PIETA

Korea, 2012, 104 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Kim Ki- duc.

Over the decades, Korean director, Kim ki-duc, has made some very striking films. This film is announced as his 18th. It won for him the Golden Lion in Venice, 2012.

By the end of the 1990s, the director had made some very violent films and this continued, although he could also make lyrical films with religious undertones, Spring, Summer, Autumn…

This film continues his grim treatment of characters and stories. It is set in the dark places of the Korean city, an apartment where the central character lives. He is a loan shark, working for a boss, doing his rounds, collecting money, being requested to lend more money in difficult circumstances, but also administering injuries and certificates for insurance which binds the debtors and their wives and families more closely to the collector. There are several scenes illustrating his behaviour and callousness.

Then a strange woman starts to follow him, eventually claiming to be his mother who abandoned him when he was a child. He reacts reacted badly, insulting her, pushing her away. However, she perseveres, buying him food, cleaning his apartment, kicking a man who was injured pleading with her son just because he is her son.

Gradually, the man believes that she is his mother, not before humiliating her by asking whether he came from her vagina and then forcing himself into her. Later, she will handle him sexually. It is a bizarre relationship. However, he comes to believe her.

There is a twist in the second part where it emerges that she is getting vengeance on him, staging some alleged assaults on her and filming them with her phone so that he believes her. He goes round all his clients to see who would hurt his mother. She later stages another episode but is pushed from a building by a strange woman, seen lying with her dead husband, the cause of her vengeance.

As with the title, the mother’s love for her suffering son, a mother of compassion, the film illustrates this but also has a deadly twist.

1. The director, his 18th film, his themes and treatment, ugly worlds, the possibilities for redemption?

2. Korea, the city, the factories, apartments, the streets, the ugliness, the score?

3. The title, the role of the Pieta, known from Michelangelo’s statue? The mother cradling her dead son, the compassionate mother, the suffering of the son? The film affirming this title? The final twist?

4. The portrait of Gang-do, age, living alone, his apartment, the masturbation, the emergence of his character, the loan shark, his relationship with the boss and the boss later attacking him, his visits and range of clients, his hardness, the nature of the loans, their needs, the issues of insurance, injury, interest, his ability to injure the debtors, and ruining their lives? The range of encounters, people willing to be injured for more money, places of work, factories, the relationship with their women, the men and their hopes, desperation? The father talking about his forthcoming child and his being spared? The range of clients, visits, the man on the building pleading, and his falling to the ground and being injured?

5. The strange woman, her claims to be Gang-do’s mother, the story of abandoning him at birth, his reactions, violence, her continuing to follow, his denial, the arguments, his insults? Getting the food for the meal, the man falling from the building and her kicking him on behalf of her son? Further talk, disbelief, in the house, the brutal sequence of Gang-do talking to the woman and fingering her? The later masturbating him? His birthday, the cake, the celebration? The outburst in the public place? His acknowledgement, the planting of the tree?

6. The changes in Gang-do, with the boss, his leniency towards the debtors?

7. The woman staging the assault, pretending, filming it? Gang-do and his wanting to check out who would assault his mother, his going to see the various clients, their disabilities, sense of hopelessness, the dead man, the man with his mother, the long sequence with the wife and her denunciation of Gang-do? The man taking his mother hostage, with the knife, the stabbing, his fall and leaving?

8. The building, Gang-do below, the mother and her staging of another attack? The strange woman and her fall?

9. The reality, her marriage, her dead husband, her wanting vengeance?

10. The ending, Gang-do under the car, self-sacrifice? The woman leaving her husband? The Latin chant: Give us peace?