마더 Mother 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Mother': The best movie not yet at most theaters near you

by Lisa Schwarzbaum

Categories: Bong Joon-ho, Horror Movies, Korean movies, Mother, The Host

 

 It’s true, Bong Joon-ho’s Mother — a thrilling blend of horror and I Remember Mama — is only in limited release at the moment, and expanding slowly. It is, however, available on cable on demand and [Update: release pending] I’m here to tell you to demand it, and watch it, twice. Use the first viewing to absorb the slippery facts in the story, about a Korean schoolgirl found murdered in an abandoned building. A 27-year-old man of limited mental ability is charged with the crime. His mother dedicates herself to proving her son’s innocence…and  to finding a killer.

 

Then use the second viewing to revel in the breathtaking sharpness, wit, and elegance of the filmmaking — the work of  one of the coolest international cinema artists working today. Bong’s ability to play one tone against another (comedy and suspense, horror and melancholy, social commentary and melodrama) is like the talent of a great jazz master working in simultaneous contrasting rhythms, and every little riff carries meaning. (There are no wasted shots, no lazy moments in his composition.) We focus on the mother –played with zest and conviction by Korean TV and movie veteran Kim Hye-ja — as a monster as well as a kind of saint, a sweet little traditional lady first seen chopping herbs (how domestic, like a scene out of a Korean folktale!) as well as a new kind of feminine power. But as he did in his previous, boundary-breaking horror masterpiece The Host, and before that in Memories of Murder, Bong also fills his story with a lively menagerie of secondary characters (not to mention fully fashioned blink-and-they’re gone characters), all of whom contribute to the filmmaker’s ongoing sketchbook on a theme of Korean society. Mother takes time for businessmen on a golf course, schoolgirls with mobile phones, cops who cut corners, and a junk-collecting hermit. And Mother’s particular mother shows her maternal obsession not only when defending her son against the outside world, but also when monitoring his eating habits at home.  Oh, and wait ’til you see her dance. You’ve never seen dancing look so mysterious. Watch and tell me if you don’t agree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kim Hye-Ja in “Mother,” directed by Bong Joon-ho.

March 12, 2010

Fierce Love: Better Not Make This Mom Angry

By MANOHLA DARGIS

Published: March 12, 2010

 

The last monster to run wild through Bong Joon-ho’s imagination was an enormous creature from the watery deep. A different menace storms through “Mother,” the fourth feature from this sensationally talented South Korean filmmaker, though she too seems to spring from unfathomable depths. Unlike the beast in “The Host” — a catastrophic byproduct of the American military — the monster in “Mother” doesn’t come with much of a backstory, which suggests that she is a primal force, in other words, a natural.

 

She is and she isn’t as Mr. Bong reveals through a kinked narrative and a monumental, ferocious performance by Kim Hye-ja as the title character. Written by Mr. Bong, sharing credit with Park Eun-kyo, “Mother” opens as a love story that turns into a crime story before fusing into something of a criminal love story. Nothing is really certain here, even the film’s genre, and little is explained, even when the characters fill in the blanks. Though richly and believably drawn, Mr. Bong’s characters are often opaque and mysterious, given to sudden rages, behavioral blurts and hiccups of weird humor. But it’s this very mystery that can make them feel terribly real.

 

None are truer, more disturbingly persuasive than Mother, who lives with her 27-year-old son, Do-joon (Won Bin), in cramped quarters adjoining her tiny apothecary. Beautiful and strangely childlike, Do-joon doesn’t seem right in the head: he’s forgetful, seemingly naïve, perhaps retarded. (When he tries to remember something, he violently massages both sides of his head in an exercise that Mother, without apparent irony, calls “the temple of doom.”) But if he runs a little slow, Mother runs exceedingly fast, as you see shortly after the movie opens when, while playing with a dog one bright day, Do-joon puts himself in the path of an oncoming BMW, which leaves him dazed if not particularly more addled.

 

You watch the accident unfold alongside Mother, who busily chops herbs with a big blade in her darkened shop while casting worried glances at Do-joon as he goofs off across the street. From her vantage point, he looks as centered within the shop’s front door as a little prince inside a framed portrait. The dim interior and bright exterior only accentuate his body — the daylight functions as a kind of floodlight — which puts into visual terms the idea that he is the only thing that Mother really sees. Mr. Bong may like narrative detours, stories filled with more wrong turns than a maze, but he’s a born filmmaker whose images — the spilled water that foreshadows spilled blood — tell more than you might initially grasp.

 

He’s also a filmmaker who finds great, unsettling dark comedy in violence, and once again the blood does run, if somewhat less generously than in “The Host” and his often brilliant “Memories of Murder.” Although Do-joon seems to recover from his accident, the event sets off a chain of increasingly violent incidents that culminate in the murder of a local schoolgirl, Ah-jung (Moon Hee-ra), whose body is found slumped over a roof wall in the village, positioned, one character says, like “laundry.” Do-joon is summarily arrested for the death after an incriminating golf ball is found at the scene. Mad with grief, Mother sets off to clear him and begins furiously rooting around the village in search of the killer.

 

The hard-pounding heart of “Mother,” Ms. Kim is a wonderment. Perched on the knife edge between tragedy and comedy, her delivery gives the narrative — which tends to drift, sometimes beguilingly, sometimes less so — much of its momentum. At times it feels as if Ms. Kim is actually willing it, or perhaps Mr. Bong, forward. Yet while Mother can seem like a caricature of monstrous maternity (“You and I are one,” she insists to the jailed Do-joon) the performance is enormously subtle, filled with shades of gray that emerge in tandem with the unwinding investigation. There are several crimes in “Mother,” and while none can be justified, Mr. Bong works hard to make sure none are easily condemned.

 

“Mother” is a curious film, alternately dazzling and frustrating. Mr. Bong’s virtues as a filmmaker, including his snaking storytelling and refusal to overexplain actions and behaviors, can here feel like evasions or indulgences rather than fully thought-out choices. There’s a vagueness to the film that doesn’t feel organic — as if, having created a powerhouse central character, he didn’t exactly know what to do with her. That said, his visual style and the way he mixes eccentric types with the more banal, like a chemist preparing a combustible formula, are often sublime, as is Ms. Kim’s turn as the mother of all nightmarish mothers, a dreadful manifestation of a love so consuming it all but swallows the world.

 

“Mother” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Bloody violence, intimations of depravity.

 

MOTHER

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

 

Directed by Bong Joon-ho; written by Park Eun-kyo and Mr. Bong, based on a story by Mr. Bong; director of photography, Hong Kyung-pyo; edited by Moon Sae-kyoung; music by Lee Byeong-woo; production designer, Ryu Seong-hie; costumes by Choi Se-yeon; martial arts by Jung Doo-hong and Heo Myeong-haeng; produced by Moon Yang-kwon, Seo Woo-sik and Park Tae-joon; released by Magnolia Pictures. In Korean, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes.

 

WITH: Kim Hye-ja (Mother), Won Bin (Yoon Do-joon), Jin Goo (Jin-tae), Yoon Jae-moon (Je-mun), Jun Mi-sun (Mi-sun), Song Sae-beauk (Sepaktakraw Detective) and Moon Hee-ra (Moon Ah-jung).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/movies/12mother.html

http://movie-critics.ew.com/2010/03/17/mother-bong-joonho-best-korean-movies/