[psycho d]

Mother (2009). Mother comes into existence with a scene whose photography was spectacular and subconsciously informative, only to have that notion shattered with a seeming unnecessary absurdity that is a joy to experience none the less. It then moves right into the heart of the story whose focus is on a mother's love and the extremes that she will travel to protect her son. To be honest, this is not a great sales pitch, but since this is from the director of Memories of Murder and The Host, we know that this will be no slip shod drama.

The story itself is rather uncomplicated, which is a nice deviation from the typically convoluted South Korean fare that leaves us outsiders scratching our heads as if digging for head lice. This is not to imply that there are no twists and turns because there are. But they make immediate sense, even for an unconventional murder mystery driven by the fanaticism of an overprotective mother with a skeleton or two of her own.

The acting was simply incredible. Lead Hye-ja Kim drags us along in her quirky and chunky capacity as a maternal sleuth, leaving a path of unlikely victims in her wake. Surprisingly, through one of her blunders, she comes upon some unlikely advice that actually points her in the right direction. But even at this point we are unsure as to the intents of this advice, unfriendly as it should seem to be. The denouement was a foreseeable surprise that captures us totally off-guard, but our unlikely heroine still has a shenanigan or two up her sleeve. The end was was a dark shade of morality offset by love, and the end finally makes use of some seemingly unrelated information.

And while this movie is driven by the titular character, the slight roles of the secondary characters feel far from peripheral. These smaller roles are handled with the same intense significance of Mother dearest, making this movie all the meatier.

The direction was simply captivating. Each scene composed to build imaginary dams of emotion that were released with the genius of psychological artistry. The photography seemed simple and effectively portrayed the characters by their current emotion and predicament. The score was typical South Korean musical sophistry, both pleasant and implicative.

That last scene was one of unimaginable brilliance, not only tying up the beginning's loose threads, but serving as an undulating portrayal of emotional transcendence, where we finally feel the meaning of releasing the heaviness of the heart. Merci.
d