Mother is a murder mystery, a melodrama, a black comedy, a keen social satire and much more. Bong's work is layered with the skill of comedy and drama ,both often so dark and thick that you can put ur hand in and not feel the bottom.
An unnamed widow,living alone with her only son,sells medicinal herbs in a small town in Southern South Korea while doing unlicensed acupuncture to the town's women on the side. Her son Do-joon is shy, but prone to attack anyone who mocks his intellectual disability. A school girl has been found murdered,her body dangled off a roof for the whole town to see. With only circumstantial evidence placing Do-joon near the scene of the crime, the police are happy with their investigation and arrest the boy. The police trick Do-joon into signing a confession, leaving him facing a long-jail sentence. Her quest to prove his innocence forces her to take up arms against an all male-establishment ,the dead girl's enraged family and Don-Joon's duplicitous pal Jin-tae,an amoral layabout who provides some of the films shocking moments.
Kim's performance captures perfectly the sense of a woman at odds with a society she can't or doesn't want to understand,her doomed quest leading her into even more uncompromising situations. Bold,unpredictable and quietly devastating,Mother is Bong's great creation.
No comments:
Post a Comment