Complexity is
of the essence in films that I find at once entertaining and enlightening. This
quality is easily evident in the best of Korean cinema, which is one of the
world's most intoxicating visual brew. Highly layered, the Korean facet of
the human condition--even at its most horrible and heartbreaking--never fails
to beam up with a grin and to surprise us with the grace of transcendent beauty. Since
getting bedazzled by the films of Park Chan-wook after watching his exhilarating offbeat
trilogy--Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003),
and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)--I've been bracing myself to wade deep into the New Wave of Korean filmmaking.
After reading
the reviews of Bong Joon-ho’s Mother and
Lee Chang-dong's Poetry, I
watched them one after the other recently and still can't get over it. I can
not recommend it strongly enough to give justice to its exquisitely nuanced
narrative, performances, and other production values that are simply
world-class. In a nutshell, both films feature two of the most out-of-the-box
and complicated characterization of mothers I have ever seen---crazy, scary, but
always feisty with resilience and tenderness.
Let these
trailers speak for the pleasure that awaits those who will watch these two
modern gems of Korean cinema:
