In the Flesh: Mother (2009)

There are few forces in human civilization as invested with unreasoning power as the hatred of those with little for those with less. See how contempt and projected feelings of disposability flow downhill in Bong Joon-ho’s Mother, from the local cops eager to fob a murder rap off on unlikable young intellectually disabled man Yoon Do-joon (Won Bin) to Do-joon’s entitled contempt for Moon Ah-jung (Moon Hee-ra), a young woman of whose murder he is suspected, and Ah-jung’s casual building up of a blackmail database of her many lovers on her phone. These expressions of essential disrespect rhyme as the film goes on, most notably whenever the condescending and presumptuous tone Do-joon’s mother (Kim Hye-ja) uses with him is reflected back at her by others who sense her dysfunction, as obvious to them as her son’s is to her. Nearly everyone we meet is riding the poverty line or under it, but there is no solidarity to speak of, no sense that anyone is in anything together. Rather the film’s characters seem to see each other as a kind of memento mori, an endless parade of reminders that there’s always farther to fall. Alcoholism, homelessness, dereliction, disability — a world of perceived horrors just waiting to absorb the unwary and the careless.

The world around Bong’s characters is no less welcoming. Shot compositions bury the film’s leads in shadowy corners or leave them dwarfed by vast landscapes and squalid architecture. There’s a sense of impersonal emptiness to even the busiest and most crowded scenes, interspersed with a few welcome group reaction shots to leaven the film’s off-kilter tension. The four cops turning as one to look backward, the golfers peeping around their clubs as their golf cart bounces along a little path; you could splice it right into Duck Soup without much of a bump. The whole golf course scene is a wonderful little comedic interlude, complete with a gorgeous and hilarious smash cut to a police station, which segues seamlessly, almost invisibly into several clever twists and red herrings. There’s thematic heft to it, too, especially in the scene in which Do-joon, who was struck by one of the golfers in a hit-and-run, attempts to extract a settlement from his assailant only for the man to angrily shoot back to Do-Joon smashed one of his Mercedes Benz’s mirrors. Immediately you can see everyone involved doing mental math, and their completely unaffected consensus that clearly Do-joon’s life isn’t worth as much as a luxury car part is equal parts crushing and deeply funny.

It’s the titular protagonist who makes the film, though. Kim’s performance is both broad and richly layered, her quavery voice and bad perm reeking of a particular species of insecure attachment, her fixation on remedies she doesn’t fully understand a clear psychological crutch verging on willful and repeated acts of self-deception. Each new revelation of her deeper nature feels stunning, yes, but also completely coherent, as though someone is pulling up a floor to reveal board by board the dry rot, insects, mold, and water damage lurking just under your feet. She’s pitiable. She’s deranged. She’s deeply unwell. She’s kind of charming. It all exists in one big swirling cloud, and the key to her continued existence is that she never lets it settle, never accepts a fact that contradicts her feelings, never acknowledges a statement that isn’t what she wants to hear. Can she, as she implies, really make herself forget bad memories with the simple application of an acupuncture needle? Of course not, but she can pretend she can, and that’s a much stranger and more terrifying power. Her final two major scenes are among the most emotionally crushing I’ve seen committed to film. One for the books.