Review Poetry (original title "Shi") | poetslandscape

MPAA (Not rated) CNS/USCCB () Roger Ebert (3 ? Stars) Fr. Dennis (three stars)

IMDb Listing - http://www.Imdb.Com/title/tt1287878/

CNS/USCCB Review -

Roger Ebert's Review- http://rogerebert.Suntimes.Com/apps/p.C..Dll/article?AID=/20110224/REVIEWS/110229993/1023

Poetry (true name, Shi) a South Korean film written and directed with the resource of Chang-dong Lee first stuck my eye whilst it was cited by using the use of numerous human beings on the IMDb?S Oscars' communicate board as one of the Best unnominated movies/performances of 2010. Then it passed off to be playing at Chicago?S Music Box Theatre this week.

One of the a laugh of the films is that you could use them to go into, but in quick, into unique places, cultures and times. One of the frustrations of world movies is, however, that irrespective of properly those films are subtitled or dubbed, the movies are as a minimum to begin with disorienting, this is, until one gets a keep close of the film-makers? Intentions in addition to their movies? Conventions and forms. Hollywood?S films, even the high-quality/superb ones, are famously formulaic. Films produced in different international locations for his or her home consumption also are usually formulaic. Most complicated however, are movies in reality supposed for international audiences. It?S as although producers of such films fall into the entice of believing that they have to % in as a amazing deal of the problematics of their usa or tradition as viable within the 2-3 hours that they have got alotted in their film.

Poetry appears to me to be a exquisite, even though very conventional example of such an global film: there are at least 3 memories, every compelling in its own proper, taking location concurrently. Together, the three tales do upload as tons as extra than the sum in their additives, however at the rate of some clarity. I?M greater or much much less high exceptional that Hollywood may have cautioned that the testimonies be taken one after the opposite and used as fodder for two-3 separate and unrelated films.

The relevant character is Mija (performed with the aid of Jeong-hie Yun), a South Korean grandmother residing in Seoul and elevating her teenage grandson Jongwook (carried out by the use of Da-wit Lee), even as his mother works in a production facility in Pusan at the alternative stop of america. (Veterans of the Korean War or the ones who've studied it, will apprehend these as vicinity names properly). Jongwook seems to haven't any father to talk of. Mija looks after him out of a feel of responsibility and resignation and Jongwook, being early in his teenagers, is each fully clueless and because of this thoroughly ungrateful for what Mija is doing for him. Mija is also turning into ?Forgetful? ... Finally, Mija as seniors frequently do, symptoms and signs up for an interest, a Poetry class, at a network center and this elegance simply gives her life.

Fairly early in the movie, Jongwook will become extra than an insignificant ungrateful annoyance at the same time as Mija is informed by using the a number of fathers of his further loutish buddies that Jongwook along with the ones distinct boys changed into implicated within the rape of a younger teenage girl who in the end jumped off a bridge committing suicide. The fathers preference to payoff the mom of the deceased lady just so she does not press expenses thus ?Saving

Not only does Mija not have ready access to the kind of money needed (though she would have a way), she seems clearly conflicted in participating in such a scheme. Was Mija’s own daughter raped in a similar way when her daughter was young, explaining the absence of a father for Jongwook? Was Mija herself raped/abused in the same way when _she_ was young? In any case, while the other fathers are in agreement as to what to do, Mija is clearly an unenthusiastic participant. Worse, Jongwook acts as if nothing at all had happened and remains simply an bad mannered and largely clueless (immature) child in Mija’s home. Mija’s new found poetry class offers potentially some respite or salvation, but Mija is also getting “forgetful.”

The movie then plays out in a poignant manner that the reader can probably put together from the pieces given above.

In the background of this terrible story of Mija and her family are some truly beautiful and tragic scenes of daily life in contemporary South Korea. The girl who was raped and subsequently committed suicide was Catholic (reminding viewers that at substantial portion of South Korea’s population _is_ Catholic). Then her family lived in the countryside at the outskirts of Seoul. This is beautiful country, but also brings to mind issues of economics and social class, as well as further poignancy of what it must have been for a country family to lose a daughter who up until her sudden rape/death might have been giving hope to the family of "making it" in the city.

The get togethers of the poetry class are both fun and at times conflicting as clearly language, even the language of poetry can be used to express a multitude of thoughts, impressions and intentions. And then there is Mija with so much going on in her life, finding it increasingly difficult to express herself at all...

This is a great and, as often is the case with “international films,” a _sad_ story. There will be American women whose blood will certainly start to boil/curdle as this story plays out. Poetry is _not_ the first story of previously largely untold women’s pain to come out on screen in recent years. I think of the recent Hollywood movie Defiance about the otherwise heroic pursuits of the Bielsky brothers who had led a specifically Jewish partisan movement in the forests of Nazi occupied Byelorussia during World War II. One of the horrors given voice in that movie was that of the Jewish women of that time who did not necessarily feel _safe_ around the Jewish men (who took “forest wives”) even as those men were nominally "protecting" them.

I am positive, however, that these kind of stories of specifically women’s suffering will increasingly common for the foreseeable future as both men and women come to grips with the violence against women, both past and present, that until recently was rarely if ever discussed.

Seniors, especially senior women would probably like / relate to this film as it is about a senior woman with definitely a story to tell.

Note to parents: While there is no nudity in the picture or onscreen violence, the themes presented are clearly intended for an adult audience. I don't think that a lot of teenagers would really understand this movie, even if one of the main characters in the story is an obviously "clueless" and largely ungrateful teen.

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