詩
Appreciation can only match depth, and it only matters what the viewer carries before going in to see this film; let’s assume that the viewer understands Korea—has experienced it and has some knowledge of it—experienced some form of abuse like rape, molestation, harassment—any form of physical trauma or an unwelcome invasion (which, realistically speaking, is more common among people than not), is a feminist to some degree, either theoretically or just unwittingly so, and finally, understands poetry in all mediums—literature, cinema, music and art.
Poetry is completely real, unforgivingly so. I was at a screening of Straight to Hell the other night. Director Alex Cox quoted Paul Lewis, saying, “Film is a punishment inflicted on people who seek entertainment.” This is true. I like movies that do this. I cannot sufficiently express my disgust for films that cause escapism.
On Lack of Music
The main thing I was struck by in Poetry is the lack of music. Music often acts as a vehicle to the audience’s emotions, shifting and directing moods of viewers. Music is the most controlling element in the cinematic experience, and I can’t agree more with Jarmusch’s statement on how he much dislikes films where the music “hijacks the mood” of a moment. The lack of music in this movie was what made the experience so close and real. Lee doesn’t coddle his audience. He strips his product down bare and forces the viewers to look at life as we know and live it.
On Poetry and Man and Woman
The film begins with the death of a 16-year-old girl (whose communion name is “Agnes”) who committed suicide by throwing herself into a river and drowning. She’d left behind a diary, which includes details on a series of rape crimes she’d experienced on school grounds—specifically the lab room—by a group of six teenaged boys.
The protagonist is a 66-year-old woman, Mija, who is suffering from the first stages of Alzheimer’s and taking poetry classes at the local culture center. She receives a small government stipend and makes extra cash on the side by working as a maid and caretaker to an old man, who’d suffered a stroke. Her duties include bathing the old man as well as cleaning the house. She is also the grandmother to one of the boys.
The fathers of the five other boys and Mija gather at a lunch meeting for a discussion on the handling of the situation. They mention how the girl’s diary had been found by the principal and how a couple of police investigators are also aware of the crime, as well as the homeroom teacher and the girl’s mother (a farmer who lives alone with her son). The men decide as a group that they should compensate the mother with a sum of something equivalent to about $30,000 to keep the matter a secret and keep the press from getting to the story.
The primary discourse throughout the film is one on the difference between genders. For instance, the men who are fathers to the five boys who’d raped this girl and driven her to suicide find it very easy to come to a monetary compensation as a way to settle the matter. Mija, however, doesn’t seem to agree, albeit not stating it directly. She quietly harbors her mourning throughout the film. I thought it was ingenious to assign Mija's role to an old woman (Yun Jung Hee) —a person who obviously is no longer in her teens, and has mothered a daughter and now raises a teenage grandson struggling with adolescent qualms. But from the film’s portrayal, it’s obvious that she empathizes with this young girl’s pain very closely, despite the distance between the two in terms of age.
The main struggle for Mija, aside from the pressure to pay five grand in order to bail out her grandson, is to write a poem. She claims never to have written a poem and does not consider herself a poet, but she constantly asks herself and others what it takes to write a poem. She attends a local poetry reading and approaches one woman whose poems she admires. The woman advises Mija not to try so hard but to simply feel. This is where the young girl’s death, her experiences just prior to her death, and Mija’s desire to write a poem meet: Mija doesn’t try to write a poem but instead feels what the girl had gone though daily and takes notes, visiting the places where the girl had been, sensing what she had sensed when she was still living.
Mija takes a walk on the bridge, overlooking the river where the girl had killed herself, and stands there, feeling the wind. Her hat flies off her head and lands in the water. Mija takes a walk by the water through grass and sits on a rock, letting rain pelt down on her. It seems that the old lady is getting closer to acting as a vessel to the girl whose voice the townsmen, the mother, the school, the police and the media have muffled, but not in a vindictive way. Just in a quiet but heartbreaking manner to say that she’d been there and sensed something in those places there.
