Faces of Contemporary Asian Cinema: Kim Ki-duk (part 11)
After the Venetian triumph of “Pieta”, its showering with prizes from this tape, you expect something extraordinary, but alas: apparently, Kim Ki-duk of the “Island” we will not see. It is “Pieta” that makes it clear that after “Ariran” the director really reborn: this is evident both by conceptual indicators (parableness became deliberate, artificial), and by formal ones (the director began to actively use a hand-held camera after “Ariran”, which did not bring his films benefit and did not add the expected dynamism). The transformation of the main character due to the collision with the altruism of his mother (who, of course, is not Christ, and his mother is not the Virgin, and the summation of the plan for the sculptural masterpiece of Michelangelo is completely tortured) is certainly the engine of the plot and all the machinery of the symbols of the picture, but it is difficult to believe him, since too little time passes for this.
The deliberate presence of mechanisms, lathes, workshops evokes in memory some “Tetsuo” Tsukamoto, but not usually distilled and abstract subject environment, familiar to viewers on the tapes of Kim Ki-duk. Equally ridiculous scenario explanation of bodily injuries, without which the director as always can not do, summing up the logical base under them, and poking her public in the face, which was not the director before looks ridiculous innovation in "Pieta", Kim Ki-duk tries to prove that he and his cinema are changing, the whole problem is that it does not change its essence and it is fundamentally tautological, because it is always designed for shock and shock, like any trending festival arthouse of the zero-tens.
“Pieta” is a secondary film from its very meaning to the smallest details, and rare strong scenes do not change things (for example, a son’s plea for the preservation of his mother’s life). For a director who always dynamizes traditional values in his films, and suddenly acted here as their defender, by and large it is like defending, as long as the arthouse audience likes it. The days of Kim Ki-duk, who had just felt the ground of the festival conjuncture and in many ways created it (along with a few directors of those years), have irrevocably passed. The transition from terrible cruelty to warm cordiality in the space of one picture, the tragic justification of this transition is not available to every director, for this you need to be a humanist and love people. Kim Ki-duk clearly does not possess this.
“Pieta” is also a crisis film, evidence of a serious internal stagnation of a great artist, vainly camouflaged by formal and conceptual innovations, the inability to say the director’s word in simplicity, without loose and artificial, completely unnecessary generalizations. Yes, without symbols, no serious cinema exists, but metaphors must be connected with reality, be grounded in specifics (for example, the family theme balances symbols and reality in Elena Zvyagintsev much more organically than in Drink).
The attempt to generalize the scale of Christian art of all times, and even a man from a different confessional environment, required Kim Ki-duk a colossal internal discipline, which he, as Ariran showed, unfortunately did not possess. Perhaps this is the reason for the artistic and conceptual failure of Pieta, which only due to the short-sightedness of critics became a triumph, apparently on the principle of “fishless and a Buddhist is a Christian.”
I watched this work on the advice of the user. “Pieta” was my first encounter with director Kim Ki-duk, and I realized I was late when I heard “18 Kim Ki-duk” in the opening credits. And I would like to emphasize that if this picture had been viewed by me before almost all the works of Kim Ji Un-a (the film “I saw the Devil”), Park Chang Wook-a (the films “Sympathy for the Lord of Revenge”, “Oldboy”, “Sympathy for the Lady of Revenge”) and Bong Joon-ho (the films “Mother”, “Memory of Murder”), I would probably be very impressed.
The plot tells us about a lonely young man named Lee Kang Do, who collects money from debtors, if a person does not have money, the main character mutilates them so that under the guise of an accident the state pays them insurance, which they give in payment of debt. He is harsh, cruel, angry at life, hates women and he has not a drop of mercy, which allows him to cope with such work, remaining deaf and blind to pleas not to maim them, since they will not be able to work and support Mother, father, wife and requests to give a little time, clearly fulfilling their intentions. Life goes on until he meets his mother, who abandoned him at birth. At first, the son does not accept the mother, calls her names, humiliates and tests her for the authenticity of their kinship, in all sorts of wild and unpleasant ways for a normal person. But over time, Lee Kang Do is imbued with love for his Mother and forgives her for being absent from his life for thirty years. It also awakens in him a love for his neighbors, awakens compassion for others and an understanding of other people’s problems. In other words, it becomes more difficult for him to cut off someone’s arm or throw someone from a height. A beautiful and true story.
There are disadvantages, but they are not significant. It struck me as the main character, carrying a chicken, stumbled on a flat spot at the very beginning of the film, well, too fake. Further, the logic of the first debtor was not clear, knowing that the wife was being humiliated and hearing it, just nervously smoking a cigarette and pouncing on the offender, only when it was already over, although the store roller was unlocked and it was easy to lift her to the top. And it is not clear the logic of the same wife, why knock on the store, when again the roller can be safely lifted? Also, a clear presentation of the dramatic situation in the scene when Lee Kang Do wants to visit another debtor, and he just talks with a pregnant wife who is about to give birth and he is very happy that he will become a father, trying to evoke maximum feelings from the viewer, as we guess that this guy is waiting for the life of a cripple, but then the scene unfolds simply incomparable. And then we will talk about my personal impression, which should not be considered as a lack or minus of the film. This is my personal relationship as a person and an individual with a clear established worldview. I did not like the scene of the pollutations, and even with the participation of Mother. Why would she do that? Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler. Also annoyed by the hairstyle of the main character and not much of his face. I also laughed at the slaps in the movies, some of them were, I don’t know what word to pick up, strange or something. And that's it!
The film “Pieta” harmoniously continues the tradition of South Korean cinema. Calm, slowly leading the viewer to the suspense, which we already guess at the end of the picture. Suspense is the same, it does not occur suddenly and unexpectedly and does not disappear after two or three frames, giving the opportunity to double your curiosity, empathy, identify as much as possible with the main characters. The director gives someone to understand, and someone to remind, what is Mother’s heart and love? How does a mother feel about her children? What are they willing to do for us? Unfortunately, many people do not understand this, continuing to disparage their Mothers, selfishly continuing to live for themselves “My life is my rules, I owe no one anything!”
It is recommended for all fans of South Korean cinematic cuisine. The film will definitely not leave you indifferent and will make you think. I advise others to start with other works of oriental masters, the names I mentioned above. All the world, and thank you for your attention. Appreciate your moms.
9 and 10
p.s. Four letters - Mom, I specifically highlighted everywhere with a capital letter.
The highest form of mercy is acceptance and forgiveness of the one who breaks you. (Ravil Aleev)
Kim Ki-duk is a director. Screenwriter. Producer. Actor.
Kim Ki-duk's movies. You can understand them, you can't. You can deny it. You can be outraged and argue whether it should be removed at all. You can admire, consider a masterpiece, extoll the virtues and depth of thought, be horrified by incredible piercing. The only thing you can't do is stay indifferent to his work.
What is the depth of his work? What causes our hearts to tremble, and souls to freeze, then clap? Why are there more questions in your head than answers? Perhaps the answer to these questions lies in the very person of this person.
Who is he, this inconspicuous, not tall middle-aged man?
He spent his childhood in the vastness of nature in the village of Sobyonni, the South Korean province of Gyeongsang-Pukdo, maybe this circumstance allowed him to absorb all the breadth and boundlessness of the world; to pass through his soul the beauty of dawns and sunsets; to hear raindrops; to see how the first rays of the sun are reflected in the pearls of dew in an endless green field. To understand the power of the earth, to hear the sound of the wind, to understand the calmness of the water surface of the lake. Soak in the ancient spirit of Buddhism and Confucianism. Then an agricultural school in Seoul and a factory job from the age of 17. Five years in the Marine Corps. Different laws, completely different requirements and approaches. After two years of service in the church and a desire to become a Catholic priest, a deep study of questions of faith, knowledge of good and evil, acquaintance with human sins, hopes and fears. Study of religion and Christianity. After that, he studied painting in Paris. A new world, new people, different orders and rules. European worldview and acquaintance with a different culture, a different mentality. Who else can boast such a diverse biography?
"PIETA" - "Mercy"
Pieta, Pieta (from Italian. pieta - pity, mercy.)
The plot is a lonely thirty-year-old Seoul man Lee Kang Do earns extortion from artisans who owe a local moneylender. Kang Do maims defaulters by simulating an accident so they can get insurance and pay back the debt, the measure of all things for him is money. One day, a woman comes to Lee, posing as his mother. The hero does not believe her and exposes the woman to various humiliations that she meekly endures. She looks after him. Gradually, Kang Do becomes convinced that he first had a family.
