L'arc

With this epic movie, Ki-duk Kim really puts out another great story in "The Bow", and I was really surprised at the beauty of this movie.

Taking place on an old, rundown fishing boat, "The Bow" tells the story of an old man (played by Seong-hwang Jeon) who have raised a young girl (played by Yeo-reum Han) for 10 years on the boat, isolated from the outside world, with the only contact with other people is by the ones coming to the boat for fishing and having their fortune read. The old man plans to marry the girl when she becomes of age, but an unexpected spark between the girl and a visiting young man (played by Si-jeok Seo) to the boat sets things spiraling out the old man's control.

Something amazing about "The Bow" was the way that the story takes you through a myriad of emotions, ranging from admiration, curiosity and then on to spite and contempt. And the story was told (and shot) in a way that the emotions of both the old man and young girl were strong and ever-present.

Shot almost without any dialogue, the story was relying heavily on the acting performances of the cast and the ability to tell a story by the director. And wow, it just came together like pieces in a puzzle. Everything was so amazing and worked out quite nicely. The actors did great jobs with their roles, both the speaking and non-speaking roles. But most impressively was Seong-hwang Jeon (the old man) and Yeo-reum Han (the young girl) in their roles. Wow, the chemistry between them on the screen was amazing, and the way they portrayed their characters made it like you were right there on the boat with them.

"The Bow" was really a treat for the eyes to sit down and watch, because the cinematography was so beautiful. The movie is really nicely shot, with lots of great shots, and that was really a necessary ingredient for the movie, being able to portray and tell a story when there wasn't all that much dialogue going on.

I found the movie to be a really great surprise, and I loved how it swept me up and put me right there in the story. It was so compelling and beautiful. And if you are a fan of Asian cinema, then surely you are familiar with Ki-duk Kim's work already. But if not, then "The Bow" is well worth putting into your DVD player and sit down to watch. It is the type of story that will stay with you for a long time.

I must confess I am a huge Kim Ki-Duk fan, and have loved every one of his films. In my opinion Ki-Duk has directed 4 absolute masterpieces of modern cinema, Bad Guy, 3 Iron, The Isle, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring. Each of these films has gone some way to changing the shape, scope, style or accepted boundaries of modern cinema.

The Bow, however does not go to these lengths, but instead falls into the category of Ki-Duk's more eclectic and arguably more mainstream works like the Birdcage Inn or Samaria. This is by no means a bad thing as these are also great films in their own right.

Much like 3 Iron, the Bow has very little dialog, and much of the emotion is conveyed solely by glances, gestures or actions. This makes the film both more and less commercially acceptable to western audiences.

The Bow has re-confirmed Kim Ki-Duk as a modern cinematic maverick, an uncompromisingly original and visionary director.

This story is about a fisherman who lives on a somewhat dilapidated fishing boat with his beautiful "grandaughter". The film pretty much takes place solely on the boat, they are never on dry land. The old man and the girl (they are never named and utter sounds but don't speak) have a special relationship, which you learn more about as the movie chugs along. The girl, who in the film is 16, is played by Yeo-reum Han who, when she smiles, is extremely beautiful. Its no wonder the few other characters, all men who pay to fish on the boat, are drawn to her. The film is good as a minimalist piece. That also means, of course, its also a little slow. I was somewhat intrigued, and the film is brave for being so focused in one place. As you see from the 7 rating, its not a great film. If you don't like minimalist films, do not watch this. I have never seen Yeo-reum Han in a film before, so I'll need to see her to see whether she is a very good actress. She is good here, as is the old man, played by Seong-hwang Jeon. You won't love it, but it will keep your interest.

Hwal / The Bow is a very rich movie for those interested in Buddhism however in cinematic terms there are some fairly substantial and overt structural problems with the movie. For example the film starts with a jolt of clumsy expositional dialogue (this is where characters have a very forced conversation that reveals the back story of the movie). Motifs are over-repeated (shooting of arrows) and non-sourced / non-diegetic music is layered on every time the old man starts to play his bow, all the worse because it is fairly saccharine.

Those with a yen for Buddhist films are however living on food parcels and so the film's flaws may be overlooked in kindness to the healing the film provides and the thoughts it provokes.

The plot of the movie concerns an old man who lives out on the sea on a fishing boat. He provides divination services and also a platform for line fishing. Customers sit on pastel-coloured sofas and ease away the day. He has spent a decade bringing up a young foundling girl and intends the unnatural act of marrying her when she reaches age.

To me one of the key points of Buddhism is that if you are angry with the world, there are two ways to proceed, change the world or change your attitude to it, the latter is the more likely to work. Another idea would be to be like the smooth stone in a river, over which the world flows softly, rather than the jagged cause of turbulence. Dukkha (a catch-all concept of suffering that has no direct translation to English) is minimised by the changing of the self. One facet of dukkha is viparinama-dukkha, which concerns the pain of unmet expectations and the pain caused by the impermanence of happiness. The old man in the movie suffers from this and has to learn to deal with it.

I found myself accepting unpalatable truths about my life watching this movie and salvaged a couple of evenings of calm from it. I would recommend it to those seeking to do likewise. One point to raise is that Kim is not averse to animal cruelty in his movies, in this one a chicken receives several deliberate blows from a character.

Others have pointed to the entire movie being composed of symbols, this is a particularly beautiful alternative way of looking at the movie, although it amounts to much the same take home in the end.

This is to my friend Mollie.

An elderly fisherman lives with a young girl, he wants to marry on her 17th birthday. But shortly before that day the girl falls in love with some student and that ultimately leads to problems in the relationship between her and the old fisherman.

In beautiful pictures the movie reflects on the dialectics of refuge and prison, tenderness and sadism, love and violence. The 12th Kim Ki-duk-picture comes up with the same metaphors and symbolisms his older films were filled with, which (at least for me, as I've seen all of Ki-duk's works)leads to a déjà-vu-like experience and therefore to slight boredom.

Rating: 6 out of 10