Director Bong Joon-ho
MOTHER (Madeo) A-
South Korea (129 mi)
2009 ‘Scope d:
Bong Joon-ho
Another extremely
intelligent film, a psychological thriller that veers into murder mystery
territory, with a shifting storyline that leaves the audience a bit off-kilter
by the end, still wondering more about the full extent of the central
relationship between mother and son.
There’s a killer opening credit sequence that features the title
character wandering through a grassy field looking somewhat dazed before
stopping, turning to the camera, and performing a free form dance, not really
in rhythm to the Spanish guitar music, but lost in her own peculiar world, a
scene that repeats itself later with a different perspective. Korean TV star Kim Hye-ja is mercilessly
plastered all throughout this film, never seeming to enjoy a single minute of
it, as every second is spent watching over her grown son Do-Joon (Won Bin), who
due to his mental impairment has the brain function of a young child, including
considerable memory loss. Do-Joon
continues to live at home with his mother, even sleeping in the same bed where
his hand can be seen resting on her breast.
But there’s an eye opening jolt when Do-Joon is nearly run over by a
luxury Mercedes Benz car that continues on without stopping. His friend, local bad boy Jin Tae (Jin Goo),
figures it must be heading to the golf course and they follow to administer
local justice, but they bungle their mission, spending the afternoon with the
hit and run drivers cooling their heels at the police station.
Even though Jin Tae
appears to be his friend, he nonetheless blames Do-Joon for breaking the
Mercedes side mirror that he himself broke.
This establishes the pattern where Do-Joon is routinely called names by
others in town and blamed out of convenience for things he didn’t do. The idea that the disabled are weak and easy
to be exploited is a central theme of Bong Joon-ho, occurring previously in Memories
of Murder (Salinui chueok) (2003)
where the police are quick to blame a village idiot character for a series of
murders. The same thing happens here as
Do-Joon is quickly arrested and charged with the murder of a young girl in what
the police are calling an open and shut case.
The audience is shown a few visual cues just around the time of the
murder, but nothing substantial. A
lawyer is hired, but he is soon depicted in the most reprehensible manner, a
man with few, if any, remaining ethics, as he’d just as soon sell out his own
clients, concerned more about his own image and the collection of his fee. The police aren’t much better, as they easily
coerce Do-Joon through fear of physical violence to confess to a crime he has
no knowledge of ever committing. The
authorities have no interest in what really happened, despite parading every
known CSI contraption out before the public in a blatant effort to fool people
into believing they know what they are doing, covering up the real fact that
they haven’t a clue.
This leaves Kim
Hye-ja to trudge through the rain in search of clues to save her son, actually
turning into a police procedural film through her meticulous efforts to follow
the evidence. This of course leads to
dead ends mixed alongside essential information. Perhaps the most outrageous sequence in the
film is when she tries to offer her condolences to the grieving family who
nearly start a riot in outrage over her presence. The authorities in town have everyone
convinced that her son is the killer, so she is threatened and eventually
assaulted by the girl’s family. The
mother initially suspects Jin Tae, actually sneaking into his home where she is
forced to hide behind a curtain in a perfect example of Hitchcockian suspense,
where Lee Byeong-woo’s music matches the frayed nerves. Out of sheer desperation, she is force to
hire Jin Tae to try to break down a couple of glue sniffers who have been
concealing information about the girl.
Do-Joon himself, pressed to recall what happened, has brief flashbacks
of clarity, but they’re not always pertaining to the case, as he scares the
hell out of his mother when he recalls a horrifying memory of such a hideous
nature that it's hard not to recoil in disbelief. If it’s not one setback, it’s another, but
the mother relentlessly pursues what she can, stopping at nothing, crawling
ever closer to knowing what happened.
Hong Gyeong-pyo’s cinematography captures in great detail the small,
decrepit quarters of the rural poor where the walls are crumbling, where dark
community secrets are held, where the physical reality matches the
deteriorating state of mind of the mother’s ever increasing desperation. By the time we reach the finale, some viewers
may believe she has solved the puzzle while others may feel she is no closer to
ascertaining the truth, as truth remains ambiguous and elusive, leaving the
mother rattled and in a state of shock.
Bong Joon-ho utilizes near experimental imagery for his final sequence,
one that has little basis in reality and instead extends the realms of the
imagination to near formless images of fire dancing in the air as if the truth
is going down in flames.
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