In "Drink" combined a deep understanding of human vices and souls with the artist's view of the world, (" the picture can not contain a film, the film can contain many paintings. That is why I find cinema much more convenient for expressing my ideas, thoughts, feelings. – Kim Ki-duk Exposing the vices, the director impartially presents them to the viewer, not giving an assessment, not expressing his opinion on what is happening, not justifying, but not condemning. Perhaps it is because of this approach that the viewer feels such incredible involvement in what is happening. After all, it is us, the audience, the director is invited to independently make a choice, evaluate what he saw and draw conclusions.
The nineties of the last century. Many still have fresh memories of the devastation and crisis in the post-Soviet space. The rampant banditry and hooliganism, the birth of the first private property in the form of cooperatives, Sabbaths, hucksters, fartsmen, and with them, such concepts as: roof, bouncers, racketeers, gangsters, mafia, groups, struggle for territory have come to our world. Perhaps this is why the film “Pieta” became the closest and most understandable to our viewer, because even those who did not directly witness such events heard about them, read about them in the newspapers, watched in the news. Someone had a neighbor on one side or another of the barricades, someone had a classmate or acquaintance, and passing through the cemetery you could see fresh grave mounds with smiling photos of young children.
Korea went through similar crucibles, someone was killed, someone was maimed, someone managed to survive it and became one of the successful businessmen. And although now mostly all issues are solved in business circles in a different way, it is not naive to believe that the methods of knocking out debts, poverty in slums, dirt, the horror of a hopeless poor life without any hope for a bright future are forever gone. Just because we don’t see it, or don’t want to see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. We are like children, who in difficult times close their eyes with a palm, naively flattering that the “bad” will immediately disappear from our lives and from this world in general. Nope! It's not! Yes, it is! And did not go anywhere, just acquired a smaller size and moved away from our life to the outskirts of being, to the outskirts of a well-fed and beautiful life. And the director simply exposes this life before us, further enhancing the effect of hopelessness with gloomy colors, dilapidated dwellings, poor environment, dirty water, skeletons of unfinished houses. “Finishing” the audience with a butchered aquarium fish (the only friend of Kang Do), a dead rabbit (the only joy of a lonely soul that gave hope to the audience for the relative “normality” and warmth of what is happening), everyone in this terrible world is prepared for the same fate, whether you are a person or an animal, you will not escape your fate and exit from this vicious circle. NO!!!
The director himself explains the appearance of these shots in his films as follows: I used violent scenes to achieve dramatic effect. I also have a heartache when I watch these scenes, but if you don’t watch them, you can’t understand the meaning of the film. I do not believe that people are born good or evil, so make them the environment.
To say that the film is heavy is to say nothing. It will penetrate you, touch all your feelings, expose your nerves and turn your soul with physical and moral horrors and suffering happening on the screen. The crippled bodies and souls will be presented to the viewer with all the unsightlyness of their nakedness. Sexual scenes (even the language does not turn to call what is happening on the screen sex, rather the ritual act of returning to the starting point of their existence) will not leave anyone indifferent.
To watch or not? There is no clear answer to this question. The film, the world premiere of which took place at the 69th Venice Film Festival, where the tape received the main prize of the festival - "Golden Lion" of course, you can not watch, but if you are confident in your psychological and mental state, there are no heart diseases, you are not pregnant and there are no small children around, then it is worth watching.
P.S. Cinema is not the camera with which we make the film, it is the soul of the director, which can be transmitted through the camera. But you can't just shoot your soul with a camera. ?
All of Kim Ki-duk’s films are philosophical and bloody, mysterious and painful. Pieta is a jewel, a perfect movie about vendetta and retribution.
I lived this story with the main character, changing my attitude towards him from disgust to understanding, from pity to the desire to punish and bleed. The director manipulated and dissected my consciousness, making me literally physically feel everything that happens on the screen.
My consciousness turned over, everything in this story, from beginning to end, is wrapped in fine threads of metaphor, allegories, personifications of the deepest matter of the human psyche.
The first film of the Master in my memory, which sometimes causes disgust with its cruelty and general uglyness (not without deviations, of course, just here the beauty is sparingly dosed), and at the same time, it is impossible to break away from the screen. But cruelty as it is is is still a flower in comparison to how sophisticated and consistent revenge will be committed, which is the key line of the film. It's an Asian compound dish served cold. At the same time, the sideline of sin and redemption is also interesting, which initially does not even seem possible, but gradually gains momentum, intensifies and eventually argues with the key.
The main character Kang Do, "helping" desperate people to pay off debts by losing the opportunity to work and getting insurance, causes a surge with his habits of the butcher and cold cruelty. His "clients" are crammed and look repulsive. But the hero himself is not far from them left in this respect - an emotionless sociopath, abandoned by his mother in early infancy and does not remember her, living in a cluttered apartment and looking, to put it mildly, not neat and not cute, as if his profession left its imprint on his personality. But everything changes when a woman appears on his doorstep calling herself his mother. Kang Do tries to get rid of her, but she stubbornly refuses to leave, even when he exposes her to the humiliations of which his perverted mind is capable. The woman endures but does not leave. Kang Do gradually gets used to the presence of the mother, and at the same time begins the process of his external and personal transformation. Step by step, it comes out into the light.
Revelation for me - I can empathize with evil, and even how. Because the absoluteness of this evil will be questioned, and in the process of narration will reveal a lot of deep layers, which served as fertile ground for the cultivation of this very evil.
However, Kim Ki-duk is consistent, and punishment for sins is inevitable. Just at the moment when the moment of truth opens, when the reversal is more than real. And at the same time, such redemption for Kang Do seems to be the only possible, because there are things that are harder to live with than to die.
A film that grabs the soul, makes you empathize, keeps your nerves stretched like a string. And a very long, bitter aftertaste.
By the way, the name of the film comes from the sculpture of Buonarrotti – “Lamentation of Christ” (the pieta is the image of the grieving Virgin Mary when the Savior was removed from the cross), and this is a real “McGuffin”.
9 out of 10
After reading reviews about the extreme cruelty of this film, and the excessive amount of violence in it, all trembling with excitement rushed to watch the eighteenth film Kim-Ki-duk. In the first scene, some Paralympian resourcefully hangs himself with the help of a lift, the main character skillfully makes love with a pillow without interruption from sleep, then a pair of broken legs and drilled hands at defaulting creditors and everything. All? Where are the promised rivers of blood, maxillofacial surgery, the cold-blooded cruelty of Koreans able to dissect even a puppy? Where is everything we love about Korean cinema?
In the twentieth minute, I lost interest in the film, and watched it in the background, reading the book, what was advertised as a “very cruel romance”, but in fact it turned out to be a boring tearful melodrama with a predictable end. With the exception of one episode, the director shyly tries to avoid scenes of violence, leaving them behind the scenes, the hero is lethargic, makes a scary face, but does not convince. The only standing character is the mother of the hero, appearing out of nowhere she unleashes all her love on him, and when the baby gets used to her mother's tita, her mother skillfully manipulates him and confidently brings the matter to the inside out happy ending.
Swimming at an epic canvas of the scale of the Greek tragedy, Kim-Ki-Dook made a sound that in decent society causes chuckles and oblique glances. The tragedy can be anything, but not boring, the film “Pieta” catches up with anguish and yawn. The director stated that his films should not be beautiful - they are realistic, and the result was ugly and unrealistic. Lifeless characters, victimized, everyone, including the main character. Fictional plot, the actors play frankly bad, except Cho Min-soo (thanks to her for pulling the film).
I foresee the reproaches of not understanding the hidden symbolism, the scene in which the hero feeds his mother with his own body - it's a communion, isn't it? And the hatred with which he first treats her, and the ensuing ardent affection, is the Oedipus complex? Fresh" Hwa-yi handles this much better, and looks more dynamic, honest perverse.
