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On the basis of just four feature films so far, Bong Joon-Ho has emerged as one of the major filmmakers in the world. As such, his is a profoundly anti-humanist and anti-spiritual voice. What has always been fascinating (and to those who cling to humanism or spirituality, repellent) about his films is the rejection of BOTH Western secular humanism and Eastern "spirituality". Bong Joon-Ho unapologetically uses all of the resources that film has at his disposal. But he is a true artist, and his nihilistic vision is uncompromisingly and entirely his own.
It has been said before, but it is worth repeating: He uses the most conventional genre elements in all of his films, freely deploying Hitchcock, the great films of Hollywood's Second Golden Age, especially film noir, the French New Wave, and even Spielberg on the one hand while simultaneously evoking the more independent, open-ended, and adventurous art films of the Japanese masters Kurosawa and Ozu and a great director/mentor like Hou Hsiao-Hsien on the other. In "Mother", the use of extended panoramic long shots that reduce the human figures to dots in the breathtakingly beautiful landscape will remind viewers of Kurosawa while Bong Joon-Ho's equally masterly use of private, constrained, "locked-in" space is pure Ozu.
I am not suggesting that Bong Joon-Ho is a derivative stylist. On the contrary, he is a deeply rewarding artist. I am saying that in his case, the originality is achieved by using the recognizable, even conventional modes of narrative filmmaking in order to create, not just allude to, another world, another universe. On the surface, that universe appears to be rural Korean society. But in the broadest, most relevant sense, it is implicatively every "country" society that is trying to come to grips with a now-dominant "city" ethos. His subject is the severe personal and social dislocation that results from the often unbearable tension between an Old Order that is under immense pressure from the new order, Modernity, cell phones, school-girl prostitution ring and all.
Bong Joon-Ho's protagonists are not just "imperfect" people (we all are). They are crazy (most of us are not). "Mother" is a madwoman, who implodes and is driven completely insane by two ultimately unbearable forces: Internal, namely a mother's abiding and unconditional love for her son that supersedes all other human values for her; and external, namely a society's rapidly changing values that she gradually uncovers for herself but never ever fully comprehends. Alternating between vast landscapes and tiny spaces to convey Internal versus External is almost flawlessly realized by Bong Joon-Ho with exquisite subtlety, measure, and grace. He was, like Bertolucci, born to be a filmmaker, that is, a master conjurer of images in all possible scales.
The typical complaint about not finding a single character in any of Bong Joon-Ho's films that one can "relate to" and "empathize with" is a humanist impulse that Bong Joon-Ho deliberately frustrates. He does not want you to feel sympathetic to any of his characters simply because he does not either. He wants you to see them for who they are, alienated and alienating human beings who represent not just Korean society in transition but all human beings in our Modern Age.
Compared to Bong Joon-Ho, Hitchcock was a humanist despite arguments for his being a ground-breaking anti-humanist (which I believe are misinformed). Hitchcock worked within a humanist sensibility that believed in resolution and made everything satisfyingly "right" in the end. "Mother" offers no closure or happy endings whereas in case one has conveniently forgotten it, EVERY Hitchcock film, however unnerving and including "Psycho", does.
I do not wish to give away the story as a courtesy to those who have not seen the film. Besides, the synopsis available on Amazon and from other perceptive reviewers here is sufficient. All I will say is that "Mother" offers aesthetic pleasure of the highest kind still possible from contemporary cinema, an otherwise debased and degraded art form for the most part. It is lazy writing to call this simply a Korean "Mommie Dearest". It is much, much more than that, a great film, which "Mommie Dearest" is not.
"Mother" is the most disturbing film Bong Joon-Ho has made thus far, and one of the most disturbing films one is likely to see. It is indispensable.
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2011
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2020
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2022
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2019
Top reviews from other countries
The Movie Diorama
Mother adopts a wicked fluctuating screenplay that relentlessly nurtures its characters.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 8, 2019Ruhi E. Tuzlak
What It Really Means to be a Real Mother
Reviewed in Canada on April 9, 2017
Lauro
Una buena película en edición de alta calidad de imagen
Reviewed in Spain on May 27, 2017
