Dr Brain’s director and cast talk about working with dummy corpses and K-dramas’ global appeal
It began most obviously with Mr Spock. Arguably, the inscrutable Vulcan's best party trick was the mind meld, which allowed him to read the thoughts of others (and avert yet another catastrophe for the USS Enterprise).
Cut from Star Trek to Dr Brain, the first original Korean-language series from Apple TV+, and the first foray into television for director Kim Jee-woon (Illang: The Wolf Brigade ; I Saw the Devil).
The practice of brain synchronisation is the unnerving plot device around which the entire six-part first series, based on the Dr Brain webtoon by Hongjacga, revolves; and because Dr Brain is a science-fiction-horror thriller, the mental can of worms opened by each "brain sync" rarely makes for comfortable viewing.
But for Kim, all that was part of the fun. "I was instantly drawn to the webtoon because I was intrigued by the story the protagonist uncovers, before solving a mystery by looking into other people's brains," says Kim during a video call from Seoul.
"And I thought I could add more layers to the narrative to turn it into a story of personal growth. So I tried to have him understand his flaws by putting himself into others' shoes through brain scans and learning what he lacks."
That protagonist is Parasite star Lee Sun-kyun, who plays Dr Sewon Koh. Having apparently lost his wife and son in murderous circumstances, the usually taciturn, dispassionate Koh becomes sufficiently desperate for information about their fates that he wires up his head to various informants, living and recently deceased.
It's a dangerous tactic and one that soon threatens to send his sanity sideways, while barely improving his social skills.
"At first I didn't know how to go about playing this character, because he's emotionless and pretty much the opposite of me," says Lee, laughing. "After he has these brain syncs he kind of learns some emotions, but we wanted to keep that gloomy, serious, mysterious aspect to him. He just doesn't know how to empathise."
Both Kim and Lee recognise the impact of new habits in the changing landscape of media adaptations and content consumption.
"A lot of OTT [over-the-top] platforms have entered the Korean market," says Lee. "All bundled up together, they have created a craze for Korean dramas and content. It's a big honour for actors to be able to show their work to a global audience, but it creates pressure as well, because we need to live up to expectations."
Expectation can also be found closer to home. "Lots of webtoons are being adapted because they have so many fans already and they're fun," adds Lee. "I was a big fan of comic books when young and I did try reading the original Dr Brain to understand the character and tone of the work.
"However, the webtoon's huge fandom meant pressure on me, so I didn't want to focus on sticking to it so much. I [wanted] to be someone new in our show."
"The creatives in Korea have an eye for what can go global," says Kim. "This was my first time working with an OTT platform and one of the best parts about filming an OTT series was the cadence of the process was quicker than that of the filmmaking process and a little looser. We have a lot of actors on our project who do both film and TV, and all said the tempo was appropriate."
Park Hee-soon, who plays canny private investigator Lee Kang-mu, is similarly enthused. "In the past, when a series was filmed, it was first shown in Korea and if it did well, it found opportunities to go overseas," he says.
"But one key merit of OTT is that something can be shared on the platform, and simultaneously a global audience can watch it and share the emotions they feel afterwards: there's a feeling of togetherness, or solidarity, created by that format of watching."
"I think the pandemic has accelerated that, but with the arrival of OTTs there have been more opportunities for Korean dramas and films to reach global audiences."
"This can be the beginning of a larger success," he adds, "because Korean content has a lot more to offer. In an environment for high-quality content, Korean content can become much bigger."
Seo Ji-hye, who appears as hard-boiled detective Jiun Choi, agrees. "Korean dramas are watched by global fans these days," she says, "and Korean content has done very well: Parasite, Squid Game and Dr Brain [deal with] universal emotions — soul searching, personal development, love, dedication — that speak to everyone."
It is Seo who throws a little light onto how an often dark and forbidding series was made — a series that in effect summons the voices of the dead.
I'd like to brain sync with the filmmakers I love. The Coen brothers, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, people who think differently to othersKim Jee-woon, Dr Brain director
"We worked with corpses, which were all dummies that looked exactly like the bodies of the actors," she says. "If looked at from afar, they looked like the person, they were so realistic. The detective that works with me, Detective Park [Jo Bok-rae] thought one of the dummies was an actual person and tried to start a conversation with it."
One for the gag reel.
More seriously, Dr Brain is so complex that "mystery, thriller and film noir permeate the entire series", says Kim. Not that that's the end of the darkness. "I think every genre deals with a particular fear of something," he adds.
"For instance, action: fear of violence; romance: fear of a break-up; science fiction: fear about the future. The whole idea behind these different genres is to overcome those fears.
Given the choice, whose minds would Kim wish to tap? "I'd like to brain sync with the filmmakers I love," he says. "The Coen brothers, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, people who think differently to others. I'd like a sneak peek into their brains."
Plug in and play. Dr Brain is streaming now on Apple TV+.
READ ALSO: Apple TV+’s first-ever K-drama Dr. Brain delves into some weird science
This article was first published in South China Morning Post.
