"Prosecutor Han! You are obscuring law and order with your personal desires."

"Where does the law's authority come from? Is it not from the fundamental desires of the people?"

Like many of Hong’s early work, Tale of Cinema is haunted by comedic despair. Cigarettes, sleeping pills, and illness give form to our characters’ alienation. In this film, death is the symbol of alienation. In the final scene, Dongsoo lights a cigarette and wonders if he can finally quit. He tells himself that in order to stave off dying he has to think clearly. And Hong's formal recursive layering gives his audience the opportunity for such thinking. He suggests that although we suffer this condition, we rebel by attempting to make sense of it.