Platicsco
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Portia Hilton
Blistering performances.
scarletpumpernickel
(and obligatory, petulantly begrudging spoiler alert)Actually, the help I need is because... lately, like a pre-Alzheimers (insert noun here) despairing over his vanishing nouns, I've been failing to accurately predict a movie's ending. There was my last endeavor (Berberian Sound Studio), where I was certain the benighted hero was going to be ushered to a grisly Wicker-Man-like fate merely for the sake of the director's lust for realistic screaming. And now, to my greater shame, I thought for sure Miah was slowly and tortuously wrestling with an eye-for-an-eye type decision - namely, who to throw off the bridge, herself or her cretinous grandson, given that her delicate, poetic nature would not allow her to embrace the crass monetary solution proposed by the others. Here again,as with Berberian, incidentals even seemed to support my notions of imminent hyperdrama - in particular, where Miah fixates about getting the boy properly bathed and trimmed- as a sort of pre-sacrifice ritual perhaps.Btw, one reviewer seemed to think the boy just needed some stern talking to, failing to understand the self evident fact that the lout was irredeemable; though it seemed clear Miah held no such illusion. I just can't understand it. Have I lost my mojo?
Red_Identity
Reading Poetry's summary, one sees a sentimental film. I surely wasn't sure if I wanted to see this or not. I am completely happy I did.What we have here is a slow-paced, delicate film. But it doesn't sway in sentimentality. It's subtle, quiet, and perhaps the most gentle film of the year, but it also wallows in the study of a suburban woman and in many ways feels like a dark portrait of a story. Yoon Jeong-hee is magnificent! She conveys so much emotion, and we realize just how quickly we want to see her journey here. The direction is assured, quitely letting us explore, never calling attention to itself. The screenplay is brilliant, and has the ideal arc needed for a film like this.There are many amazing moments in this film, moments that really grabbed me and that emotionally shook me. One of the best films of the year in an already amazing year for film.
josealfonsoprz
This is a very special film that brings us to something that many deeply love: poetry.What is poetry, how to get it? a slightly older woman, but not yet old (played by Jeong-hie Yun), who lives with her grandson, try to find answers to these questions while facing a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and painful evidence of the utter lack of awareness of his grandson. His teacher (played by Korean poet Kim Yong-taek) will help you find your way to the poetic word, that word that bleeds or laughing at the same time of sorrow or joy in the world.A film that is itself a poem, a poem delicate as a cherry blossom, made by the Korean director Chang-dong Lee.
punyaketu
What a wonderful film! To give my personal answer to one interviewer's question "Do you regard cinema, too, to be a dying form?" to the director Lee Chang-Dong. I believe (and deeply hope) that as long as films like Poetry are being made cinema will continue to flourish because it is important. It will continue to exist as long as humans exist because they are about being human. I was struck by how masterfully two sides of our humanness were presented in the film. On the one hand, it is about our search for beauty, as beauty can only be experienced if something of our own potential beauty responds to the beauty around us. There is something spiritual in this as Beauty and Truth are essentially one. On the other hand, there is the human predicament. That includes the pro and cons of the fact that we always have the choice to decide if we act ethically or not. That means if we actually say Yes to what is intrinsically our positive potential, or we say No and harm others, our environment and as a kind of end result, ourselves. What for me links the two is impermanence. Old age, illness and suicide as it is shown in the film. "Everything that is born will have to die" goes a very old Buddhist saying, and that happens no matter if we like it or not. At the same time, would we experience beauty if everything was to exist forever? Is it not because a beautiful flower grows out of a very simple looking seed in spring and then withers away after some weeks that it can become so precious to us? Without impermanence there is, one could say, by definition no beauty. Both are somehow the two sides of the same metaphorical coin. The same is true about this film. It still lingers on in my heart and mind weeks after I saw it. Very much like a true and wonderful poem, for example Rainer Maria Rilke's First Duino Elegy. It is is just about that, the wonder and horror of beauty.
