After an ostensibly goofy intro of the titular mother (Kim Hyeja) dancing atop a hill that only really makes sense toward the film's end, Mother, by director Bong Joonho (Memories of Murder, The Host), opens with juxtaposed shots of the mother -- she's only referred to in the film as "Mother" -- chopping dried herbs and her son, Dojoon (Won Bin), across the street, playing with a dog. Dojoon is dangerously close to traffic, and when a car knocks him down his mother frantically runs across the road to make sure he's all right. He's bleeding, she screams. It is only after Dojoon runs off in pursuit of the hit-and-run driver with his friend Jintae that the mother realizes it is in fact she who is bleeding.
This scene is, in essence, representative of the entire film -- a film that uses misdirection, both in plot and theme, so masterfully that it left me reeling. Until approximately 45 minutes in, Mother appears to be a fairly straightforward crime thriller about a mentally handicapped young man (Dojoon) wrongfully imprisoned for murder. The evening of his hit-and-run, after an incident that finds him and Jintae at the local police station over a confrontation with the driver and his golfing buddies, Dojoon goes to a nearby nightclub to meet his friend. Jintae never shows up, however, and Dojoon drunkenly stumbles home a few hours later. On his way, he sees a high school student walking alone and makes a pass at her (the only female Dojoon has ever slept with is his mother, it is explained). The girl ignores him and hurriedly rushes into an abandoned building. Dojoon stands outside the building for a while until a large chunk of concrete is thrown from the darkness and lands at his feet. Then he heads home and falls asleep next to his mother. In the morning, the girl is found dead, draped over the abandoned building's rooftop railing. Dojoon is the prime suspect; a golf ball with his name written on it in pen has apparently been found at the murder scene. The police take him in for questioning, and it isn't long before he's coerced into signing a confession.
Thus sets up Dojoon's mother's quest to have her son proven innocent. The police want the case closed and are of no help*. Neither is the Craig Sager-suited lawyer she has hired. So desperate to have her son set free, the mother tries to find evidence that Jintae, whom she dislikes and has always believed to be a bad influence on Dojoon, killed the girl and set up her son. Seemingly your average crime thriller, the plot moves along like this until a key point about Dojoon and his mother's relationship is revealed, and that's when the film makes the leap from a mildly entertaining, run-of-the-mill crime drama to something far more sinister and compelling. It should be noted that Mother, while containing some truly shocking plot reveals, has no real twists. I mentioned that the opening scene is a microcosm of the movie's overall misdirection, but the connotation associated with that word is unfair. There is no sleight of hand in Mother. While perhaps tough for some viewers to accept, every place the plot goes, every dark corner it explores, is earned.
This is mostly due to to the mother's character arc. Kim Hyeja, whom I first noticed last year on the outstanding Korean drama 엄마가 뿔났다 (Mom's Dead Upset), portrays the mother, at first, as you would expect: her son is imprisoned, and she will do everything within her means to prove his innocence. Touching, sure, but there's not much new there, nothing that hasn't been done a thousand times before. It is only when she rejects the truth of Dojoon's fate and takes extremely drastic measures that Mother achieves what it has been building toward for most of its running time. Whether intentional or not, the film's transliterated title is eerily close to another English word that, much like the opening credits scene of Kim Hyeja dancing nonchalantly, makes sense only after the climax.
Wonderfully scripted, directed, and acted (kudos to Won Bin for taking Kirk Lazarus's advice and not going full retard), Mother is a chilling masterpiece, an instant classic.
4/4 *_*
* no shit?
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