POETRY SHI

Lee Chang-Dong

2h 19m  •  2010

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Review by Beatrice On 27-Jun-2023

Writing poetry to survive.

Mi-ja is a 66-year-old lady who is a caregiver to an infirm old gentleman and is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

She lives in a small town near Seoul with her rude and mostly apathetic young nephew who has become involved, along with a group of companions, in a series of sexual abuses of a female peer, Agnes who will commit suicide by throwing herself into the Han River.

How can Mi-ja, the delicate and elegant lady whose world is about to collapse on her, endure all this?

Only art can save her, and she will enroll in a course where she is taught that "to write a poem one must begin to see," and Mi-Ja will succeed after many attempts, to stop the pain, to see it, to identify it, and maybe even be able to process it by even making an extreme decision.

An extraordinary film about the aesthetic justification of existence, a true masterpiece of elegance.

27-Jun-2023 by Beatrice