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By Nathan Cone

Any movie with the guts to call itself “Poetry,” at least as its English-language title, better be able to live up to its lofty name. Lee Chang-dong’s exquisite film, a Cannes Film Festival winner for Best Screenplay, more than earns its moniker.

The film opens upon a serene setting, the gentle flowing of a river. As kids play along the bank, a girl’s body floats into the frame, face-down. Her soul haunts the film and its central character, Mija (Yun Jung-hee), an aging part-time maid who looks after her bored teenage grandson, Wook (Lee David).

Mija enrolls in a poetry class at the local community center to sharpen her mind, after she’s diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease.

One day, Mija learns that Wook and five of his friends at school have been implicated in a heinous crime. The dead girl floating in the river at the beginning of the film was a classmate of Wook’s. It turns out that his “gang of six” had been raping the girl, Heejin, repeatedly for months on end. Heejin threw herself off a bridge, but her diary revealed the perpetrators. Mija is pulled into a plan, instigated by the fathers of the other boys, to pay off the dead girl’s mother and avoid a police investigation.

It would not be spoiling the film to say that Mija follows through with the plan to pay off the mother, but also enables justice to be served. I won’t say the methods by which she does so, but I think the way she comes about her decision is formed in an oblique way by her poetry class. While initially finding it difficult to actually write a poem, the class makes Mija more observant of the world around her, and she begins taking notes on seemingly innocuous things like apricots that have fallen to the ground. She also becomes a keen observer of human emotion, I think. After meeting the dead girl’s mother, she recognizes the path she must take; that she must speak for Heejin, a poor girl who can no longer speak for herself.

All the while, Lee Chang-dong handles this material like a great master, with care and respect for his aged protagonist. The film could easily have descended into melodrama, or added a knock-down confrontation scene between Heejin’s mother and the adult guardians of her rapists. But Chang-dong deftly avoids such cliche in favor of quiet moments of empathy, and yes, poetry. The final scene, looking upon the same river that opened the film, is open to interpretation -- but then, so are the best poems, aren’t they?

'POETRY' on BLU-RAY

“Poetry” is being released on DVD and Blu-ray from Kino Lorber. I viewed the film on Blu-ray. Cinematographer Kim Hyun-seok captures the South Korean cities and countryside well, using what seems like natural light. The disc includes a short interview with actor Ahn Nae-sang, who sings the praises of Yun Jung-hee. The actress, a major star in South Korea, is also interviewed in a short “making of” feature included on the disc. And there are trailers for some of Kino’s other outstanding releases, including “Mademoiselle Chambon” and “Untold Scandal.”

8/23/11

 

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