The habitual life of the main character changes with the arrival of an unfamiliar woman who calls herself his mother. Suffering various humiliations and insults from her own son, she does not leave, but steadfastly endures all the bullying, trying to prove that she does not need anything more in life, only to be near him, to achieve forgiveness for leaving him in early childhood. She was young and stupid, and she left the baby, just like the script. But life apparently gave a couple of lessons and the mother returned to her child, recovering only 30 years later. And the son has long crossed the line of a “good” person and became a heartless racketeer, collecting debts from the poor. But the debt payment is red, there is no money - no conversation, just choose - leg or arm, and insurance will cover your debt. Grown up in rigidity and used to it, Lee Kang Do cannot get used to a new member of his family, because he never had a family. But you get used to the good things quickly and after a couple of days, he does not see life without his mother, she cooks him breakfast, knits a sweater, as it seems to him, too. And the icy heart of Kang Do melted, he is no longer eager to maim his “wards”, but only worried about his mother, because now he has something to lose.
In the dull and gray tones of poor Korean areas, this story fits perfectly, despair and anger at what is happening to the viewer are also accessible and understandable. To sympathize with the main characters, yes, I do. This film should not leave anyone indifferent, unless it meets the same frozen heart as Kang Do.
The finale of the picture reminded something of the Belgian film of 1974 “Wedding Vase”, where the main character almost as much fell asleep in the grave with his beloved, albeit not his mother, but his beloved.
The film is about violence. Absolute cruelty. In fact, this movie is just cruelty. Every frame, every word and every gesture of the characters is a calibrated, mathematically calculated cruelty. Beating the viewer at will, making him mourn the heroes, the world, himself.
In general, Kim Ki-duk is one of the most multi-layered directors of modern author cinema. In Pieta, this multilayer is particularly pronounced.
The layer of the parable: heroes, almost biblically archetypal in their manifestations: rage, cruelty, love. By the way, I remind you that Pieta is a scene of mourning by Mary Christ.
Story layer: Kim Ki-duk is an amazing storyteller. The plot is verified, fascinating and has its own development, the characters are revealed gradually, changing the overall course of the film.
Psychoanalytic layer: "Pieta" is filled with Freudian symbols, suppressed sexuality, motifs of the Oedipus complex, the connection of loneliness and cruelty. Analysis of the film from this point of view gives an amazing rhymed canvas - the origins of cruelty, inevitability and irreversibility of manifestations of cruelty.
Layer of art: of course, “Pieta” is an absolutely author’s film, with the artistic language characteristic of Kim Ki-Duk, the author’s construction of the frame, the selection of actors, the silent tension of the picture.
Kim Ki-duk works through each layer in detail, with masterful attention, as a result, there is no classic “high threshold” inherent in author’s cinema in the film, everyone will open his own layer of the film – someone will limit himself to the top, someone will reveal layer after layer, absorbing the entire film, its messages, symbols, unexpected rhymes.
The work of Kim Ki-duk is amazing because it is impossible to get rid of him. After watching any of his films, you will carry him through life, not as a work of art, but as a personal experience. In this way his films are close to the works of Dostoevsky – the same destroying and purifying power of art, the same psychological depth, almost an abyss, characters, the same pain for humanity and sincere love for the world and people.
I love Kim Ki-duk for not being moralistic in his films. He just tells the story, shows that it happens again and again like this, and such tragedies happen, but this does not change anything - the wind continues to move the foliage, the sea washes stones, after spring there is summer, then autumn, winter and again spring.
A great movie.
Whether Kim Ki-dok was inspired by Michelangelo’s creation, or rather used it as an allegory, illustrating the Mother’s notion of pity and sorrow for her lost child, regardless of the identity of the mother or whether the child is a Savior or a Demon. Feeling captures a person regardless of whether he is good or bad, smart or stupid, etc. There is no division into good and bad, on deserves and does not deserve.
The main characters: Mother and Son, or rather the feeling of love and affection of the Mother and Son. The magnitude of the feeling of attachment is directly proportional to the magnitude of dependence and weakness of a person. A huge sense of attachment kills. The story is far from new, but... The movie is definitely worth watching.
The grotesque and theatrical nature of what is happening are reminiscent of ideal combinations of colors:
- the red skirt of the Mother and the green scarf (red symbolizes the feminine principle, vital warmth and living, flowing blood; green - the antipode of red, and at the same time a symbol of all good, protection, hope and new knowledge), contradictions tear and torment the main character, she will experience a feeling for which she was not ready;
- bright and neat makeup of the main character, the eyes of the main character, his hair dyed in purple, one of the favorite colors of mentally ill people (purple balances between live red and dead blue, between hot and cold, life and death).
Symbolism for fans a lot:
The knife in the center of the picture of a naked woman - hatred of all women, the absence of women and any relationship with them in his life.
- with the words, "I felt sorry for her." The mother replaces the picture with the image of a woman in her photo, ingeniously and simply extinguishing his hatred;
- obeying her words "plant a tree for me and water it", he tends and cultivates his death with his own hands, the pine planted is a symbol of eternal life, and its roots penetrate deep into the earth, into the realm of the dead.
It is hard for many to imagine that a creature devoid of human traits can love so much. There is nothing that cannot be, but there is something that is hard to imagine. He leaves his Mother and her love for himself, nothing else matters.
Unacceptable for many scenes are used not only as a tool, but also as filters. Filter what? After each such scene, at least one more viewer will press the “stop” button and leave the “distance”. Doesn't sound like a game? Only in the final you will not receive a prize.
Cinema in general is primarily entertainment, as is play. People prefer to have fun in different ways: someone reads Kant or Freud, someone bakes pies, practices sadism or masochism, someone brings people to emotions. I’m not going to say that Kim Ki-dok’s films are brilliant, but rather he’s a genius inventor and psychologist. To put it another way, the director is like an energy vampire ravaging you, that's his entertainment. If your internal energy reserves are recovering for a long time, you should not watch.
There is a high probability that Kim Ki-dok will answer the question “Your favorite game?”
I’m much more fond of films based on his scripts by other directors because there’s a naive notion of making a movie for the sake of a movie. I would like to paint this review in red and green, since I want to put 10 for some episodes, 2 for others, but I cannot say that the author has crossed the boundaries. Mind and cunning in action. I liked the actors, and the goal justified the funds. For the impression I made on me, I choose green, but I do not put a tenth.
I think many people share the opinion that money is not only happiness, but also a great misfortune and evil for any person. Money breaks fate, radically changes life, destroys families. A once-inspiring idyll can be disrupted by the same money. Directors of world cinema have repeatedly paid attention to this problem, showing its essence and content in their own way. So the famous South Korean director Kim Ki-duk shot the masterpiece “Pieta”.
Synopsis A lonely 30-year-old resident of Seoul, Lee Kang Do, is engaged in extorting money from artisans who owe large sums and a usurer. From day to day, all he does is maim the unfortunate to death to pay off their debts through insurance. One day in Lee Kang Do's life, a woman appears calling herself his mother, who abandoned him immediately after he was born. Lee Kang Do is subjected to brutal humiliation as evidence of her motherhood. Soon, having finally found the Kang Do family, they change their outlook on life until the real truth is revealed.
Game of actors To be honest, Pieta opened up a new oriental cinema, removing all imposed stereotypes and prejudices. I was amazed by the Korean actress Cho Min-soo, who played the role of a mysterious woman who calls herself the mother of the main character. Her initial presentation, her words, her actions lead us to believe her statement about motherhood, despite the many questions that have arisen. However, regardless of the twist of the plot and the disclosure of the truth, you do not change your attitude towards the heroine, but only more sympathize with her grief.
Directing Legendary Korean director Kim Ki-duk once again declared his talent. "Pieta" looks with extraordinary ease and simplicity. You don't have to turn off your brain to get into the picture, to understand it. Pieta is a European film made in the East. By genre, it can be attributed, so to speak, to a dramatic thriller in the style of Hitchcock, in which you like the turn with the appearance of your mother, but at the same time there is a feeling of some kind of trick.
Scenario On the first viewing of the script caused me a slight shock, because some scenes can really shock with their excessive cruelty and revelation, such as the rape of Kang Do “his mother” embarrassed to such an extent that I just wanted to close my eyes. However, the main thing in the plot is not that, but how cool and unexpected turns happen. The affair with motherhood is revealed towards the end, but still what happens keeps you in suspense, and the tragic ending seems to be the only logical outcome.
Result Without a doubt, “Pieta” is a strong and positive film that will not leave the viewer indifferent and make you think about your own life. The film focuses on social conflict, which is a compilation of problems of money, revenge and family, which lead the characters to a fatal end.
