I review a lot of films that I know in my heart are going to be pretty dreadful. That doesn’t mean I don’t go in with an open mind, but it does mean that I get a chance to exercise my criticism bone and sit sneering with superiority as I type unhelpfully damning reviews of most US imports. However, every now and then some kind soul sends me a DVD of a film that I’d never be able to see at my local hive-like multiscreen cinema, and unusually I have to reach for my antiseptic wipes and prepare some foreign feet for a good kiss.
Mother is one of these rare films; a thoughtful, intelligent novel compared to Hollywood’s industrial pamphlets on the virtues of youth and violence. It manages to achieve this level of greatness because it is not a product of the US, but rather a Korean movie which joins a long line of delicately disturbing films that have caught the attention of western audiences.
Mother is ostensibly a thriller, but it’s one of a melancholy, heartbreaking variety that lacks the full-on horror and pace of The Chaser and doesn’t have the subversive cool of Oldboy. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, it follows the aging Hye-ja, a mother who is devoted to her 27 year old son Do-joon. He has the mind of a child and the memory of a sieve, and when a local girl is murdered he is quickly charged and faces a lengthy prison term. Doing the motherly thing, Hye-ja fights to investigate the events of the fateful night and prove her son’s innocence while the police and local authority figures are portrayed as apathetic, detached entities able only to punish and presume.
While the plot is subtly constructed around a mesh of interlocking events and clues, and there are brief temporal shifts to alter the perspective, the film is shot in an artful yet unfussy way, with the Hitchcockian influence clear in the fluid, subjective camera which recoils at some of the grimmer events but delves with morbid curiosity into others. Violence threatens to invade almost every scene, and evidence of its presence in the community is clear, but it is used sparingly and effectively.
Of the many underlying themes it is class that become the most pertinent. The working class squalor of the lives lead by the lead characters is juxtaposed with the country club existence and aloof attitude of local academics and lawyers. This is compounded by the inadequacies of the police, who play a tiny, inconsequential and ultimately unjust role in the film that does little to garner the trust of the penniless masses.
While Mother is brutal, there is occasional humour to be had in the most inappropriate of places, and it’s far from being an emotional slog. I highly recommend renting/buying this movie if you can, and since it’s landed on DVD and Blu Ray in the UK there’s no reason to ignore it.
