Amateur Recommendation Hour: Poetry (2010 Korean Film)

Today’s recommendation is small scale on every level and delivers a truly unforgettable, poignant reminder that it is never too late to introduce new things to keep our lives worth living, remembering, and discussing even after they are gone. The films pace and subject matter may not be of interest to a broad audience, however to those who are willing to invest the time in this piece will hopefully be finding themselves contemplating themselves in very constructive and healthy ways, arriving to their own conclusions about what to do next with their lives.

Poetry, directed by Lee Chang-dong, is the story of a lonesome suburban woman in her 60s with precious few things left in life to keep her occupied. After she learns she has Alzheimer’s she decides to take up poetry whilst dealing with her irritable grandson who, unbeknownst to her, is at the center of a police investigation along with his friends. It gives light narrative strands to explore people and society with a straightforward cause and effect to excellent effect. Allowing more space for meditative and constructive moments than a film with a stronger emphasis on pace and narrative focus.

The characterization and performance of the main character, Mi-ja, are absolutely top notch. Portrayed by Yoon Jeong-hee who had not been in a film for the previous 16 years at that point in time, she is a woman who is clinging to what she has left, while realizing how little that truly is. Her struggle with trying to find purpose in her largely empty life and balancing that with her deteriorating health, issues with her grandson, and the fathers of his friends is one that I found to be compelling, remarkably subtle, and expressed through the most understated of environmental detail, mannerisms, and dialogue. She never becomes more than human, and there’s a beauty in that slow decay and the resolve that she gains because of it and who is to say that there isn’t anything super about that human quality of resiliency. But she’s never explore through an idealistic lens, and the reality of her situation remains a constant underlying dread throughout the film.

The lack of a score and not being presented in an overly melodramatic tone are absolutely brilliant decisions that I believe enhance the central themes of this work. Toiling through an overall artless, joyless, and newly confused space. I appreciate the backgrounded elements subtly criticizing the uniquely materialist aspects of Korean society specifically but also mixing it with broader level of criticism of the global population as a whole. So many live surface level lives without deep thought about anything confronting, transgressive, expressive, sentimental, or gentle. It is an appreciation that Mi-ja is beginning to learn just as her functioning mind, the most important part of learning anything, has begun to betray her on the most destructive and personal level.

The shot framing, one of director Lee’s more underrated qualities, continues along with the commitment to small scale of this film. The natural backdrops of Korea’s countryside would enhance any filmmakers film but it is how they are contrasted with Mi-ja’s failing mental state so smartly to create an empathy between the two, the backgrounds she won’t remember, but wants to so desperately in order to continue creating, to continue living and being present. Afraid to confront the truth that she is losing herself and there is nothing she can do about it in the physical sense. But in a memetic sense, leaving pieces of herself behind, that can be appreciated beyond photographs of her and anecdotes about her from others, if there were any left.

My personal interpretation of this work is to appreciate the depth of our surroundings amidst the chaos of our lives, never stop striving for personal growth and insight of what makes up our world, no matter how basic those things might seem and no matter what stands in your way. These kinds of ideas are not limited to the space of artistic creation either. We can utilize these ideas in a myriad of scenarios to better ourselves. Even the most undesirable situations can be salvaged with new aspirations and activities to find purpose in. To keep striving to find meaning even when we have been given every reason to not. We may all be ordinary people at the end of the day, but the untapped potential within all of us to create something monumental is something worth confronting.

When the heavier, harrowing, and truly traumatizing subjects and experiences of life come to bite at us we often think them not worthy of creative inspiration, and in a vacuum, no they are not, certainly not in any sort of romanticized immortalization. It is their impact on life that makes them worth portraying, worth confronting, and worth exploring. We hate them, we revile them, we despise them, but when we ignore them they become lost in our soul, lost to the potential beauty in our shared humanity, lost to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

In typical Lee Chang-dong fashion, there are no easy answers to these complex questions that he asks of us in his trademark ambiguity. We must dig to find the answer ourselves, much like our own lives. One of the very best artists at using the tool of ambiguity to his advantage and to those who are willing, to our advantage as well. His background primarily as a novelist is never more evident than in this work.

It hits heavy but it hits true. It is not exciting, but as much as art should be an imitation of life, never a one to one depiction of it in the healthiest society,  it doesn’t have to be. It may not be the most “enjoyable” film to the average viewer, but in its aspirations and its execution it is not only poignant and valuable but it is good art of the highest accord. Contemplative, real, and motivating in every sense. It’s value is in what it says as much as what it doesn’t say and allows us to connect the dots of our arduous but worthwhile journey forward into a space that gives us a chance at self-fulfillment.

Art is not only a reason of many, but for some it can be THE reason when we need it the most. Be it creating, commentating on, or experiencing. And I look forward to doing my part to enrich my own life more while I am still fortunate enough to be here.