10 out of 10
Many people point to the incredible cruelty and enthusiasm for the revelations of the director Kim Ki-Duk. When how, all this has always been just a kind of tinsel against the background of the main ideology of the director’s work. Being a true patriot of his country (as he repeatedly claimed), the director of the film Kim Ki-Duk once again decided to reveal the topic of the main ailments of Korean society. This is what causes a rather cruel and perhaps even tragic story that unfolded on the screen.
The harsh reality of modern life is that making a living is becoming more and more difficult. Needless to say, what is the work to provide not only themselves, but also their parents, family and even children? Especially if you are unlucky to be born in the right caste and in the right way. Here and here Kim Ki-Duk in the usual form reflects what sacrifices people are sometimes willing to make, at least for a short time not to be burdened with their social position.
All this is quite interesting way develops against the background of a rather unusual relationship between the two main characters. A mother and son whose fate has been divided into more than 30 years of total absence from each other's lives. The plot unfolds very unusually, but quite strongly. The heroes of the picture are not sorry, but it is simply impossible to do without any impression of certain aspects of the events of the heroes’ lives.
Kim Ki-Duk in his usual form reflects on the screen violent scenes of violence and scenes of cruelty. Whether it is quite shocking, even by the standards of the master’s work, the scene of the rape of the mother, or other cruelty, which the director of the film “Kim Ki-Duk” already feeds the audience throughout all his 19 directorial works.
The amazing play of the leading actors Cho Min Soo and Lee Jung Jin allows you to fully imbue with what is happening on the screen. Only once again giving to make sure that Kim Ki-Duk has always been able to choose very characteristic actors who are able to pull the roles physically and if it is felt here less than in other films, it feels still accurate.
8 out of 10
Pieta is another strong creation of the great master in the person of Kim Ki-duk with violence, cruelty, heaviness and revelations inherent in his work. Not just a work of art, but a rather cruel view of life in society within the framework of art and author's cinema.
All passion is bottomless. Don't eat, don't drink. All-consuming and meaningless in essence. Money is not the beginning and the end. Passion is a beginning and an end. It doesn’t matter what the passion is or what the thirst for: money, fame, revenge, woman... everything is disastrous. You can't stop. Rock.
The main characters of the film are prisoners of passion. Kando, deprived of recognition as a child, snatches him with cruelty, and his mother, unable to cope with the mental anguish of loss, silences her with revenge. Alas, the more passion, the more emptiness. More and more passion, more and more emptiness. Passion becomes transcendent and a person dies. The film is realistic. How unpleasant in places. But it is necessary and useful to watch. Maybe someone, putting his foot over the abyss of passion, will stop and ask himself: ' what am I actually doing? why is this all? what does it solve?' In the depths of passion, such a chance will no longer be.
8 out of 10
It often happens that the film develops completely different thoughts, unlike thoughts about the idea of the director himself. When Kim Ki-duk commented on the idea of the film, I caught myself thinking that I had drawn different conclusions after watching.
Evil should be punished, and sometimes people should pay for their weaknesses. I did not feel great pity for those characters who were bullied by the main character, because they were warned about everything. They knew about the unrealistic conditions of the contract, knew what torment (even theoretically) they doomed themselves, and were not afraid to contact this monster, for which they paid. Pathetic, lustful, blatant men do not cause much pity, and the main character does not cause sharp disgust - because he played by the rules. He said, he did, he raised. But he did evil, a great evil. Gradually, for all the suffering inflicted on people, the hero becomes nauseating for the viewer, especially after several scenes with the so-called mother. A huge interest rate (and interest itself, in fact, is inhuman). Sometimes I think, and how do interest-bearers do not dry their hands?, which is unrealistic to pay the poor, and then torture and condemnation of people to disability, leads the viewer to the fact that the criminal must be punished, long and painful. Even rethinking what he did does not elicit compassion, and the final shot is the blood from under a rocky truck at dawn, beautiful. The wedge kicks out and the viewer feels satisfaction - justice has triumphed. I wish I could see all of them.
However, this is not the best picture of Kim Ki-duk, despite the relevance of the topic in the modern world, so
7 out of 10
After watching the film “Pieta” by South Korean director Kim Ki-duk (by the way, my favorite director), I was overwhelmed not by a wave, but rather a storm of emotions. And so, before they disappeared, I immediately sat down to write a review. But before that I decided to read reviews of the film not only eminent critics, but also ordinary (like me) viewers. Alas, I did it for nothing. Hoping to see in the reviews at least something similar to my experiences, I experienced the greatest disappointment. Everyone talked about poor Kim Ki-Duk with his creative crisis, about Arirang as an attempt to get himself back on screens, about the parallels between the biblical stories and the title of the film. But no one really talked about the drink itself.
Yes, there were pathetic attempts to disassemble the life of the main character Lee Kang Do, but everyone limited themselves to laying out his actions on the shelves, without the slightest attempt to understand - and why exactly "Pieta"? I was extremely surprised that no one remembered the one whose role may be much more important than the thirty-year-old extortionist Kang Do.
The main character of the film for me is not a boy with a petrified heart. Through a secondary character, Kim Ki-duk showed the main drama. The woman who suffered the greatest loss came up with a plan of revenge as cruel as her grief was. She is ready to make huge sacrifices, humiliation, realizing that only mental pain can be stronger than physical pain. No, it doesn't kill the abuser, it just deprives him of the meaning of life. Hardly any other directors thought of what Kim Ki-duk showed us. Most likely, they would use a worn-out pattern: if you want to cause suffering to a person, kill his loved ones. How do you make someone who doesn’t even have a mother suffer? That’s where Kim Ki-duk is – unpredictable, cruel and very accurate – he hits the heart, and hurts from the back.
The main mistake of many reviewers is that they translate the name “Pieta” as “Lamentation”. But that's not at all true. Pieta means pity. It was complaining that we see at the end of the picture, when, it seemed ready for all the mother, suddenly experiences this feeling. And no matter what many critics say about the inexpediency of the poster for the film, I believe that it very accurately shows the essence of the picture. A mother who dreams of a place feels sorry for the main character, she even begins to mourn him for a moment, realizing that he is not to blame for what he has become.
It is not necessary to consider this film in the context of all the work of Kim Ki-duk. Don’t compare it to other films. Why come up with theories about capitalism, sadism and excessive naturalism? Life is so much easier. Pieta is another masterpiece by Kim Ki-duk. No doubt.
Seoul. Early morning. A young married woman rolls a truck on the outskirts of town. She is stopped by the Highway Patrol and asked to get off the car. A woman climbs out of the cockpit blissfully unaware that a young man is tied under her car. The representatives of the law are interested, they say, please explain, madam, why you are carrying people not in the cabin or on board the truck, but under it, attaching a strap to the legs. You see, the guy's completely rubbed with asphalt. You can't do that. A woman sees a bloody trail trail trailing behind her car and the corpse of a young man she immediately recognizes. Because of him, she lives in a hut made of polyethylene, because of him, she is forced to lie on the panel, because of him, her life and the life of her crippled husband are ruined. What will a woman say to the police? Please take your option:
A. He'll say he doesn't know anything. In the morning, as always, I started my car and went. And here, sorry, it turns out that. I won't do that again.
B. It is admitted that she put this man to sleep with sleeping pills and tied him to a car, because all her life I dreamed of doing it, since he is the culprit of all her misfortunes.
C. He'll ask you to take it again because he didn't jump out of the car very well.
So, South Korea. Kim Ki-duk. “Pieta” is the last film of a kind of melancholy director at the moment. The tragedy with the death of the main characters. The drama of finding and losing loved ones. Art house with torture and limb removal. Black comedy about human greed and helplessness.
This whole conglomerate of genres tells us the story of a lonely young man living in a dirty apartment, sleeping among the rubbish and guts of a chicken, ejaculating in his sleep and going to work in the morning with a knife in his pocket. And the occupation of the main character - Lee Kang Do, inhuman, inexplicably cruel, is such that he offers the urban poor engaged in handicraft production, money at unthinkable interest. In case of non-payment, the debt is recovered by amputation of the limbs of unfortunate debtors. They are covered by insurance.
How much does one hand cost? Thirty thousand dollars. How much does one leg cost? About the same. And you can not die: insurance can not be issued.
