Today’s post follows a grimmer darker road than my previous entries, but still noteworthy. I recently watched Bong Joon-ho’s Mother at the recommendation of a friend. It’s a thriller, which I hate, but Mother touched a much deeper chord than just being a thriller – something almost anyone could understand – the love of a mother. Albeit, this love can be twisted and distorted, but this movie really examines the core of a mother-son relationship that are duly and completely dependent on one another.
Hye-ja cares for her son Do-joon, her 27-year old son of limited mental capacity. She hovers over him while giving him the illusion of independence, and though Do-joon asserts his own, he is also deeply reliant on his mother. There is a well-meant double-entendre when Do-joon says he “sleeps” with his mother – which he literally does – but the Oedipal undertones are not far off. When Do-joon is accused of a murder in a small country town, Hye-ja goes to all lengths to clear her son’s name. She is the Korean-version of The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency playing sleuth, forensics expert and spy all in one swoop.
Without spoiling the film, this movie definitely brought me to a certain understanding of why or how someone might commit murder – not in a thought out way, but in a deeply-entranced moment of unreliable fury. I think of the worst temper tantrum I’ve ever had, add a blunt object and an innocent bystander, and therein I have the recipe for murder. It’s incredible how Bong Joon-ho is able to draw such a thinly veiled line between those who murder and those who do not. I found myself having to visibly shake my head out of the trance I entered as I followed Hye-ja’s “logical” thoughts. The human mind can be a dangerous labryinth.
R and I had an interesting discussion about this because of the murder I grappled with in my own life. No one will ever truly deeply understand why people kill, and sometimes not even the person who perpetrates the crime knows why, but Mother helped me to see that sometimes those lines can become increasingly burdensome and heavy when carried by one person.
At the heart of it, this film explored the dark recesses of humanity which we often shudder at and dismiss. I came to some of the same conclusions I had years prior when I realized that everyone houses a capacity to kill. What keeps us from it is the deep intertwined networks of community that keep us from ever getting too lost in our own heads. The true danger comes when a man decides what is right and wrong for himself alone.
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That was heavy, so on a lighter note, there is a great dance number at the opening of Mother, and if you ever see R, ask him to dance it for you. He’s a pro at the Mother dance.
