Pieta (2013)

just watch it!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

This is the first and only one movie i see that directed by Kim Ki-duk. After watching it i have talking with other audience and looking the reviews on the net. There is no one point out what i feel the most in this art.It is the love i can see which is deep inside of the violent man. Everything he is going through is all begins with a disaster of his destiny. I can't help to wander if there was a warm hand taking care of him. He smashes himself to make connection with others, harder and harder until the end.All comes from love.

Many brutal deeds in the film are committed by its unlikable hero Kang- do(Lee Jeong-jin). Kang-do('Kang-do' means 'robber' in Korean, by the way) works as a debt collector for some loan shark, and he is someone you don't want to mess with especially if you happen to borrow the money from his boss. Even if his poor debtors really have no money to pay back, he gets the money back by any ruthless means necessary. These unfortunate debtors usually work at the metal shops located on the narrow alleys of Seoul, so they are forced to get their hands or feet injured by their machines for paying him back through the insurance money they will acquire. During one comic but cringe-inducing moment, one debtor nervously asks him to cut both of his hands instead of only one hand because he needs more money to pay his debts and support his baby to be born.Kang-do's life is as barren as his debtors'. While his home looks a little more comfortable, he has lived alone in his apartment. He cooks for himself, and he usually brings live animals to his home for his dinner. Seriously, I do not understand why he prefers to buy a live chicken and then butcher it instead of just purchasing a dead one at a supermarket, but I guess this savage behavior solely exists for representing his beastly nature.On one day, his life is disrupted by the sudden appearance of one mysterious woman(Cho Min-soo), who claims to be his mother and apologizes to him for abandoning him not so long after he was born. Resentful toward his mother he does not remember, he does not believe any of her words and brusquely rejects her, but she keeps coming to him. She slowly insinuates herself into his daily life while behaving like a mother who tries to compensate for her unforgivable fault in the past. Though he harshly treats her, she sticks to him while doing what mothers usually do for their dear sons. She cooks for him, and she says genially to this detestable man who has probably never experienced love or kindness for a long time.Revealing or saying little about themselves, the characters of Kim Ki- duk's films are usually fascinating to observe for how they behave rather than who they are. The characters of "Pieta" are no exception; we do not know a lot about them, but what happens between them is a darkly compelling drama. There is quite a disturbing scene where Kang-do cruelly attempts to violate her with his own twisted logic, and you may wonder how much she can tolerate him, if she is indeed who she seems to be. Induced by her love without condition, Kang-do slowly reveals a vulnerable child with lots of hurts inside him; he eventually finds himself depending on her care, and they momentarily have a nice time together as a mother and her son.Is she really his mother? I don't dare to tell anything about that matter for not spoiling your entertainment, but let's say that I did not lose my interest while the movie changed its direction in the middle of the story for the reason you may easily guess in advance. Its second half is less engaging and less focused because of that, but the director/writer Kim Ki-duk provides a very realistic background for his relatively unrealistic story, and the gray, destitute underbelly of Seoul is vividly conveyed to us through its shabby metal shops and dirty alleys. His films have been well-known for their unflinching attitude to brutal violence, but "Pieta" thankfully takes a restrained approach to its equally savage violence while retaining its emotional impact intact. When I watched gleefully over-the-top violence in "The Expendables"(2012) right before watching this movie, I could have some chuckles, but I discovered that there was nothing laughable about the frighteningly realistic violence in "Pieta" even when it does not present it on the screen.The tension in the drama largely depends on the simple but fearless performance by Cho Min-soo, who deftly maintains the elusive side of her character even at the most emotionally anguished moment. You can feel the genuine emotions from her face, but you can never be sure about where they come from. Although Lee Jeong-jin feels strained and miscast compared to his co-actress, at least he supports her well during several tough scenes between them. Their characters may look silly when they behave like a mother and her little son, but we come to accept the emotional bond forming between them.Although he recently went through a rough time, Kim Ki-duk remains as one of the most interesting South Korean directors along with Park Chan- wook, Bong Joon-ho, and Hong Sang-soo. I have watched most of his works, and I admired many of them while recognizing their disturbing side. The unforgettable scene involved with fish hooks in "The Isle"(2000) still makes me flinch whenever I recall it, and "Bad Guy"(2002) was another disturbing relationship between a violent man and a woman who is suffered and degraded by him while stuck with him. After his best work "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring"(2003), his subsequent films became a little more gentle, but they are still the movies tough to watch. I did not like his previous work "Arirang"(2011), a self- portrayal documentary which can be called his version of "I'm Still Here"(2010), because I found it both painful and embarrassing to watch him on his supposedly bad days, but I hoped everything would be soon all right for him.

Ki-duk Kim built his career on films containing bizarre motifs that outline deeper layers of human nature. However, in some of his latest works the priorities have changed. Complex themes have become superficially elaborated frameworks within which a whole range of disturbing contents has been featured. So, in his film Amen (2011), we follow the story of rape (the director himself plays the rapist) to finally understand the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. In his latest work Moebius (2013), the castration of a minor reveals to us that the family goes through a crisis, while in Pietà-I (2012.) Kim teaches us that the obedience by the suffering of rape and humiliation may warm up even the coldest hearts. But this is not where the director stops; he gives to his film a politically involved prospective, as well, criticizing the capitalist system through the mutilation of the poor.The debt collector Gang-Do (Jung-Jin Lee), fear and trembling of the neighborhood, totters through the overcrowded city suburb. He perambulates stuffy hovels of helpless debtors just following his orders. There, he mutilates them, remaining completely cold, in an ambiance filled with menacing machines that impose by themselves the variation in the choices of the ways to inflict lesions ... This established routine is disturbed by a mysterious woman Mi-Son (Jo Min- su) that abruptly enters into Gang-Do's life stating to be his mother. The son reacts to this information by raping her, as it wouldn't be okay to leave her non-raped – because in such a case the director would miss the strike combination of incest and rape! However, regardless of violence she was subjected to, Mi-Son offers unconditional love through which she gradually acquires confidence of her son.Pietà has won the Golden Lion at Venice. The film has a really intriguing plot (although the South Korean revenge film patterns were entirely followed), as well as visual homogeneity in the representation of cold atmosphere and nauseating thematic. However, shock effect is here mostly to affect the audience, and Kim uses it artfully to cover the weaknesses of the film such as poorly dramaturgically elaborated theme of empathy. Its elaboration is so shallow that the director resorted to an awkward explanation of his work. We had to endure the final monologue of the female protagonist who in an outburst of pathos explains from alpha to omega motives of the film and its punch-line. Through the accentuation of flaws present in the character of victims (wimps, invertebrates, people with a lack of morals ...) he supports his misanthropic vision of life and thus calls into question the alleged message of the film and whether the motives of the director were indeed humanistic.

Pieta,winner of Venice's 2012 Golden Lion is another disturbing,compelling,metaphorical Kim Ki-Duk masterpiece.The plot unfolds as an unusual revenge story yet the metaphors tell another tale.Named after Michelangelo's masterpiece housed in St.Peter's Basilica in Vatican,Pieta is not easy to watch but a thought-provoking experience about the misdeeds of industrial capitalism and how it slowly and finally drains the vitality from those who are not able to cope while creating monsters of others.The mystery that surrounds the two main characters lend an almost 'eerie' atmosphere to the film which is typical of Kim Ki-Duk. Definitely not for the faint-hearted,the pleasure seeker or the romantic...this is a serious film and certainly a rewarding experience for the true 'cinephile'.