A film called Poetry

This is a South Korean film. It is about an elderly woman, played by a very well established actress, Yun Junghee, who hadn't made a film for sixteen years.

The film-maker, Lee Chang-dong, has worked in the theatre as a writer and director, has written a novel, and has served as minister of Culture and Tourism in the South Korean Government. With Poetry he has made five films. His films have received awards and prizes at international festivals too numerous to summarize here.

Poetry is, in fact, a very poetic film. Very interestingly there is, at the centre of the narrative, a terrible event which, like an elephant in the narrative room, no-one properly acknowedges. Yun Hunghee plays Yang Mija who is alone bringing up her uncooperative teenage grandson. There is a pre-credit scene where the body of a sixteen year old girl is found in the river. This girl went to the same school as the grandson, and she has killed herself because she was being repeatedly gang-raped by a group of six boys. Yang Mija is traversing a life-changing phase: she has just enrolled on a poetry course for which she must write a poem by the end of the month, and she has just discovered that she has the onset of Alzheimers disease. She is called to a meeting of parents at the school to discover that the parents of the raping boys and the headmaster of the school are negotiating a compensation deal with the mother of the dead girl, and that her grandson is one of the boys.

The  meeting with the parents and the headmaster, and a subsequent meeting with the mother of the girl, are all conducted in a very sociable and 'civilized' way - drinking beers, making small talk - not at all reflecting the horror of the events that they are about. Yang Mija, nevertheless, becomes preoccupied by this knowledge but when she tries to confront her grandson he avoids her.

In the course of the film we see Yang Mija at her poetry lessons and attending a poetry group where people read their poems. She always dresses very well and looks very good. She is finding it very difficult to write a poem by the deadline. The still above shows her studying an apple, something her poetry teacher has urged her to do.

The film moves to an extremely moving conclusion as we hear her poem read on the soundtrack of the film.

I can't wait to see this film again. Among the films I've seen recently it stands out.