In a clip that has been widely circulated on the web, Quentin Tarantino lists his 20 favorite movies released his 1992 (the year he made his first film). Among the picks were two films from Korean director Bong Joon-Ho: the serial killer drama Memories of Murder (2003) and monster movie The Host (2006). Tarantino did not elaborate on why he is so enthusiastic about Bong, but one can hypothesize. Like Tarantino, Bong is interested in working in very mainstream genres and then offering a fresh spin on these typical stories. His newest film, Mother, is another tale of murder, but this time combined with the trope of the maternal melodrama. It is thus a departure from the worlds of his previous films, not unlike Tarantino’s own Jackie Brown (1997). But it is still very recognizably a Bong Joon-ho work in its approach to the material.

For a commercial director, there is a rather deliberately formal structure to Bong’s style and narrative. Memories of Murder begins with a detective at the scene of a murder in the countryside and ends with the character returning to this location years later. Mother also begins with a scene in the countryside, in which the lead character (the mother of the title, played by Kim Hye-ja) is shown walking up a hill. The naturalistic setting makes the audience anticipate the beginning of a serious drama. Then, however, Bong gives us an unusual moment: the elderly woman begins to dance, in the middle of this field, to the non-diegetic music (music from outside the story space) on the soundtrack. The film breaks from its seeming realism to give a moment of subjectivity to its lead character, but Bong is doing something more. He is subtly preparing the audience to expect the unexpected and not simply accept the genre conventions he will provide. However, the conventions of storytelling are so ingrained that it is difficult for a viewer not to become complacent. In a sense, the effectiveness of Mother depends on this. The audience must invest in the typical emotions of the maternal melodrama in order to have these feelings complicated by the turns the plot takes.

The story of Mother revolves around a murder of a young girl in a small town. The main suspect in the crime is Do-joon, a rather slow-witted and odd young man who lives with his mother. Because he followed the girl home from a bar, he is assumed guilty. His mother believes he is innocent, and investigates the case to try to find the real murderer. We as an audience believe this as well, since we are shown Do-joon’s point of view from that night. But like his mother, we do not know the murderer’s identity. This description does not really convey the unsettling atmosphere created. This disturbance is not from the murder itself, but the incestuous overtones of Do-joon and his mother, so blatant that it cannot even be called subtext. Nevertheless, this is our lead character, and we are placed with this mother on her journey. The fact that this quest will not follow a typical genre trajectory should be evident from the twists Bong performed with Memories of Murder and from the dysfunctional nature of the family we are given as our protagonists. That the ending works as well as it does is a testimony to Bong’s skill as a director and the truly unusual perspective he gives of this Korean “mother”.

Mother has certainly been a success. It had a fine commercial run in Korean theatres, it has been selected as Korea’s entry for the 2009 Foreign Language category at the Academy Awards, it has played at most of the prestigious film festivals (Cannes, Toronto, New York, and upcoming at Pusan), and it will even get a theatrical release next year in North America (a rarity these days). For me, Memories of Murder remains the better film, precisely because it is able to achieve the rare balance of offering traditional generic pleasures while also deconstructing those conventions. For its first half, Mother does not really work as a conventional entertainment, and its final act is where the real interest lies. On one level this is to Bong’s credit: a more conventional opening with more typical and sympathetic characters would have made the final act too much of a departure and a gimmick. Although one could still argue Bong has cheated in his telling of this story, I believe he gave us the information to make the conclusion logical. I just think the result is too schematic, a criticism that can be labeled at his work as a whole. This can be seen in the final image, which once again shows the lead character dancing, recalling the strange opening. Here, the dancing is entirely natural and appropriate, conventional even. But it is made strange by the context of the film we have just watched. It may be overly formal to begin and end the film like this, but for me these two images of Kim Hye-ja dancing are more memorable than all of the more spectacular scenes of violence in the rest of the film.

Those interested in Bong may want to check out Jung Ji-Youn’s book, part of a series for the Korean Film Council on Korean directors.

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