And it turns out that no debtor can pay the debt, because he has gained interest in ten times the amount. Consequently, hands are cut off, joints are broken, people are thrown from high-rises. And in the film, we get a whole city of handicapped artisans maimed by the ruthless Lee Kang Do. And all this horror goes absolutely with impunity. In the film, there is no hint of the existence of police or other judicial bodies. Turners, blacksmiths and millers, who have stuffed their hands with grinding and sharp metals, dutifully give the same hand to be cut off, without thinking at all of self-defense or retribution. The wives of the masters are ready to surrender to the collector of debts, in order to preserve the integrity of the husband. It seems that nothing else can solve this problem.
In other films of the Land of Morning Freshness, in particular, "Memories of Murder", "I Saw the Devil", we know how the Korean police work. And so it becomes clear what causes this disastrous anarchy. But we don't yet know how Korean insurance companies work. The only Korean insurance movie didn't show that. Somehow they are not interested in why all the local machine workers regularly lose hands and feet on their machines. It is not clear who insures them. There's a lot of questions. And most importantly, is there such a poor existence in Seoul, where the standard of living is not bad even by the standards of large megacities of the world? It seems that in creating a poor entourage, the director went a little too far.
This is how Lee Kang Do lives, taking away the health and even the lives of his boss’s debtors, until he is visited by his mother, who abandoned him three decades ago, according to her, immediately after birth. She prays for forgiveness, for filial understanding and love, is ready for anything and even incest and cannibalism. She is the embodiment of motherhood, she has never held a baby in her hands, she wants to feed her son from her hands, buy him toys, put him to sleep with a lullaby.
If with insurance Kim Ki-duk made unconvincing, then in the transmission of transformation, rebirth of a person feels his master hand. Lee Kang Do, who takes away the last rabbit from an old woman because her son died without paying his debt, now involuntarily lets feelings into his heart and gradually falls under the influence of his prodigal mother. Bow your heads before the skill of the director: here he acted as a genius of human souls. Watching this process, one gradually forgets what a misanthrope and sadist the hero was before. From now on, he is a child who can’t live without his mother. He abandons his favorite business - the lynching of people and is completely given to his mother, whom he had previously humiliated, trampled, raped.
But Kim Ki-duk wouldn't be Kim Ki-duk if he left it that way. Spectators are waiting for a shock, a lightning strike, an electric discharge with a power of a thousand volts, from which you will have to depart for a long time.
According to interpretations, drinking is pity, compassion. Depicting the Mother of God in his sculpture, the great Michelangelo showed people the pain of a mother who lost a child, saw his humiliation and torture. And there are many who will weep in ecstasy, likening this Korean ribbon with the unique creation of an outstanding Italian. But does the hypochondriac Kim Ki-duk himself think this comparison is fair at heart? After all, he made a movie about revenge and suffering, and the film has nothing to do with religion, and there is no saint in the heroes. But he still got a golden lion, a lion cub, a mouse. Maybe there's something about this movie... Ah?
What answer would Kim Ki-duk give to the test proposed at the beginning of this article? He would have chosen the latter option.
Getting acquainted with the films of 2012 “Pieta” can not be ignored. South Korean cinema is now on a significant rise, and Kim Ki-duk is perhaps the most original of its representatives. The film also won the Venice Festival.
I had to watch it without much doubt. The doubts came later. The film is not a masterpiece at all. In fact, Kim Ki-duk uses a style he has long tested. “Pieta” can be confused with “Samaritan” or “Bad Guy”.
All right. Kim Ki-duk seems more comfortable modeling his parables in the slums of one of the world’s fastest-growing innovative countries. Of course, it is good that he does not gravitate to the gloss, but the confidence with which he splashes on the viewer is alarming. In his reality, the heroes have no choice, no gap, no sense to fight.
Not fighting and the main character is a 30-year-old man who specializes in knocking out debts and organizing insurance events, that is, fixed injuries. It is extremely cold and cruel.
That's where Kim Ki-duk fixes him, soon the master of Korean directing will offer him a test - acquaintance with his mother who abandoned him as a child. It is funny that with his plot, Kim Ki-duk will enter into a correspondence and obviously losing dispute with Oldboy. Alas, the work of Kim Ki-duk does not reach the level of this picture. When an analogy appears, the difference between them becomes as obvious as the result of the match between the football teams of Barcelona and FC Rostov.
The violence, which is simply moderated by Kim Ki-duk, seems to me absolutely unnecessary. It's like he's savoring some scenes. Remember the beginning of the picture. It seems that everything is filmed stylishly, clearly and beautifully, but in the end the plot of the first five minutes of the film simply reproduces the trendy topic of paying debts in porn videos. Everything has its place.
It seemed to me that Kim Ki-duk had not worked out both the style and the concept. The story he told, against the background of his early paintings and films, seems secondary and little original. Technically, the film is well-made - plans, color, camera work, acting - everything speaks about the experience of the director. But, instead of exquisite drama, the picture seemed to me an intellectual empty space.
Here you will point me to the main prize of the Venice Festival and ask if it is deserved. And I'll tell you that I probably do. The thing is, there was not much to choose from. Paul Thomas Anderson's "Master" also won one of the top prizes. Well, in competition with “Passion” by Brian de Palma and “Total lawlessness” Takeshi Kitano, the jury preferred the film Kim Ki-duk. This is more a question of taste than a real indicator of the cinematic level.
So it remains only to sum up the result: the picture seemed to me weak in concept and little original stylistically. A typical festival film, with a long delay flirting with the theme of "Oldboy".
“Pieta” brought the Korean shockman the most prestigious in his record award – “Golden Lion” in Venice. It is symbolic that it happened at the very festival where twelve years earlier his star rose after the premiere of “Island”. At the time, the jury didn’t know what to do with this ruthless Asian, but reports of fainting viewers during the screening of the film spread around the world and unwittingly intrigued. So formed the myth, and then the cult of Kim Ki-duk, which he carefully supported the next eight years, regularly delivering his fans one or even two paintings a year, establishing something like a conveyor production.
This continued until the ideological resource was exhausted and there was a crisis of overproduction. Having fallen out of the band of festival favorites for almost four years, Ki-duk devoted this time to producing and writing scripts for young Korean directors, “as a token of gratitude” and to the best of his talent copying his author’s style. In 2011, he returned to his main activity - directing, having emerged from the crisis in an original and in a certain sense beautiful way. Combining professional remission with the filming of the documentary “Ariran”, he ventured to appear in it in an almost discouraging and unsightly form, presenting and personifying a state of creative confusion.
And now, in fact, about “Pieta”, which is a kind of “apocrypha” on the subject of the famous sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti. Pieta in Italian means pity and mercy. Copies of the statue of the Italian artist who depicted the mourning of the dead Christ by the Mother of God, lying on her lap, adorn all over the world, and there are even in the homeland of Ki-duk. The director used the stylized image of the sculpture in advertising posters, but did not use it in the film itself. Which is not surprising, since in this case the essence of the carefully hidden intrigue could be revealed.
A pityless cash-debt collector from small Seoul artisans meets a beautiful woman on the street who claims to be his mother. Together with the awakened filial feelings, the young racketeer has a fear for his mother. So still working faultlessly "torture machine" suddenly begins to fail, which leads to an unexpected development of events. I believe that such a bold exploitation of the classical trail could not but please the organizers and the jury of the Venice Review. But Ki-duk remained true to his characteristic manner: using the image of Michelangelo as the key to deciphering, he unmercifully, and to the end, stuffed the film with scenes of extreme violence. As a result, the already extensive catalog of Kiduk tortures and perversions was replenished with another sophisticated selection.
The classic Kim Ki-duk, motivated by the search for non-banal manifestations of aggression, here as a young Stakhanovite gives up a new, fresh arsenal of frightening scenes. Fans raised on the island, bad guys and Samaritans, it seems, should rejoice. But personally, for some reason, I do not leave the feeling that this is a swan song of the director, after the performance of which, you either need to leave the movie altogether, or radically change the style and content. In fact, this has already happened with Ki-duk, as a result of which appeared, as you well know, “Spring, summer, autumn, winter...”
But following a proven direction and deftly manipulating the symbols of Christian mythology and spirituality, Kim Ki-duk nevertheless continues to fit organically into the context of national cinema, since Pieta is a film about revenge, and this topic has become a favorite among advanced directors of South Korea. The awakening of filial feelings to the mother affirms the inviolability of blood ties, but in the interpretation of Ki-duk passes here through a sacrificial “incest” to then leave the longest bloody trail not only on the suburban Seoul road, but also, with a high degree of probability, in the history of world cinema as retribution and atonement for sins.
Amen.
A debt-blower who makes creditors disabled for late payments meets a woman who calls herself his mother.
