Poetry (Shi)
Dir: Lee Chang-dong
2010
*****
Poetry's greatest achievement is that is raises many
questions while it avoids answering them, the downfall for many a film but
perfectly handled here thanks to writer and director Lee Chang-dong and his
enigmatic mastery. It an exploration of the disorder of life and a look at
modern society in comparison to the old ways - that aren't that much better -
and vice versa. These slices of life are studied so delicately and so subtly,
the film is almost like Poetry itself. Everything good that happens and everything
bad that happens is, to a degree, a matter of opinion but how we view the world
and each other is key in this masterful tale by master storyteller Lee
Chang-dong. Jeong-hie Yun's performance is tender and understated and is
probably my favourite performance of 2010, if not of all time. The story opens
at a river where we see children playing on the bank. The body of a girl in a
school uniform floats by. Yang Mi-ja (Yoon Jeong-hee), a 66-year-old
grandmother, consults a doctor at a hospital who is concerned about her
forgetfulness, referring her to a specialist. As she leaves the hospital she
sees a woman manic with grief because her 16-year-old daughter has drowned.
Though Mi-ja lives on government welfare, she has a small job taking care of a
well-to-do elderly man who has had a stroke. At home, she cares for her
ill-mannered 16-year-old grandson, Jong-wook (Lee David), whose divorced mother
lives in Busan. When Mi-ja asks Wook about the girl from his class who
drowned, Wook insists that he doesn't know her. When Mi-ja notices a poster
advertising a poetry class at a local community center, she decides to enroll.
The course assignment is to write one poem by the end of the month-long course.
At the suggestion of her teacher, she begins writing notes about the things she
sees, especially flowers. Wook frequently leaves home at odd hours to socialize
with five other boys from school. One night, he invites all of them over
without notifying Mi-ja, who nevertheless tries to be a gracious host, offering
them a snack before they disappear into Wook's bedroom. Later, one of the boys'
fathers insists that Mi-ja join him and the other boys' fathers for a meeting.
She is told that the group of boys have repeatedly raped a girl,
Agnes, over the past six months, before she jumped off a bridge into a river
and drowned. Her diary was discovered, though only four members of the school's
faculty are aware of the situation. The fathers fear retribution for their
boys, and the school fears a scandal that will tarnish its reputation. In order
to avert a full police investigation, the parents of the boys offer to pay a
settlement of 30 million won to the widowed mother, a poor farmer.
Mi-ja, who cannot afford her 5 million won portion of the payment, is pressured
to ask her daughter (Wook's mother) for the money. Though Mi-ja occasionally
speaks to her daughter on the phone, she does not mention the situation. When
Mi-ja is diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer's disease, she again
neglects to tell anyone. She attempts to confront Wook about his actions, but
he simply ignores her. Mi-ja begins attending a local weekly poetry reading. A
brash man frequently reads beautiful poetry at these readings, but follows them
with crude sexual jokes that offend Mi-ja. Another amateur poet explains to
Mi-ja that the man is a policeman with a good heart, and was recently
reassigned from Seoul after exposing corruption within its police force. Mi-ja
temporarily quits her job caring for the elderly stroke victim after he makes a
desperate sexual advance toward her. She later returns after a journey to the
bridge where Agnes jumped, and her hat flies off into the water. She walks down
to the riverbank and sits, writing poetry until it begins raining. Dripping
wet, she returns to the elderly man, agreeing to have sex with him. When she
does, she appears emotionless. In another meeting with the fathers, Mi-ja is
elected to travel to the countryside to convince Agnes' mother to accept the
settlement. Initially not finding her at home, Mi-ja eventually comes across
her working in the field. Mi-ja begins raving about how beautiful the weather,
flowers, trees, and fruit are, forgetting about the task at hand. The two have
a pleasant exchange before Mi-ja turns and begins to walk away. Finally, she
remembers that she was meant to confront the woman about the settlement, but is
too embarrassed and continues to leave. A few days later, Mi-ja returns to the
fathers to admit that she still cannot pay her portion of the settlement.
Though annoyed that she still hasn't contributed her sum, the fathers are
overjoyed that Agnes' mother has agreed to settle, despite Mi-ja's failure to
confront her. Mi-ja asks the elderly man for the money she needs, refusing to
tell him what it is for. Wondering if this is Mi-ja's attempt at extortion, he
pays her. Once the settlement has been paid to Agnes' mother, Mi-ja phones her
daughter to come home, and insists that Wook shower and cut his nails. That
night, the crude policeman from the weekly poetry readings appears with his partner
to take Wook away. Mi-ja does not protest. The film concludes with Mi-ja's
poetry teacher discovering a bouquet of flowers on the class podium with her
poem, "Agnes's Song", but Mi-ja herself is not present. Her daughter
returns to an empty home, and calls Mi-ja's phone, but receives no answer. The
teacher begins to read Mi-ja's poem to the class. Mi-ja speaks
in voice-over, though the voice of Agnes herself takes over midway
through, following Agnes from the science lab, where she was raped, to the bus,
to the bridge where she is to jump. Agnes turns to the camera, half-smiling,
leaving Mi-ja's fate on an ambiguous note. In many respects the film feels like
a visualisation of the phrase ‘Don’t forget to stop and smell the flowers’ but
it also feels like a reminder that you can never walk away from duty or escape
inevitability. You can address your responsibilities as well as smell the
flowers, even with the shadow of horror upon you. Life is like poetry, poetry
is a small piece of captured life and life, and thus poetry, is a collection of
all things, whether they be bad or good. Lee Chang-dong has an amazing way of
exploring such subjects through the most unusual and often dark corners of
life. There is horror and there is beauty, again, there are no answers but
plenty of food for thought.
