Poetry

In a nondescript South Korean city, a 66-year-old woman of unusually delicate features, who works part time as a maid and caretaker, is coping with the encroachment of Alzheimer's.

She is also taking a poetry class at the local cultural center.

 

In her daughter's absence -- she lives and works in another town; their relationship, it's implied, is not much -- she is raising her grandson, a sullen, barely communicative teenager typical in some respects but grimly exceptional in others.

Along with five male classmates, the grandson has been accused of raping a female student who subsequently killed herself. In the opening scene of the film "Poetry," which may well be the film of the year, the body is discovered floating downstream by children playing on the riverbank. The grandmother, Mija, must choose a difficult path. Either she joins the fathers of the accused boys in paying considerable hush money to the dead girl's mother, thereby covering up the scandal, or Mija, played by the heartbreaking Yun Jung-hee, follows her fledgling poetic instincts toward a different solution.

This is a small film. It is also a great one.

"Great" is a word I don't use often. Rampant critical overuse of "great" has caused moviegoers to disbelieve claims of greatness on principle. But "Poetry" was the most supple and satisfying narrative picture I saw last year at the Cannes Film Festival, and seeing it again nine months later has, for me, confirmed its value.

The writer-director is Lee Chang-dong, whose previous, more unruly but equally striking film "Secret Sunshine" also made a splash at Cannes. In that picture, an ordinary woman's extraordinary emotional setbacks led to a spiritual quest of haunting complication. In "Poetry," an ordinary woman's extraordinary emotional setbacks lead in another direction, toward a series of inquiries and discoveries, and a resolution both complete and suggestively open-ended.

"I do like flowers and say odd things," says Mija, explaining why she has decided to take a poetry class. Putting words on paper does not come easily for Mija, who has sacrificed much and has been rewarded somewhat meagerly by her relations and society. Where, she wonders throughout "Poetry," does poetic inspiration come from? Is the old cliche true, that only personal reflection and suffering will bring the muse?

The movie, for all its potential melodrama, resists the obvious, even when the narrative structure risks tidiness. The poet, says one casual mentor to Mija, must observe and reflect and head straight for "the most honest thing" she can find, no matter how painful. As Mija struggles with the toughest decision of her life, she enters into a kind of psychic relationship with the victim, the girl so badly used in life and so cruelly dismissed by the boys' fathers in death.

Yun, a veteran actress here playing her first major role in 16 years, astonishes with her subtlety and felicity of expression, her character's initially hidden and then gradually revealed will of iron. I hesitate to even write a sentence like that, lest I make "Poetry" sound like a triumph of the human spirit. The filmmaker, who favors hand-held compositions that lend a slight moral unsteadiness to everything in Mija's universe, is too smart for easy triumphalism. "Poetry" is practically unclassifiable. On the one hand, the narrative does most of the work for you; it's spare but more than enough to get you hooked. On the other, what makes it exceptional is everything going on in between the narrative lines. The writer-director has equated the much-predicted death of poetry with what he sees as the imminent demise of film. His film leaves me no choice but to disbelieve him on both counts.

 

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"Poetry" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: NR

Running time: 2:19.

Cast: Yun Jung-hee (Mija); Lee David (Wook); Kim Hira (Mr. Kang).

Credits: Written and directed by Lee Chang-dong; produced by Lee Joon-dong. A Kino International release. In Korean with English subtitles.

 

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