Poetry

I saw a Korean film called Poetry. It was not a typical movie watched on a regular school night, but somehow it left a great big impression on me. Perhaps because it was such a dramatically sad setting however with such a happy, floating ambiance throughout the 2+ hour film.

The setting is in some country side in Korea with a 68-year old grandmother as the protagonist. She lives on welfare and works as a helper/maid for this older geezer, and lives in a tiny apartment with her grandson whom the protagonist found out raped a girl at school with his friends, and the girl committed suicide. Because the group of boys' fathers decide they need to shush the whole incident, they ask for the grandma to also contribute with an incredible amount of money for settlement, which she can no way come up with. On top of it, she starts getting Alzheimer. Her daughter has abandoned the family too.

All of this is beautifully depicted through her taking up poetry and finding beautiful things and phrases to practice poetry. Even when she was forced by the corrupt father to go see the dead girl's mother, she forgets her purpose of coming when she sees a beautiful fruit in her path, and completely turns happy and even holds a pleasant conversation with the dead girl's mother without mentioning who she is. Only later she realizes that she had forgotten her purpose of coming, and the next day has to face the mother again who learns that she was one of them.

The ending was particularly beautiful. The overall movie really depicts well the sensitive balance between the horrid things that can fall upon a single person, and her going through these things with beautiful poetry and taking a more proper path than many others.