• Thematically it’s in line with the rest Chang-don Lee’s oeuvre- it’s dark- life being sucked out of its protagonist
  • Best actress win at Cannes for Do-yeon Jeon and she is good- a very emotional performances- multiple scenes of raw emotional outpouring
  • Kang-ho Song is great as her shadow—he’s funny here
  • Yellows galore and that’s where the strength of the film lies- in the believable-world color-specific mise-en-scene like Kieslowski. Chang-dong Lee forgets his usual penchant for green (though that color comes in second here) for yellow—the spot of bleached hair on Do-yeon Jeon’s child, the boots, the pillow, coffee mug, SpongeBob stuffed animal, taxi, chair in pharmacy, the yellow-letter dividers at the cd store
  • Ironic town named “Sunshine”—could be “Dogville”- this tragedy is very von Trier- Godless
  • Genre-bending a bit- the kidnapping here seems to come out of nowhere- I think it’s a stretch in this world
  • Lots of discussion on Christianity and theology here. It saves her when she’s at her lowest and then she comes crashing down with God’s silence or the hollowness of her belief- I see some Bergman here
  • A warm color palette but this is a cold world
  • A biblical fable, meditation on pain and suffering- this is Chang-dong Lee’s thesis. A novelistic film
  • 127 minutes in we get the 2 ½ minute wrist slitting scene and then the camera tracking outside- a great shot. This is another Chang-dong Lee trait—the long take or fantastic tracking shot not set up through the film, but to show the film’s zenith like the topless dusk shot half-way through Burning or the final murder
  •  R/HR – superior to Oasis but not Peppermint Candy or Burning