Who’s In It: Hye-ja Kim, Bin Won, Ku Jin, Mun-hee Na
The Basics: Korean TV actress Hye-ja Kim is Mother, a small town ginseng store owner who lives with her grown son, Do-Joon (Bin Won), a 27-year-old young man whose mental retardation is ridiculed and exploited by most everyone but his doting, loving mother. One night, Do-Joon drunkenly follows a young school girl into an alley. Unfortunately for him, she turns up dead the next day. When Do-Joon is arrested for her murder, Mother sets off on a mission to find the real culprit, unearthing scandalous secrets and conspiracies in their sleepy country hamlet along the way.
What’s The Deal: This slow-building potboiler from Korean auteur Bong Joon-Ho (The Host, Memories of Murder) is a surprisingly complex gem of a film that should head straight to the top of any cinephile’s must-see list. Part melodrama, part noir murder mystery, Mother weaves layer upon layer of storytelling magic into its often dark and comical plot, resulting in a moving whodunit that’s as much about a mother’s love as it is about an amateur detective on the hunt for a killer. Bong, who earned his reputation as one of Korea’s leading contemporary filmmakers with films like the monster movie The Host, shows an uncommon dexterity and lyricism as he reveals a deft storyteller’s touch that’s as transformative as one of Mother’s acupuncture needles. Uniquely Korean and yet universal when it comes to Hye-ja Kim’s exquisitely played maternal impulses, Mother is a film that must be seen to be fully appreciated -- especially for folks who think their moms are on the borderline psychotic and overly adoring side.
Suspense Done Right: Director Bong worships at the altar of Hitchcock, which means that Mother builds suspense the old-fashioned way: through atmosphere and craft and creepy people sitting in the dark rather than gore or bloody violence. Well, okay – there is some violence, and boy does it pack one heckuva punch. But Bong’s appreciation for old-school genre tricks makes for real, visceral tension that sustains itself for the duration of the film, and all without a single white-faced girl with dripping wet hair making scary sounds or creepy ghost boy crawling on the ceiling to be seen anywhere.
Mother Against The World: Mother is presented as a creature of nature, a practitioner of holistic traditions driven by her maternal instincts who, despite her best efforts, is rapidly losing her son to the contemporary world. She is one with the rural Korea, aligned with its wheat fields and boughs of healing ginseng. Her enemy: modern Korea, a money-hungry society run by blind law, impotent police forces, and capitalist class warfare. While Bong’s sociopolitical themes aren’t as strong here as they are in his previous Memories of Murder, they paint a wider backdrop for this intimate tale of a mother and son that invites deeper cinematic reading.
Best Opening/Closing Scenes Of The Year: No other film this year is likely to top the strange and wonderful scenes that bookend Mother, in which Hye-ja Kim randomly and wordlessly breaks into rhapsodic dance for reasons you won’t understand until the end. Set to original Latin-flavored music by Bong’s regular composer Byeong-woo Lee, these haunting musical scenes are mesmerizingly melancholic highlights that linger in the memory, perfect punctuations for Bong’s deliriously affecting film.