Director/writer: Chang-dong Lee
Photography: Hyun Seok Kim
Editor: Hyun Kim
Cast: Jeong-hie Yun, Lee Da-wit, Hee-ra Kim, Yong-taek Kim, Myung-shin Park, Jong-goo Kim
I have an impulse to call Poetry underrated because it's more of a film festival / arthouse show, a "foreign movie" with subtitles. They tend to live in their own ghetto, where the blurbs are overheated (e.g., "An extraordinary vision of human empathy" - Manohla Dargis, New York Times) and the awards generous (over 50 nominations and/or wins, including a shot at the Cannes Palme d'Or) but the theatrical runs and other afterlife are too often meager, playing to empty houses or not even making it into multiplexes at all (multi-what? oh PRE-pandemic). On the other hand partisans at that citadel of the middlebrow, IMDb, have awarded it a highly respectable rating of 7.8, with over 10,000 voting.
The popularity surprised me a little but the fact is Poetry is just a remarkable and undeniable film, which could probably win over anyone who looks at it. Manohla Dargis is right that it's extraordinary, pulling off a trick of using true-crime notes to make poetry, of all things, alarmingly moving. It's the next day and I'm still crying about the poem. Jeong-hie Yun—the notable secret ingredient in this picture—is Yang Mi-ja, a grandmother in her mid-60s living in Seoul and raising her grandson on her own. She is ingratiating and charming, working part-time as an in-home aide for an older man who has suffered a stroke and is disabled, but she is beginning to show signs of dementia herself, losing some of her nouns—she can't quite think of the word for things like electricity and wallet. Poetry is virtually a one-woman show. Before we even meet Mi-ja, however, the other thread of this picture is introduced.
I have an impulse to call Poetry underrated because it's more of a film festival / arthouse show, a "foreign movie" with subtitles. They tend to live in their own ghetto, where the blurbs are overheated (e.g., "An extraordinary vision of human empathy" - Manohla Dargis, New York Times) and the awards generous (over 50 nominations and/or wins, including a shot at the Cannes Palme d'Or) but the theatrical runs and other afterlife are too often meager, playing to empty houses or not even making it into multiplexes at all (multi-what? oh PRE-pandemic). On the other hand partisans at that citadel of the middlebrow, IMDb, have awarded it a highly respectable rating of 7.8, with over 10,000 voting.
The popularity surprised me a little but the fact is Poetry is just a remarkable and undeniable film, which could probably win over anyone who looks at it. Manohla Dargis is right that it's extraordinary, pulling off a trick of using true-crime notes to make poetry, of all things, alarmingly moving. It's the next day and I'm still crying about the poem. Jeong-hie Yun—the notable secret ingredient in this picture—is Yang Mi-ja, a grandmother in her mid-60s living in Seoul and raising her grandson on her own. She is ingratiating and charming, working part-time as an in-home aide for an older man who has suffered a stroke and is disabled, but she is beginning to show signs of dementia herself, losing some of her nouns—she can't quite think of the word for things like electricity and wallet. Poetry is virtually a one-woman show. Before we even meet Mi-ja, however, the other thread of this picture is introduced.
That is the suicide of an adolescent girl who has thrown herself from a bridge. The first scenes in the movie are of her body being discovered. Mi-ja happens to be at the hospital when the ambulance brings the body there. She sees the girl's mother, who is beside herself with shock and grief. Mi-ja is impressed by the scene and follows the news stories. She discovers that the girl went to the same high school as her grandson, Wook (Lee Da-wit). He is a typical loutish adolescent boy, insidiously ashamed of his elders and wanting little to do with them in public. At home, he expects Mi-ja to both wait on him and leave him alone.
Wook claims not to know the girl and that seems to be that. Mi-ja pursues another whimsy, crashing a poetry class at the local cultural center. She has always wanted to write poetry but is mystified by how it's done. Now, timidly, she sets herself to it, taking this class, absorbing the lessons of a somewhat preening but also somewhat inspiring teacher, and sitting in on public readings. She asks anyone whose work impresses her how they do it and tries to assimilate and make sense of their answers. We see her taking a small notebook with her where she goes and we see some of her notes, details that are somehow resonant. We see that she has very little confidence in herself.
At the same time, problems with Wook are deepening. It has looked like annoying but normal brooding adolescence and a clannish gang of geeky goon peers. But then the bottom drops out when one of the fathers of the other boys contacts Mi-ja and ominously wants to have a meeting with her and some other parents. In the car on the way there he tells her frankly that it is bad news, and it is. The girl who killed herself had been a victim of Wook's group of friends at school, who repeatedly raped her and intimidated her to say nothing about it.