There is a scene where the old woman is bathing the old man she works for. In the middle of bathing him, she stops because she feels an erection. When she pulls away, the old man grabs her arm and begs her to let him feel like a man just once before he dies. She rebukes him and leaves, subsequently quitting her job. The scene is intense. The old man, who can’t enunciate his words properly due to his stroke, looks pathetic and desperate, and Mjia looks back, resentful and disgusted. The scene conjures up the eternal struggle between man and woman. The only word that can describe this struggle is “impossible,” because of the impossibility of what a man claims he needs, which he blames nature for, and the impossibility of being a woman, unable to heed to such a request so easily without feeling like she is being taken away of something. This scene juxtaposes nicely with another scene that occurs a bit later on in the film, when the old woman pays a visit to the country side where the girl’s mother resides. She takes a walk down a path and sees apricots that had “throw[n] themselves” all over the ground. She finds the girl’s mother working in the field and talks for sometime about apricots, and how the sight of the fruit thrown on the ground, getting trampled and broken, seems necessary for the next life to begin. The scene is more or less a statement on how a woman, in all stages of her life—teenage girl, a middle aged mother, or a senior grandmother—suffers abuse for the sake of others' progression, particularly, in this case, the men’s.
In another scene, Mija goes to a karaoke room and sings. The father of one of the five boys goes there to meet her. I wondered why the director had put in this scene, and soon the reason became clear to me: the men sense an urgency in a matter such as this, and believe it can easily be put to rest with money, but women—this woman—finds the situation so much more overwhelming and impossible than they do—so much so that she sees no choice other than to go to a karaoke room and sing. Either that or go for walks, feel and describe nature, and try to write a poem.
Mija eventually returns to the old man’s house, gives him his Viagra, and performs intercourse. I say “perform” here because the sex scene lacks such intimacy, is so tragically arid and sad that there is no better word to describe it. The old man, with his face contorted from stroke, in an expression that seems mixed with pain and pleasure, looks away the entire time she has sex with him, while Mija sheds tears. Mija eventually blackmails him, requesting the five grand in return for the service she gave him when she pays him a visit in the presence of his children and grandchildren. She requests the money in return for her silence of their actions.
On “Electricity” as a Motif
At the start of the film, Mija visits a local hospital, complaining of a prickly sensation traveling down her arm, which she compares to a sensation of electric shock passing. Throughout the film, technology as a form of escapism for her grandson plays a huge role. Whenever the boy is home with his grandmother, he plays the stereo too loudly, keeps the computer on constantly, or watches TV at every meal. When the grandmother makes hints at her awareness of his crime, he turns on the TV to block out her words and his own conscience. In one of the last scenes of the boy, his grandmother finds him at an arcade, and pulls him out. The boy reluctantly leaves with her, but it is obvious that what he craves is senseless visual or aural stimulation to find relief from whatever distress he feels. The electronic distractions in the film act as an antithesis to poetry which Mija looks for in nature.
The boy doesn’t really show much remorse for his actions or the girl’s death, and finally, neither does Mija after she hands the men the five grand she received from the old man, indicating that the matter’s been closed and put behind her. In the end, the boy does get taken away by the police, and what happens after is never really told but the old woman does finally write her poem, and she hands it in on the last day of her poetry class, leaving it behind with a bouquet of flowers for the teacher.
On Agnes’ Song
The poem is called “Agnes’ Song,” and it begins in Mija's voice then turns into Agnes’ voice in the middle until the end.
It is a love poem. One must ask to whom this song is dedicated, and to whom the confession is being made. The poem makes sense once it is realized that the love song is dedicated to life. The small but vivid details of the experiences one feels while living are what Agnes had loved and what she misses. Seen from this angle, the poem is moving, painful and beautiful.
Poetry is a terrific film. It’s devastating and slow moving but intense and lovely at the same time. I recommend it for anyone who can appreciate it from the angles that I’d mentioned earlier. The film is a perfect, poetic illustration of what we live everyday but often ignore.
