"Poetry," a South Korean movie that opens here today, is long, slow-starting, in Korean with subtitles. But despite these probable impediments to audiences, it's an amazing movie, sensitive, gripping, studious, mesmerizing. There are wondrous performances from a number of actors, especially Yun Jung-hee as Mija, a 66-year-old woman who lives with an angry, truculent, pain-in-the-neck teenage grandson and who is told that she is in the early stages of dementia.
Written and directed by Lee Chang-dong, it opens with a shot of a teen-age girl, in school uniform, floating face-down in a river. It's not a mystery in the usual cinematic term; we learn rather soon that the grandson, Wook (Lee David), and some of his buddies are responsible. The investigation becomes a sub-plot that is an interesting take on South Korean society and police work.
Almost on a whim, Mija goes to a local cultural center and sits in on a poetry class led by a gentle, moon-faced teacher who insists that anyone can write a poem. Mija, looking for inspiration, starts to carry a notebook and a pen; she writes about flowers, and about ripening apricots, but her inspiration lasts for only a few lines
Mija is gentle, loving, hard-working, generous, but she's a bit strange. She wears a white hat and colorful, neither mixed nor matched nor well-paired, skirts and blouses as she lives and travels around in what appears to be a close-in suburb of a major city. She lives on a government subsidy of some sort, also works bathing and taking care of a man of comparable age who seems to have had a stroke. He does not get around very well, has difficulty hearing and speaking, but Kim Hira is amazing in the role.
Yun is one of South Korea's most famous actors, having appeared in some 300 films, and I was completely under her spell as she dealt with her life. She seems to become more self-confident as the movie progresses, even as she deals with a segment of society with which she is completely ignorant. She meets with a group of men men–fathers of Wook's schoolmates–who are searching for a way to protect their sons from any punishment or discipline, and Yun cannot understand their patronizing attitude, though she is never able to argue with them.
Lee's film, and the acting of Yun and her co-stars, is gripping. He is quietly pointing out that there are those in all societies who are able to avoid responsibility for themselves and their families, and it bothers Yun a great deal, though she trapped by millenia of customs. However, feeling the stress of Wook's action and the attitudes of his friends' fathers does have an effect on her, as does the poetry. Writer-director Lee has made a remarkable, memorable film that takes a good story and makes it better through his talent.
This is a film that should not be missed.
Poetry opens today.
—Joe