Good Korean drama. I would like to write a few odes of praise, but I am not familiar with Korean cinema from hearsay. I've seen a lot of great dramas and thrillers. The pieta is good, ideologically almost perfect, but I personally lacked something. Perhaps at least a tiny part of a thriller, which I was taught by the masters of Korean cinema. If you try to reason objectively, the film is excellent in all aspects: directing, script, acting, idea. For me, Doc slightly changed the Korean atmosphere of drama in favor of Europe. Nevertheless, the denouement in this film does not spill over to the viewer as ice water stirs, but calmly comes by itself long before the end of the film. I understand that this was the idea, but still I would like something so unexpected, well, like a dust bag from around the corner on the head! For some reason, the last scene in the film was particularly touching – there is something about it...perfect. Only Koreans could have thought of this, and that is why they are respected. Before this scene, I wanted to come together on 8 points with a plus, but after it it is the cleanest 9. For those who Korean cinema is no stranger to Pieta, watch it! I would recommend everyone else to see this, without a doubt, a good film.
9 out of 10
I don’t like Kim Ki-duk’s movies, but I watch them with interest. This director, undoubtedly, has his own cinematic handwriting, and even though his films have a lot of sadism, violence and various kinds of “perversions”, from which you want to take your eyes off the screen, but this distinguishes Kim Ki-duk from Korean and Japanese directors (however, sadism in the East filmmakers from Kitano to Miike horror as they love!) Kim Ki's latest film is violent, but only in part. I read opinions that the director shot Pietu after years of creative downtime caused by depression and searching for himself. The return to the machine turned out to be impressive and very peculiar (it is known that this year the film received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival). Sadism now Kim Ki does not really relish - and let the viewer be prepared to see some abomination such as physical maiming or killing an animal, but Kim Ki does not let the viewer see the expected. For example, a Glavger goes home carrying a chicken in his hand. He will kill the chicken and cook it for dinner. But we are not shown the very process of turning a live ripple into a plucked ham. Truth be told, I'm only happy - I don't like to see it in the movies.
The fact that Kim Ki-Duk took his film title on behalf of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s sculptural masterpiece, Pita (images of the grieving Virgin Mary at the removal of the Savior from the cross) “Lamentation of Christ”, is known to everyone who read before watching the film info about him. The poster of Pieta duplicates the sculpture of Michelangelo - the main characters of antiquity reproduce in the photo the state of forgiveness, repentance, frozen on the face of the heroine of grief. Formally, the poster is a fraud: mourning one fontanel of another fontanel in the film will be completely different.
Glavgeroi Lee Kang Do is a lone wolf who trades by knocking out money from workers who owe a local usurer. Workers are unable to pay their debts, so Kang Do mutilates them so that they receive insurance (which goes to write off debts). The workers hate Kang Do and fear the most. A young person does his “work” without much pleasure – he has no emotions at all. Almost like a robot programmed for action, it beats debtors, throws them off skyscrapers and sends their limbs under the machines, behind which these debtors work to somehow feed their families. Kang Do eats scantly, he does not have a girlfriend (he does not seem to particularly like the female sex - note that his working knife is stuck in the photo of some woman on the wall), from entertainment - perhaps an eel in the aquarium and a shank in a dream. Of course, the psyche of Lee Kang Do is disturbed due to the lack of love and affection - in particular, the mother. Mom left Kang Do even at birth - brought up unknown how and by whom Glavger to his adulthood turns into a "clockwork orange" - and everything in his life is ordinary, boring and familiar. Empty apartment, sms with photos of “victims” in the morning, work, work, apartment, dinner, sleep... Cyclically, in a word. And then Mommy comes along.
A woman with black hair and sad eyes appears suddenly in Kang Do’s life, and from now on, his and her lives will no longer be the same as before. Kang Do - like a computer that inserts a flash drive in the form of Mom - new hardware is found, the computer adapts to the new device to eventually accept it. Mom is lame, he wanders behind Kang Do on his heels, she silently bursts into his cell apartment, beginning to clean up, washing dishes. She silently tolerates his swearing, she tolerates his "Crazy bitch, get out!", she thus begs for forgiveness for leaving him. She realized everything and now she wants filial love, she will shadow-walk after Kang Do, she will endure humiliation and insults. The result will not be long in coming. Kang Do's heart will melt - with a stretch, but he will accept the Mother, settle her in his home, and then ... fall in love. Metamorphosis will come soon - Kang Do will become kinder, he will spare the young debtor, who is about to become a father and wants to completely quit his craft.
Now in his life there was a beloved and dear man – Mom, who he always missed so much. However, we must not forget that this is not a melodrama about a family reunion, and that the movie was directed by Kim Ki-duk - with a softer style of storytelling than in the earlier films, but still. All actions, as you know, have consequences. Everyone will have to pay for it!
Here I would really like to write how this sad, in general, the story will end (in principle, everything is very clear and not a happy ending is predictable), but I will not spoil. I felt sorry for the Glavheroes – Kang Do and his Mom, but the final points in their fates were put right. In Oldboy, Park Chanuk paid the price for a stupidity he said in his youth, which entailed tragic consequences. In Drink, the hero pays the price for his natural manic craving for sadism. They will respond as they do.
This is the 18th film of Kim Ki-duk, as is usually proudly stated at the very beginning, and once handsome Korean self-taught again shoots like a ten-year-old boy (torturing cats) or a wolf (not able to speak, but found on camera the REC button). Only with blood, only in the forehead and only with a hammer. As if unlearned (as if there was no Spring-Summer or Time) or still not able to speak another language, in Pieta, to convey basic truths, he again maims his heroes in every possible way, introduces him to cannibalism, forces him to copulate with his own mother (with reservations, but not spoilerim) or flattens white furry rabbits on the asphalt.
For what? Word to author:
- People today are obsessed with money. In capitalist society, there is an illusion that money can solve all problems. That's not true. In my film, people who hurt other people through money have a family. Let it be so illusory. But even such a family, we understand where the real values are. Money will ask us its sad questions until its era is over. We want to stop this monstrous expansion of money.
The main idea of the film is the work of man, his attitude to technology. I wanted to show the relationship between people and equipment and understand whether people live on the same principle as technology.
Thank you, Cap, but the themes of violence, money, alienated labor and even revenge or mother-son relationships can be learned in a dozen other healthier/deeper/talented/smarter/finally pleasing ways (if someone hasn’t done it yet, like the Venice Film Festival, apparently). Yes, in the language of Kim Ki-duk, you may need to talk to people like the main character of the film, or with dull inmates of colonies for minors, but the rest, I am sure, the topics touched on can understand without breaking joints.
4 out of 10
Revenge is a favorite theme of various works of art – both literature and theater, both cinema and even painting. But if in other forms of art, people of different nationalities dedicated and devote their works to the theme of revenge, in recent years this theme has been exclusively Asian, and, to be more precise, prerogative. Moreover, it is Korean filmmakers who obviously know something about revenge that we Europeans and Americans do not understand. Even the most famous film about the revenge of the two thousandth, “Kill Bill” (meaning, of course, both parts), is full of Asian motifs and shot in the appropriate style. And now to the topic of retribution finally got recently flaunted his suffering (we are talking about the film “Arirang!”) Kim Ki-dok. And he did it great.
After the "Trilogy of Revenge" and specifically the film "Oldeuboi" Park Chan-wook will not surprise anyone with sudden plot twists. After Kim Ji-un’s brilliant Akmareul Boatda, you won’t scare anyone with naturalistic scenes of violence. Kim Ki-dok never tried. He just did what he always did: tell the story. The story of a cruel, indifferent and lonely man who suddenly finds something he has been deprived of all his life. Then she loses. Then again, for a little while, he finds it. And he's aware of his mistakes. The story, it seems, is not new and even banal, and if Pietu had been directed by any other director, it would hardly have turned out what it turned out to be. But Kim Ki-dok shot it. And so Pieta is a masterpiece.
First, the film is strikingly beautifully shot. Kim Ki-dok is not a visionary. He's not Carway, much less Lynch. The film is surprisingly simple - almost like the Dardennes. But with its beauty, it looks simply magnificent: backyards, enclosed spaces, various mechanisms, slums and cloacas - Doc looks almost more beautiful than, for example, red curtains at Lynch (and what could be more beautiful?).