Director and writer Chang-dong Lee has written an excellent and memorable script, with a great story, but Jeong-hie Yun is what makes this film special. We see the knowledge of the truth of her grandson seep into Mi-ja very slowly. It's too much to take in at once. She identifies with the girl—so immediately and so deeply we sense she has similar wounds in her own past. She compulsively attends the girl's funeral (interestingly a Roman Catholic affair in Korea), steals a photo of her, and can be seen worrying about it even when she is working, in class, or at readings. It is poisoning her life.
The other fathers are scheming to cover up the crime. They want to settle with the victim's mother, who is demanding money. Mi-ja has no idea how she can even raise her share of the money. The school also wants to keep it quiet. A reporter may have caught wind of it. These story elements are developed slowly and methodically, almost in the background. There's also a fascinating thread about the man Mi-ja bathes and takes care of. It all comes together in a powerful crescendo as Mi-ja makes irrevocable decisions on her way to finally producing a poem for her class.
The poem, called "Agnes's Song," is the most remarkable part of a wholly remarkable picture. Any time a movie can end on its greatest strength or moment that's something special (see, for example, Vertigo). But when the getting there is intriguing and fun and warm and heartbreaking and tense and never less than engrossing you just have to say the kinds of things blurbers are so good at. I mean, I'm part of the problem with poetry these days. I pay it lip-service respect, and that mostly to the tried and true (hey man, you know, what about that Alfred Prufrock), and I don't read any of it ever anymore. But "Agnes's Song" and Poetry set me straight on the whole issue—though, perhaps paradoxically, I say it is a cinematic achievement even more than a poetic.
Wook claims not to know the girl and that seems to be that. Mi-ja pursues another whimsy, crashing a poetry class at the local cultural center. She has always wanted to write poetry but is mystified by how it's done. Now, timidly, she sets herself to it, taking this class, absorbing the lessons of a somewhat preening but also somewhat inspiring teacher, and sitting in on public readings. She asks anyone whose work impresses her how they do it and tries to assimilate and make sense of their answers. We see her taking a small notebook with her where she goes and we see some of her notes, details that are somehow resonant. We see that she has very little confidence in herself.
At the same time, problems with Wook are deepening. It has looked like annoying but normal brooding adolescence and a clannish gang of geeky goon peers. But then the bottom drops out when one of the fathers of the other boys contacts Mi-ja and ominously wants to have a meeting with her and some other parents. In the car on the way there he tells her frankly that it is bad news, and it is. The girl who killed herself had been a victim of Wook's group of friends at school, who repeatedly raped her and intimidated her to say nothing about it.
Director and writer Chang-dong Lee has written an excellent and memorable script, with a great story, but Jeong-hie Yun is what makes this film special. We see the knowledge of the truth of her grandson seep into Mi-ja very slowly. It's too much to take in at once. She identifies with the girl—so immediately and so deeply we sense she has similar wounds in her own past. She compulsively attends the girl's funeral (interestingly a Roman Catholic affair in Korea), steals a photo of her, and can be seen worrying about it even when she is working, in class, or at readings. It is poisoning her life.
The other fathers are scheming to cover up the crime. They want to settle with the victim's mother, who is demanding money. Mi-ja has no idea how she can even raise her share of the money. The school also wants to keep it quiet. A reporter may have caught wind of it. These story elements are developed slowly and methodically, almost in the background. There's also a fascinating thread about the man Mi-ja bathes and takes care of. It all comes together in a powerful crescendo as Mi-ja makes irrevocable decisions on her way to finally producing a poem for her class.
The poem, called "Agnes's Song," is the most remarkable part of a wholly remarkable picture. Any time a movie can end on its greatest strength or moment that's something special (see, for example, Vertigo). But when the getting there is intriguing and fun and warm and heartbreaking and tense and never less than engrossing you just have to say the kinds of things blurbers are so good at. I mean, I'm part of the problem with poetry these days. I pay it lip-service respect, and that mostly to the tried and true (hey man, you know, what about that Alfred Prufrock), and I don't read any of it ever anymore. But "Agnes's Song" and Poetry set me straight on the whole issue—though, perhaps paradoxically, I say it is a cinematic achievement even more than a poetic.
No comments:
Post a Comment