compromised and gave up at a certain point, but Gi-hun manages to hold on to his hope and humanity very persistently. Loading 'So even though the Front Man wants to break Gi-hun, I do believe there is a little shred of compassion left in him that still believes in human beings and just hopes that Gi-hun is right. So I believe one part of the Front Man is at least rooting for him. So I tried to express that, slightly.' Assuming Gi-hun survives to the end, do you think he would go into the game a third time, perhaps as player 001? Do you think he would choose survival at all cost? Do you think he might even take on the role of the Front Man himself? 'This is not a spoiler, this is just me speaking as a viewer,' says Lee. 'If I were given a choice between Gi-hun just participating in the game once again as a player with a different number and Gi-hun becoming the Front Man of the game, I think the latter option would be much more fascinating to watch.'

Danny Boyle 'couldn't make Slumdog Millionaire today'

Perth Now

4 hours ago

Perth Now

Danny Boyle 'couldn't make Slumdog Millionaire today'

Danny Boyle "wouldn't be able to make" Slumdog Millionaire today. The 68-year-old filmmaker helmed the 2008 drama movie - which told the story of 18-year-old Jamal Malik from the Juhu slums of Mumbai - but Danny believes the acclaimed film was of its time and that the world has now moved on. He told the Guardian newspaper: "Yeah, we wouldn't be able to make that now. And that's how it should be. It's time to reflect on all that. We have to look at the cultural baggage we carry and the mark that we've left on the world." The film - which starred Dev Patel and Freida Pinto - won a number of awards at the time, including seven BAFTA Awards and four Golden Globes. However, it received mixed reviews in India. Asked if the movie amounted to a form of colonialism, Danny replied: "No, no. Well, only in the sense that everything is. "At the time it felt radical. We made the decision that only a handful of us would go to Mumbai. We'd work with a big Indian crew and try to make a film within the culture. But you're still an outsider. It's still a flawed method. "That kind of cultural appropriation might be sanctioned at certain times. But at other times it cannot be." Danny remains proud of Slumdog Millionaire, but he feels that such films should be made by "a young Indian film-maker" instead. He said: "I'm proud of the film, but you wouldn't even contemplate doing something like that today. It wouldn't even get financed. Even if I was involved, I'd be looking for a young Indian film-maker to shoot it." Danny enjoyed his big career breakthrough with Trainspotting in 1996. The director helmed the hit drama film - which starred the likes of Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle - but Danny never imagined that the movie would become such a huge success. He recently told The Hollywood Reporter: "I remember there was a wave of disapproval of it building. They had shown a trailer or something on one of the TV movie shows here. And one of the prestigious critics said, 'Well, that looks shockingly irresponsible about drugs.' Things like that were building. "And then there was this journalist, Muriel Gray, and she wrote this piece about Irvine's [Welsh] book, and about the film. She spoke with authority saying, 'You do not know what you are talking about,' all these people piling disapproval on top of it. It was a tipping point." Danny relished the experience of working with Ewan on Trainspotting, remembering that the actor was "fanatical" about his role. The director said: "His agents were putting him in period romances, for which it was perfect. And he shaved it off before we'd offered him the part of Renton in Trainspotting. He shaved it off and lost weight. And then he continued to lose weight. He was fanatical about that. And he was right."

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Lifting the mask: Squid Game's villain Front Man reveals (almost) all

Lifting the mask: Squid Game's villain Front Man reveals (almost) all

Danny Boyle 'couldn't make Slumdog Millionaire today'

Scott Caan and Elizabeth Debicki join Once Upon A Time In Hollywood sequel

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Lifting the mask: Squid Game's villain Front Man reveals (almost) all

Lifting the mask: Squid Game's villain Front Man reveals (almost) all

Danny Boyle 'couldn't make Slumdog Millionaire today'

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