Secondly, "Pieta" is wonderfully played. Korean actors, with their lack of character, create such characters that any Western actor of the new wave will envy. Especially I want to note, of course, the performers of the main roles – Cho Min-soo, the mother of the main character and Lee Jung-jin, actually our protagonist. Their emotions look not only unplayable - they are alive.
Third, it's nice to finally see Kim Ki-dok's new film. Agree, the director’s confession in “Ariran” is not the most cinematic spectacle, I want to forget about “Amin” in general, and in general after “Empty House” I did not observe real masterpieces from the Korean master. "Pieta" is a masterpiece.
I’m not a fan of Asian cinema, but because I heard good reviews, I decided to go to this movie. There were 4 people in the cinema, alas. The attitude towards the film changed throughout its screening. The film is divided into three parts:
The beginning of the film: quite rigid, not distinguished by the dynamic development of the plot, at some points I noted to myself that I was bored. Extended pauses and absolutely not causing any emotions heroes of the film. It seemed to me somewhat worn out that a bad guy easily pushes people to get hurt, but he can not kill a fish - it is sentimentality and kindness.
Climax of the film: the hero wonders, but not what is life/death, love/hate, and another, which rarely gets attention on the screen – money. What is money? Why? Why? What's going on? What are they for? I may not list the questions, but it doesn’t matter. However, when the word “revenge” was heard in the film, the puzzle began to fold. There it is! Now there is a dynamic, there is an interest in the film, which was not in the beginning. I began to get the whole point of what was happening and why my mother came.
The solution: there is cruelty in the very color - to harass and humiliate a person, taking advantage of his feelings. To give a person a feeling of warmth and love, and to take it away, torment and play on the feelings, to break the ground from under his feet. Lie him down. Turn a violent interest ransomware into a little boy who is very scared and lost. It's an amazing planned revenge. There it is, the cruelty and callousness in the juice itself. Everyone's dead and everyone's miserable. Yeah.
Still, I think this movie is more worth watching than not. As no matter how, the excellent and eternal questions for modern man are touched upon, which go hand in hand with him throughout his life.
7 out of 10
Korean director Kim Ki-duk, who took a creative time-out for 3 years, returned to the big screen, painting his new canvas with a blood-red handwriting characteristic of him. And, as if laughing at the European ideas of all-forgiving motherly love, he called the painting “Pieta” – an iconography of the mourning of Christ by the Virgin Mary, and for a greater allusion brought to the poster a scene that was not in the film – a mother in a wedding veil, holding her deceased son in her arms. However, you forget about Christian mythology after the first 5 minutes of watching.
The main character is a lonely Kang Do (Lee Jung Jin), who works for an office to knock out debts from overdue residents of an industrial district. The Asian terminator is an opponent of standard clichés and for each client chooses his approach - someone just needs to split the joint, and another to cut off his hand to get disability insurance and thereby pay off debts.
After half an hour of diligent and methodical reprisals against debtors, Kang Do meets a woman (Yo Min Soo), who calls herself his mother, who left the baby in a shelter. He did not know the words of love of the scumbag, manifests his filial feelings in his characteristic manner - bloody scenes of identification of his mother - such as the offer to eat his own bloodied flesh cut off by him or her rape under the motto "So I came from here into the light?", after seeing earlier seem quite idyllic and there is hope for the speedy catharsis of the hero. And indeed, a debt breaker, coming to the next victim, will not be able to do his job, imbued with a touching story about the fact that the victim, in the name of his child, is ready to break his joints to ensure his future.
However, from the most titled and prolific Asian director, whose hand is clearly not tired of stabbing and cutting in the eighteenth film, you do not have to wait for a happy ending. From this moment, the bloody thriller turns into a psychological drama with the inherent genre of immersion in the inner world, however, in Asian style and with the participation of the same barbed-cutting entourage.
The film did not impress me at all. The point is not that “Pieta” is a social melodrama in the form of yet another sympathy for Madame Revenge (as if Kim Ki-duk did little melodrama), but that the melodrama is simple with only one intriguing twist, inventive in detail. The core of the plot - the rebirth of the villain is very simple made, without psychological delights. Some naturalistic delights, the film also did not shake, urban landscapes are quite traditional.
Despite the fact that the film is purely directorial, and the actors are assigned the role of extras, the main male role could be destined for someone more factual and winning in terms of cinemagenicity, because the central actor is completely trivial, devoid of charisma.
Kim Ki-duk did some tricks in recent films, so when he returned to the old manner, the jury of the Venice Festival sighed joyfully and awarded for the work, at least secondary and weaker than there was “Bad Boy” or “Samaritan”. These are my taste preferences, but fans of other films by the Korean director, I am sure, will find works closer than Pieta.
6 out of 10
His name is Kang Do, but no one calls him by name. He is thirty years old, but he has never been with a woman, his sex is erotic dreams and nocturnal pollutions. He does not know the warmth of his mother’s hands and the comfort of the hearth. His appearance on the doorstep of someone else’s house is a bad sign: he portends unbearable physical pain. After all, Kang Do works as a mercenary in a creditor firm, his task is to pay the debt on time, and he will cope with it without bowing to anything. If the debtor cannot repay the required amount, let the state do it for him, paying him compensation for the loss of ability to work. And Kang Do will help to lose those abilities.
But one day a woman will appear on his doorstep. "Ding-dong, I am your mother" - falling on his knees, asking forgiveness for thirty years of absence, satisfying first the needs of the flesh, and then filling the void of soul. And the world of man is turned upside down. And the hero for the first time discovers the capacity for compassion. And the opportunity to feel like a child for the first time in your life. And he'll even decide to quit his job - tempt money and hurt. And a woman will do almost everything possible to make up for what she lost to become a real mother. And it seems that love, the highest of love, will finally illuminate the lives of these two people.
But his name is Kim Ki-duk. And the appearance of his film on the screen does not bode well either. No, for fun and tears of tenderness - to someone else. And here you will find, if not torture, then a test of strength. Cries, tears, falls, unbearable confessions, sophisticated violence, screams, tears, blood, screams, tears ...
“Pieta”, the triumphant of the Venice Review in 2012, is a landmark film in the creative path of the director. This film is a comeback after a severe spiritual crisis, after confession in Arirana and prayer in Amen. But it’s not just a return to the movie that Ki-duk made before, it’s also a development, a new self-discovery and a sense of voice, language. This is a reflection, a statement, after silence.
Analyzing the state of modern society, Kim Ki-duk still asks big questions. In fact, if the two eternal questions of mankind - "What is the meaning of life?" and "What is death?", the characters of "Pieta" add to them another, not so metaphysical, but infinitely important in the history of mankind and especially in our days: What is money? Beginning and ending. But if death can become deliverance, redemption, purification, then money is the death of everything immaterial, spiritual, total lack of freedom of mankind, a means of suppression and oppression. And even the most gray and empty life is justified by the possibility of love.
Watching “Pieta” will not be an easy pastime and a pleasant rest. The illumination of love can be illusory: not the sun, but a desk lamp, not love, but a thirst for revenge? By responding to pain, you can only multiply the pain. But before the lights go out, something will irrevocably change in the souls of the heroes of the film. And the audience before the credits go?
Beautiful, tough and piercing film. The real Kim Ki-duk.
Probably only a director like Kim Ki-duk, who has his own unique vision of the material, is able to bring up the themes that are often touched on in movies, each time telling his stories in a slightly different way than usual. Here the viewer is given to watch the gloomy misanthrope Lee Kang Do, working for a usurer and mercilessly knocking out debts from unhappy borrowers, often bringing matters to disability, and therefore to such necessary insurance in this case. Having no clear schedule of the day, living as if on an automatic machine and subject to animal instincts - this is how the main character appeared before us in the first minutes of this again very cruel, one might even say ruthless picture of the Korean director.
The more interesting it was to observe the relationship of a sudden mother and an insensitive thug, who grew up, in her own opinion, “without love at all.” Mother and son, between whom the chasm, an infinitely long pause of thirty years, suddenly find comfort in each other. Let their relationship spelled out by the author is very difficult - the check of kinship, initiated by a distrustful son, can confuse even the viewers who have seen the views, because the creator is not at all shy at times to paint his monumental canvas in a blood-red color, then and then causing shock at a purely aesthetic level. Needless to say, the central duo played at the highest level, because any, even the slightest falsity or playfulness could destroy carefully built, played on subtle nuances images, causing every minute more sympathy.
