What follows is the cruelest wish fulfillment in cinema. The film then tells its story entirely backwards, through seven chapters, peeling back the layers of a destroyed soul. Unlike Memento 's puzzle-box gimmick, Lee’s reverse chronology functions as a forensic autopsy. We open with Kim Young-ho (Sol Kyung-gu) at his lowest: bankrupt, divorced, violent, and attending a reunion of his old student activist group. He has a breakdown, screams, and throws himself under a train.
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It is the taste of a life he could have lived—gentle, poetic, human. Instead, he chose violence, money, and power. Is it a Masterpiece? Yes. Sol Kyung-gu’s performance is arguably the finest in Korean film history. He transforms from a weeping victim to a cruel torturer to a shy factory worker. The final scene—a young, happy Young-ho crying under a bridge, shouting "I want to live!"—is cinema's most heartbreaking paradox.