Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Decision to Leave.
When the credits roll on Decision to Leave, we are left with the certainty that detective Jang Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) will never sleep again in his life. The protagonist of Park Chan-wook’s most recent thriller about a policeman that falls in love with one of his suspects will have to live forever not just with the knowledge that he let a guilty woman go free, but also with the pain of an unresolved love story. After killing her second husband, Song Seo-rae (Tang Wei) goes to the beach and digs up a hole in the sand. She then jumps into it and waits until she’s drowned by the tides, her life carried away by the ocean she loved so much. All she leaves Hae-joon is a recorded message saying that, maybe, her goal was to become one of his unsolved cases.
It’s a tragic ending to a romance that was doomed from the very beginning, and Seo-rae was always the tragic type. Though it might seem unreasonable to viewers, for her, it was only logical to end her own life like that. But how and why does Seo-rae come to this inevitable conclusion? And what does her final message to Hae-joon mean? The answer is in the smallest details of their affair, that begins and ends in death.
What Is 'Decision To Leave' About?
Hae-joon first meets Seo-rae while investigating the death of her first husband, Ki Do-soo (Yoo Seung-mok). A big fan of mountains, Do-soo seems to have fallen during a particularly tricky climb. However, the actual circumstances of his death become muddy when Hae-joon and his partner, Soo-wan (Go Kyung-Pyo), meet Do-soo’s young widow. For starters, there’s the fact that Seo-rae doesn’t seem surprised by her husband’s passing, nor does she shed a tear upon hearing the news. Secondly, there are the circumstances under which Seo-rae and Do-soo came to be married. Do-soo used to be a servant at the immigration office, and Seo-rae is a Chinese immigrant that managed to stay in South Korea even though all the others that made the trip with her were sent back home. The power dynamic involved in their marriage was deeply exploited by Do-soo, who not only beat up his wife, but even forced her to tattoo his initials in her underbelly. Last, but not least, there’s the fact that Seo-rae is wanted in China for the murder of her mother.
But, despite his suspicions, Hae-joon becomes slowly infatuated with Seo-rae — first, due to her looks, but later because he sees something of himself in her. During his stakeouts, he imagines himself standing right beside her and holding an ashtray for her to put out her many cigarettes. During interviews, he woos her with food from one of the finest sushi places in Busan. Seo-rae notices his affection towards her, and, little by little, begins to reciprocate. The two strike up a delicate affair that is made even more complicated by the fact that Hae-joon has a wife waiting for him in another town.
The Affair Clouds Hae-joon's Judgment
As the relationship between Hae-joon and Seo-rae develops, the suspicions about the young widow start to fade away. The death of her mother wasn’t exactly murder, but assisted suicide: her mom had been in the hospital for quite some time and was ready to let go. Seo-rae hates mountains, and thus never accompanied her husband on his trips. Furthermore, she has an alibi for the day of his death: she was working as a caregiver for old Granny Hae-dong (Jung Young Sook). The agency can confirm it: they called Hae-dong’s cell phone, and Seo-rae herself picked up. With everything settled, the coast is clear for Hae-joon and Seo-rae to get even more involved in each other’s lives. They start to spend entire days together, with Seo-rae helping Hae-joon get over his sleeping issues, and Hae-joon offering to cover for Seo-rae when she can’t come to work.
It is while covering for Seo-rae at Granny Hae-dong’s house that Hae-joon realizes that her alibi doesn’t really check out. Upon looking at the elderly woman’s phone and noticing that her step counter app says that she walked 138 steps on the day of the murder, even though she hasn’t left home in 10 years, Hae-joon finally figures out Seo-rae’s plan: she took Granny’s phone with her to the mountains, and she seduced Hae-joon so that he would allow her to destroy evidence such as pictures and voice recordings. Hae-joon pays Seo-rae a surprise visit and, after telling her that he is shattered, tells her to throw the phone she used at the bottom of the ocean, where no one can find it. Virtually, he’s letting Seo-rae go and telling her that his feelings for her matter more than the case.
Years later, at his hometown of Ipo, Hae-joon runs into Seo-rae once again. Now married to a stock analyst, she has fled Busan with her husband to escape the ire of the son of one of the many clients he’s deceived. Confused and angry, Hae-joon is dragged back into Seo-rae’s life when her husband is found dead. Once again, it seems like she has nothing to do with the case. The killer is the man that had been threatening them in Busan, whose mother has recently died in poverty. But, as usual, Seo-rae is more involved with the crime than it initially seems. It turns out that she killed the man’s mother using the same pills that she gave her own mom, prompting him to finally take his revenge.
After the truth comes to light, Hae-joon goes after Seo-rae, but he’s too late to do anything about her or the case. He finds only her car on the road next to the beach, with her phone stuck to the panel. In the device, he finds a series of voice messages. In the last one, Seo-rae confesses that she chose to hide in Ipo because of Hae-joon. Moreover, her plan was to become one of his “unsolved cases." Desperate, Hae-joon runs to the beach after Seo-rae. However, it is too late: the tide has already risen.
What Does Seo-rae’s Suicide Mean in 'Decision to Leave'?
Seo-rae doesn’t kill herself out of the blue. From the moment Hae-joon breaks up with her, she falls into a kind of depression, devastated that she hurt a man that she has grown to love so much. But her sadness isn’t the only thing that prompts her to take her own life. By committing suicide, she makes sure that Hae-joon will never stop thinking about her.
Earlier in the film, we learn that Hae-joon has a wall full of pictures of unsolved cases that keep him up at night. According to Seo-rae, the pictures scream at him and keep him from falling asleep. Later on, Hae-joon is about to close one of these cases, but the suspect kills himself in front of him. The fact that Hae-joon wasn’t able to arrest this man means that the case is not closed for him. This is symbolized by the fact that he keeps the pictures from the crime scene glued to his wall. By making herself a suspect of a crime that Hae-joon is investigating and taking her own life, Seo-rae makes sure that she will remain an “unsolved case,” and, thus, will never leave Hae-joon’s mental wall.
But that still leaves the question of why on Earth did she choose such a horrifying way to die. Well, when she reveals to Hae-joon that, unlike her husband, she never liked mountains, she tells him that Confucius said that wise men love the ocean, while benevolent ones prefer the mountains. Over the course of the film, we are left wondering about Seo-rae’s benevolence: she’s kind to the elderly, but she killed her own mother; she may be behind her husband’s death, but she was an abused wife. Visually, Seo-rae is often shot in front of a wallpaper that features pointy shapes, which can be interpreted both as a mountain range and a tumultuous sea. By using the ocean to take her own life, she makes it clear once and for all that she is not benevolent, but wicked and selfish. It is a confession to both her crimes, as well as an atonement for the suffering she continues to put Hae-joon through.
ncG1vNJzZmibn6G5qrDEq2Wcp51ksaavyKygqKZdqbxuuMSarZ5llaOxqrrGZpyxqJyWtq%2Bxw2g%3D