We can say that the emotional background of the unfolding action is off the scale, demanding full return from the target audience, giving in return a whole range of all kinds of human feelings, but never ever sliding into a tear-crusher. Just Kim Ki-duk, true to himself, spares neither his heroes, nor the spectator, nor even the white rabbit running free. Death, so elusive but clearly felt on a subconscious level, is present in every frame. Such a mood is achieved by almost elusive, deft strokes of a real master, coupled with an unusual, gloomyly verified visual series. Let such a simple story be shot in an almost documentary style, without any technical delights, except for competent camera work and, as always, heartbreaking musical accompaniment, whose pathetic notes this time sounded very appropriate in the context of the growing tragedy of almost ancient Greek proportions.
Soon, of course, an unusually furnished, but still predictable, even necessary move will slip into the storyline, even better revealing the message inherent in Eastern cinema, and in the finale effectively emphasizing the undoubted artistic merits of the entire film as a whole. It may be that even Kim Ki-duk himself wanted to initially mislead, deceive, which is suggested by the reference to Michelangelo’s sculpture “Lamentation of Christ” in the title. In fact, the sacral meaning of the 18th Maestro film contains arguments about the high cost of redemption of terrible sins, and about the moral decay of human souls due to the destructive influence of money. The fact that revenge sometimes goes so far as to turn into torture for the avenger. In the end, dragging Kang Do through the abyss of psychological trials, the director somehow shows that the love of the son to his mother (even if based on an irrational attitude) is a great force that can awaken a person even in a monster.
9 out of 10
The best thing about this movie, I think, is understanding it as a story of weakness. The main character makes a mistake only once - when he lets this woman into his life. Someone must be shocked by the cruelty with which he knocks out debt. But it seems that he really had no one to learn that people can not be treated cruelly. And the hatred that all respond to him only exacerbates his indifference to their suffering.
After all, these disfigured people are the price society pays for moving from inconspicuous houses to luxurious skyscrapers. Their failures are due rather to economic and social factors that condemn them to poverty and death (as one of them, an old man who has lived in the area for 50 years, understands well). You can treat this process differently, but it is unlikely that the protagonist can stop it. But, with their thoughtless malice, which hapless creditors respond to him, they cause only disgust.
In fact, the only one who wants to be compassionate is the main character. The first, apparently, when he experienced someone’s love, is the last for him. Against the background of his life, the suffering of his victims looks rather peculiar - strangely enough, almost everyone has someone for whom they could live further and who then takes care of them.
The woman he takes for his mother, on the other hand, responds with a very sophisticated and cruel revenge against the actions of someone who, perhaps like animals and children, simply did not understand what was hurting other people. She and the mother of another deceased just once again deny a person who has never known maternal love and affection, compassion.
The main character acts only as a catalyst that accelerates, but does not cause the death of these people. They too insistently call him the “devil,” the “temptation of money” into which he throws them, but for some reason they always forget that one can resist temptation. Of course, they all have good reasons to succumb to it, but somehow only one of them says anything about responsibility.
The film was shot in a rather heavy and slow manner, which seems to complement and aggravate its already more than dramatic plot. The director deliberately takes extreme violence or sexuality out of the picture to give the narrative a more classical and tragic character (which seems to me one of the main drawbacks of the picture).
Only the Mother can mourn; it is said that to be depressed is to carry an imaginary figure to the end of the age of the Mother who mourns me.
Roland Bart
Family is what remains when money runs out. Marx described the proletariat as possessing only its offspring, the only inalienable property. Kim Ki-Duk immerses the viewer in the world of handicraft workshops, homeless in the outskirts of a post-industrial civilization, whose inhabitants begin the day in fear of ending it on the street. On this fear, the boss of the protagonist parasitizes, giving out loans at an unbelievably high interest rate. Kang Do himself is engaged in collecting money, or rather, helping debtors to acquire the amount that they need to return. It forces insurance cases that lead debtors to disability and at the same time guarantee them insurance payments, due to which debts are covered.
According to Buddhism, any living being could have been our mother in past lives. Fromm pointed to maternal love as a source of love for life and others. Kang Do sees in his "clients" bastards who do not repay the loan. This logically indisputable position is opposed by Kim Ki-duk’s argument, which Kang Do has been missing all his life – the unconditional love of his mother, who suddenly appeared in his life out of nowhere. We empathize with a person on the screen who becomes such in the full sense of the word only in the fourth decade.
To repent, you need to understand your own guilt. Dostoevsky believed that redemption is possible only through suffering. Kim Ki-duk’s 18th film, traditionally tough, thin, cutting and soulful, which won the Golden Venetian Lion, is a mother’s elegiac ode; it is a ruthless study of the human mechanisms that justify and block aggression; it is a film about cruel revenge and universal love.
Invariably organic, not leaving the possibility of evaluation, remain the selection and play of actors, light, camera work, music, atmosphere, manner of narration. Strong, strong, whole.
There are directors whose new film you are looking forward to. Kim Ki-duk is one of them. ' Pietu' worth watching not only because of the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival (although I will not hide that this fact was another motivation to watch), but also not only fans of Korean cinema. Anyone who is interested in semantic cinema - watch it!
The plot of the picture, at first glance, is simple. Young man Kang Do (Lee Jung Jin) earns a living by knocking out money for the usurer from borrowers. He is lonely and seems insensitive and too harsh towards debtors. One day, a woman (Cho Min-soo) appears, who literally follows him and, in the end, declares herself his mother. This is followed by the development of a very difficult, complex and simply painful relationship between the now son and mother. The transformation of the main character occurs gradually, and it is more touching. Instead of the previously important money of debtors, he has a new meaning in life. But, in the words of the main character, money is revenge. And Kang Do confronts her.
' Pieta' a heavy film, in addition to psychological, it carries a strong social load. But he makes you think about many things: repentance, death, love and the leitmotif of the whole plot - mourning a person.
9 out of 10
Probably Kim Ki-dok tired of looking for original titles for his films, so his new creation was christened “Pieta”: based on the poster and trailer, wanting to become one with Michelangelo Buanarotti himself. The jury of the Venice Film Festival 2012 concluded that this is justified ambition, and not crazy audacity and bragging, and blessed Kim, giving him, among other things, the main prize.
So, “pietta” or “mercy” is the image of the scene of Boromother’s mourning of the crucified Christ lying on her lap. Michelangelo created it in marble, Van Gogh and Titian with oil paints on canvas, but Kim Ki-Dok failed to do it on film. The Korean filmmaker tried to fix a variation on the theme of the tragic biblical plot on the camera, depriving the viewer of the pleasure from the wide format of the picture and dooming him to an unreasonably trembling image.
The director seems to start from the idea of divine art and lands iconography to the level of Korean working-class quarters. Kim’s Christ is called Kang Do, he is, of course, thirty, and he quite predictably descends from heaven to earthly impurities: daily digging into the mud, earning on sin. His essential bread is torture of debtors of the usurer, boiled bird and sexual somnambulism. Kang Do is equally unfazed with human limbs and chicken legs. His life is as disgusting and slippery as the bloody guts that lie in his bathroom - of good will, no one dares even touch him. No one but one beautiful woman who calls herself his mother. He must forgive her the greatest “duty” that she left him after giving birth. A woman begs for forgiveness, as with God, Kang Do demands redemption through a severe “penance.” The crimson geometric mouth of the mother agrees to the shocking Eucharist, and even the clenched lips pray for one thing - mercy. The astonished audience, in turn, must believe that the heat of filial love will finally flow in the veins of inhumans.
Forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors. Kim Ki-dok reads surprisingly straightforwardly and hard-headedly, non-cinematically relaying through violence and numerous perversions. His unholy family performs the sacrament of “baptism” through washing with dirt, and only in this way, at least temporarily, is reunited and gets rid of the evil one.
In Drink, Kim Ki-dok moves as far as possible away from the aesthetic values with which he once tempted sinophiles in Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and again Spring. Unconvincingly wanting to convey a certain humanistic message, the director simply squeezes it into the final monologue of his mother, and cuts all the plot knots in the simplest, but extremely cruel way. “Pieta” is godlessly kitschy: “Christ” has its own shroud in the form of a knitted sweater, he absorbs the last supper with his own Judas, the brutal past drags him with a cross into the abyss, and in the end there must undoubtedly be a ritual sacrifice. Only in the Bible it makes sense, and Kim Ki-dok has apocalyptic Asian bile.
6 out of 10