Poesia

What a contrast to the average Hollywood product which highlights guns afire, frantic car chases and exploding buildings--noise and action aplenty: this subtle and enticing tale of self-realization is the antithesis of the action film, although within the first few minutes of the film, in the midst of children playing near a river, a body floats by and sets an odd tone for the remainder of the film. A grandmother who learns she has an incurable illness and who discovers her grandson is not merely a disaffected teen who cannot clean up after himself--but something worse-- the woman inexplicably enrolls in a poetry class and for the next two hours we are taken along her journey in a most leisurely fashion, a film with powerful cinematography and at last, a puzzling, thoughtful conclusion: if you want easy entertainment with pat answers, this is not your film. If you enjoy an immersion in another culture from another point of view, this might be a great treat for you--it was for me

Poetry (2010)

Steady and stealthy, this film proposes to be as lyrical and compact as a poem, but then it keeps going and ends up larger and more impressive than you'd expect. And the acting by leading female actress, the Korean star Jeong-hie Yun, is startling and nuanced, a great performance.

At the heart of the plot are two plots. The first is the title line—elderly Mija has decided to learn how to write poetry, so she attends a class (filled with younger students). The second is about a sex crime—a gang rape it turns out—by her grandson, who she is raising alone. The two are nearly opposites in so many ways we see how life itself balances the beautiful and ugly, and responsibility and indifference. In a larger way, "Poetry" is about contemporary life in Korea, and the interactions of ordinary people in extreme situations will be revealing to many outside of Korea.

It's hard to overstate how well this movie pulls off something socially serious and yet makes it all understated and almost matter of fact. There are these several lines of thought that keep going throughout, and that don't quite converge until the very end, which is both tragic (truly) and a bit mysterious. What exactly is the implication of that last scene on the bridge, and the water that shows nothing? It hearkens to the beginning, of course, but we have our main character at hand.

In that sense, it's a brilliant, almost perfect evocation of contemporary Korea on the most normal, middle class level. Lovely and loving, and cold and brutal. And it shows the glib sexism of the men there, much like everywhere at various times. And how to survive you sometimes have to just proceed. And then, of course, sometimes you do not survive.

Reading Poetry's summary, one sees a sentimental film. I surely wasn't sure if I wanted to see this or not. I am completely happy I did.

What we have here is a slow-paced, delicate film. But it doesn't sway in sentimentality. It's subtle, quiet, and perhaps the most gentle film of the year, but it also wallows in the study of a suburban woman and in many ways feels like a dark portrait of a story. Yoon Jeong-hee is magnificent! She conveys so much emotion, and we realize just how quickly we want to see her journey here. The direction is assured, quitely letting us explore, never calling attention to itself. The screenplay is brilliant, and has the ideal arc needed for a film like this.

There are many amazing moments in this film, moments that really grabbed me and that emotionally shook me. One of the best films of the year in an already amazing year for film.

It never ceases to amaze me how Korean film makers seem capable of balancing so much in their films - so many of the best films from Korea seem to defy any genre categorizations. They are often funny when you expect them to be horrifying, thrilling when you expect them to be ethereal, and have a way of turning all audience expectations upside down.

Poetry is one of the very best Korean films of the last few years. I saw it last week, and still can't get that wonderful old lady out of my head. It is, very briefly, about a proud but desperately poor woman in her mid-60's, who looks after her taciturn teenage grandson, who finds out that he may have been involved in the rape of a girl who later commits suicide. Simultaneously, she is diagnosed with early Alzheimers disease. She is also trying to find an artistic outlet, to make some mark on the world before she loses her grip. All these elements come together in a way with is somethings horrifying, sometimes fascinating, and ultimately very beautiful.

This film is a flat out masterpiece and demands to be seen.

POETRY (dir. Chang-dong Lee) POETRY is a slow-moving character drama which is disarmingly powerful, yet haunting and meditative. Mija is a sixty-six year old suffering from early onset Alzheimer's disease who lives in a rural Korean town with her indolent teen aged grandson, Jongwook. In an attempt to stimulate her cognitive abilities, she enrolls in a poetry class. Things are looking up until she learns that her grandson was involved in the suicide of one of his classmates. Jongwook and some of his friends had been sexually abusing a classmate, and this drove the young girl to take her life. Soon Mija is contacted by the fathers of the boys and learns that they want to pay the girl's mother a large sum of money to keep her from going to the authorities. In her poetry class at the community center Mija learns that in order to create poetry one must learn, 'to observe', 'to notice', and 'to witness'. The need for a heightened awareness or sensibility becomes the compelling dichotomy of the film. We observe that the fathers only focus on the ramifications of the incident on the lives of their sons, while Mija becomes moved and deeply empathizes with the loss of this innocent young girl to her family and the community. And, in the end Mija forces her grandson to face up to his responsibility, and she also constructs a loving and heartfelt poetic eulogy for the young girl. And, in a remarkable way of relating these two crucial events, the character of Mija is not even present as the actions unfold. Director, Chang-dong Lee, delivers a wonderful film which touches on a wide range of difficult subjects; poetry, dementia, sexual abuse and suicide, and casts an elderly semi-retired Korean actress as the star of the film. However, these kinds of mature topics and deliberate presentation are out of favor in Hollywood and unpopular with contemporary film audiences. I'm afraid that this film will never garner much commercial success, but if you take the time 'to witness', you will enjoy a truly rewarding cinematic experience.