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Poetry – 2010 Chang-dong Lee
- Opens, much like perhaps his best (along with Burning) work- Peppermint Candy with a suicide on a bridge. Here Chang-dong Lee
distorts the water to his trademark green to open and then it slowly turns to a
more normal river/water color—great opening
- Jeong-hie Yun (playing Mija) is going through some things here—she’s
facing a diagnosis of Alzheimer, her grandson has committed a heinous crime,
she’s out of money (she needs a large sum to pay for her grandson’s crime), she’s
wrecked with guilt and the entire time, is trying to escape, find art (poetry)
and evolve. Really well done moral meditation and character study
- Chang-dong Lee goes half-way in with the green
color again- the strong opening, the plants, the bath tub of the house she
cleans, the bus—but go all in and give me more
- Great costume on Jeong-hie Yun- called chic in
the film and she is, even if it’s not flashy as she repeats outfits. It still
works with the context of her being poor
- Great long-take at the hospital near the
opening of the mom reacting to the suicide in the opening- long-take pivotal
moments are a Chang-dong Lee trademark
- Art (poetry) as an escape from harsh reality
- Sadly there is a lot of poetry reading here—lots
of words in general in the film—novelistic
- The ending comes full circle after we see the
green bus and kid with a green hula-hoop again– she starts reading the poem
and the girl victim finishes it—we go back to the river and bridge. Bookends
- Recommend could go to HR with another visit
Drake2019-04-19T19:24:04+00:00
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[…] Poetry – Chang-dong Lee […]
My god does Chang-dong Lee make gut wrenching films. After being blown away by Burning (2018) which has climbed up my list to top 10 of the decade I’ve wanted to do a full on Study but have had trouble locating his work so forced to do piecemeal. I had only seen Burning (2018) and Secret Sunshine (2007) prior to this one.
Some similarities to Bong’s Mother (2009) although that film had some stunning shots while this is not as strong visually. Chang-dong Lee was a novelist before film director and I can see that a lot here. Perhaps it could have been trimmed down a bit. Hopefully I can find Peppermint Candy (1999) at some point.
@James Trapp- feels like we could be in for quite some wait for a follow-up to Burning
@Drake – Yeah, I was looking through all the South Korean Films I have watched ever since I started tracking and grading films. I’ve seen a total of 23
I came across this list of the top 100 South Korean Films of all time (link below)
Funny enough my top 5 is identical to their list albeit with a slightly different order
My top 5
1. Old Boy
2. Burning
3. Parasite
4. Memories of Murder
5. The Handmaiden
Their list:
1. Burning
2. Parasite
3. Memories of Murder
4. Old Boy
5. The Handmaiden
https://www.koreanscreen.com/100-greatest-korean-films-50-1
@James – I share the top 2 with you but I’d swap out Memories and Handmaiden for the two Kim Ki Duk films Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall, Spring… and 3-Iron
@Harry – I’ll check those out. Man I love Korean Cinema. It’s funny how a lot of the great directors come in trios
South Korea: Lee Chang-dong, Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook
Mexico: Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón
West Germany: Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders
Japan: Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi
@James Trapp – indeed- the various “Waves”
Web search “peppermint candy full film” (full film is a good web search trick for any film by the way) and it comes up at archive.org I had to download it to get the sub titles to work properly. Quality was great. It looks like an american site and I did it from Australia.
@Jagman – wow it worked, thank you so much. Can’t believe how simple that was. Going to try to watch in next couple days but quality looks great