Poetry [Blu-ray]

Masterful...
I sadly can't speak about the blu-ray disc itself, but I do know it's been reviewed at blu-ray.com and they spoke highly of the image quality and sound. Lee Chang-dong is my favorite Korean director along with Park Chan-Wook. They make very different movies however - Park has these epic, overblown tragedies with beautiful cinematography, and Lee makes very subtle, ultra-realistic, natural stories about human drama. Quite the opposite of the typical Korean melodrama.

Poetry is probably his best yet, but also check out Oasis, Secret Sunshine and Peppermint Candy (if you can find or afford it).

POETRY is seeing and feeling
POETRY tells a simple tale of an elderly woman who is diagnosed with early Alzheimer and encouraged to keep an active mind. She enrolls in a poetry class to learn that poetry is our ability to see what is truly before our eyes and our emotional impressions expressed in words. She works part-time assisting a man recovering from a stroke and looks after her grandson who treats her like a hired hand. At the start of the film, a female teenager is seen floating face down. An apparent suicide, she had been the victim of repeated gang rapes. The grandmother becomes aware of the crime, investigates the scene, attends the service but flees. Will she report this or share with other fathers of the boys involved with monetary payoffs to the poor mother? I will not reveal more of this absolutely mesmerizing film. It is long but totally engrossing. We want justice for this horrific abuse. We, as viewers, have witnessed what immoral behavior people will resort to with hope of burying the...

Stanza quest.
Poetry is a 2010 South Korean film directed by Lee Chang-dong. It stars Yoon Jeong-hee as Mija, a woman in her 60's raising a derelict grandson while dealing with the onset of Alzheimer's Disease.

I picked the movie based on its case synopsis but knew to expect more because of where it was filmed. My introduction to South Korean cinema was Taegukgi and I was blown away. Since then, I've kept the country on my radar and have not once been disappointed in their efforts. Now I'm at the point where I prefer South Korean movies and when I found Poetry, it was an easy decision. Once again, I was rewarded for my favoritism.

Poetry is a beautiful and disturbing film. At the risk of exposing the plot, I'll refrain from specifics, but it makes this review difficult to write. There aren't any major twists to give away but there are turns to take and I don't want to ruin them. There is a suicide that involves Mija directly and the effect on her is profound. What I...

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