“POETRY” My rating : B
139 minutes | No MPAA rating
Beauty and brutality, poetry and pessimism are uneasy neighbors in Lee Chang-dong’s “Poetry,” a character study about an elderly woman whose rosy view of life is shattered by the casual cruelty of the modern world.
Mija (Yun Jung-hee, Korea’s greatest actress, who came out of 16 years of retirement to take this role) is a sixtysomething widow rearing her teenage grandson. She lives off a pension and the money she earns bathing and cleaning up after a cranky stroke victim.
Yun Jung-hee in "Poetry"
Once a great beauty, Mija takes girlish pleasure in being told how pretty she still is. In fact she’s flighty and shallow and — perhaps because her looks have always seen her through — naively upbeat.
That’s about to change.
Butler's Cinema Scene 