Film Feature: Poetry (2010)
Poetry, a Korean movie by Lee Chang-dong, is a story of a woman, who one day, decided to go to a poetry class with the hopes of fulfilling her dream of becoming a poet. As the film progress, the audience gets to see how the elderly woman's life changed due to some unexpected turn of events, which will lead to the question of her being able to write a poem or not.
Mija, the main protagonist of the story, is a 60-year old woman who works part-time as a caregiver for a well-off disabled man in order to support her grandson who, I can safely say, is in his rebellious phase. The film started off by introducing her relationship with other characters such as the disabled man, her grandson and the mom of her grandson which is a nice approach because the audience will be able to understand Mija's character right away. And to what I've seen, I can say she is quite a lonely woman who has no one to talk to.
Mija is actually just living a normal life until she learned about her grandson's secret (I won't spoil here) which required her to produce a large amount of money. And to stir up her life more, spoiler alert but not really as there were hints from the first scene already, the director made it sure that she learns about her early stage Alzheimer's in the midst of everything and had no one to talk to about it. Damn it. Although her character does not speak a lot, you can feel how hard she was trying to pull herself together day by day after everything that has happened, which is really heartbreaking to watch. To be honest, I haven't fully recovered from the film and just remembering the movie, especially the end, already makes me feel sad about it.
The pacing of the movie is quite slow but it makes the experience realer. In fact, because of it's slow pacing, the audience will actually be able to immerse themselves fully to the emotions being portrayed in each scene, especially that the film includes beautiful long shots – a real treat to the eyes of the audience – mostly featuring Mija as she slowly piece together her first poem. The film wants you to connect with the protagonist and I believe it worked.
It's a beautifully executed film and I highly recommend this one. Also, don't you want to know whether she was actually able to write a poem or not? Heh.