Poetry review

Directed by Changdong Lee. Starring Jung-Hee Yong.

Poetry is not always pretty. Sometimes it can be downright depressing. South Korean director Changdong Lee’s Poetry begins with a lengthy shot of water flowing beneath a bridge. After a few moments, the body of a girl floats into the frame.

The focus then changes to Mija (Jung-Hee Yoon), a beautiful older woman. Mija has problems. She has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and has trouble recalling nouns. She works as a housemaid, where an elderly man sexually harasses her. She lives with and cares for her teenage grandson, Wook.

In regard to her relationship with Wook, she explains, “He’s the master of the house.” Wook comes and goes as he pleases, blasts music from his room, and spends much of his time watching obnoxious television. The only time he voluntarily interacts with his grandmother is to demand food. Wook never apologizes or expresses gratitude. In fact, Wook never does much of anything, except rape one of his female classmates, ultimately leading her to commit suicide (the girl in the water, named Agnes).

In an attempt to cover their tracks, Mija, along with the fathers of Wook’s five other friends who also raped the girl, elect to pay a collective 30 million won settlement to the girl’s family.

Everything about this cover up is blatantly corrupt. The fathers only concern is how the case might hinder their sons’ bright futures. They toast champagne in celebration when the settlement is accepted. But they are not the only guilty party. The school also desperately wants the girl’s family to settle to prevent tarnishing the school’s record.

In fact, the only person who seems emotionally affected by the Agnes’ death at all is Mija. She attends the girl’s funeral, collecting a small, framed picture of her on the way out. She wakes Wook in the middle of the night to beg, “Why did you do it?” She visits the science lab where the rape occurred. Mija even makes an attempt to talk to the girl’s mother, but can’t find the courage to bring up the subject.

Mija finds some relief when she enrolls in a poetry class at the local cultural center. The class meets twice a week, with an ultimate goal of each student writing their own poem.

During one particular assignment, everyone shares his or her most beautiful moment. This evokes Mija to vaguely describe her first memory, a tender moment between her and her older sister as infants. “I felt really pretty,” she explains.

This beauty seems to have escaped her, and she spends much of the film struggling to find poetic inspiration. “How do I write poetry?” she asks miserably several times throughout the film. Ironically, she refuses to find any inspiration in any of the extraordinary, although depressing, events happening in her present.

Mija wants to write about beauty, and is constantly looking for it in nature: an apricot fallen to the ground, the flowers in her window, and the tree in her yard. Roughly halfway through the film, this culminates in one especially pathetic scene where Mija comments on the beautiful flowers in her doctor’s office, only to find they are fake.

Poetry ends as tragically as it begins. To pay for her share of the 30 million won and protect her grandson, Mija sleeps with the old man she works for, only to blackmail him. Her rapidly progressing dementia finally fully turns on her when she forgets the identity of a classmate, a police detective. She unburdens herself on him one night after a poetry reading, revealing all the information of Wook’s crime.

The final scene is the reading of Mija’s poem, entitled “Agnes’ Song”, aloud in class by the teacher. Mija is absent. Although Lee leaves Mija’s fate open to interpretation, he heavily alludes to suicide. The last seconds of the film return us to the beginning of the film, moments before the young girl, Agnes, flings herself from the bridge.

Much of the film’s success (and this is a successful film) can be attributed to Jung-Hee Yoon’s quietly tragic performance. She capably communicates the decay of Mija’s mental health and spirit by the hand of her unfortunate circumstances.

A thought-provoking examination of one woman’s search for beauty, Lee’s economic film tells the story of two women through one. An excellent, intelligent film.