Pieta - Pietà Directed by Kim Ki-duk Starring: Jung-Jin Lee, Min-soo Jo
Pieta - Pietà
Directed by Kim Ki-duk
Starring: Jung-Jin Lee, Min-soo Jo
Country: South Korea
Year 2012
Review Author: Roberto Matteucci
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“People must never die due to money.”
Korea is a country with an intense cultural and civil memory. Its historical events are important and fascinating.
In Asia, Korea was crushed between two giants: China and Japan. Despite the invasions, it has been able to build a vigorous national sentiment, with fundamental diversity.
Korea is the Asian state - after the Philippines - with the highest percentage of Christians.
Christianity was inserted with classical cultures, Confucianism, Buddhism, and the ancient religion of Korea, shamanism, still today an irreplaceable reality.
Philosophical integration happened within the population, through conflicts among the various forms of thought.
Despite defeats and dominations, the Koreans remain tied to their own identity and tradition. The patriotic soul is unlimited. At the end of the civil war, the difference between the increasingly isolated North and the South, under US control, widens. Japanese and American investments came to South Korea, accelerating prosperity.
The fall of the USSR, the isolation also due to a personality cult, caused a gap between the two nations.
At this moment, unification - between North and South Korea - has become very improbable. In the North, there are bad economic problems. The South increase in social difficulties, such as the abuse of alcohol, divorces, suicides and worn out human relationships.
In Korea emerge solitary individuals, with a violent inclination; sadism and masochism are structural in daily life.
Kim Ki-duk's films, like Park Chan-wook's ones, depict the universal and personal discomfort of Korea. The film, Pieta - Pietà, presented at the 69th Venice Film Festival, is a sum of these elements.
According to the director's own statement, the idea comes from the most famous of Christian icons: Michelangelo's Pietà:
“In the nineties, when I was not yet a film director, I took a trip to Italy, and during a visit to the Vatican, I stopped in front of Michelangelo's Pietà. The image - Mary is crying, embracing her dying son Jesus - made me realize that humanity cannot escape from its future destiny, a destiny made of pain and suffering. Now I am a director, and I want to express in my films that deep pain of humanity as I felt near the Pietà." (1)
The family is a concept present in Confucian culture:
"The filial piety of the present day simply means the being able to support one's parents which extends even to the case of dogs and horses, all of which may have something to give in the way of support. If there be no reverential feeling in the matter, what is there to distinguish between the cases?" (The Analects of Confucius http://confucius-1.com/analects/analects-2.html)
This philosophy is indisputably added to Christianity. The film includes many elderly, sick, poor, devoted mothers. All are predisposed to sacrifice themselves for their children: "Don't you have a mother?" Sons have the duty of filial piety, the supreme obligation to repay the efforts of parents to grow up with them. They would feel frustrated if they did not do their responsibility.
These motivations help to understand the Korean author's mentality.
The plot is about young Lee Kang-do, abandoned like a child by his mother. He has a sordid existence, he lives alone in a filthy flat, located in a nasty alley. His job is to collect usury loans for the Korean Mafia. Occupation carried out with great competence, seriousness and dedication. A true professional of evil.
In his antisocial reality, one day, a meek, humble woman appears to him: she claims to be his mother, repentant of her mistake.
The film is shot with a dark vision, with over-the-top protagonists, necessary to have an international reading of the story.
The tones are cruel and obsessive. The setting is in a small neighbourhood full of narrow streets, with many small mechanical workshops. The speculators want to tear the area down and replace it with more modern condominiums. The world of mechanics offers a large range of tools - sharp, cutting, pointed, vise, crushing, drills, punches - to cause horrible pain and physical mutilation.
These objects are indispensable in the film, such as the framing of the hook. It gets down on a boy in a wheelchair. The meaning is easily identifiable.
Lee Kang-do's temperament is brutal, sadistic, cynical, indifferent, misanthropic, and terribly lonely. In the beginning, he indulges in an onanistic, agitated and painful orgasm. This sequence emphasizes his perversion and depravity.
The mother looks like him. She has inhumane behaviour.
Kicks a man amputated in the legs by Lee Kang-do; she hits him with malice, insensitive to the suffering and screams of the tortured.
In another scene, the woman releases a bunny, captured by Lee Kang-do, from one of his victims and immediately a car runs over him just arrived at the street. It is the allegory of the relation between mother and son.
Their bond is disturbed, agonized, cursed. Their initial hatred is profound, described in a depraved attempt to rape the mother. A clumsy attempt. It is only the son's desire to re-enter inside his mother lost when he was a baby. Their relationship changes, it evolves. The mother buys him a balloon and treats him as a child, generating the hilarity of the people.
The most repugnant action is when the mother masturbates her son in his suffering sleep, as in the film La luna by Bernardo Bertolucci.
The style is always active, with a dark language.
The final is a crescendo of anxiety and agitation, achieved with symbolic images and romantic postures.
Kim Ki-duk creates a desolating picture of the family, they are all in position, still, motionless
The family is the centre of life, in spite, it is overwhelmed by anguish, carnal and psychological torment.
This figure is equivalent to the sorrow of the maternal love of Saint Mary, with her dying son Jesus in her arms, in Michelangelo's Pietà.
There are other roles around, especially the victims of Lee Kang-do's anger. There are many mothers but the most exciting scene is with a teenage father. He, too, has surrendered to the loan sharks. He must repay the money or otherwise, Lee Kang-do must mutilate him to cash the insurance.
The constant noise of an automatic machine. Close-up of the puncher, two hands with dirty gloves are working on it.
The camera moves, medium-shot. There is a boy, with a naive face, sitting. His cell phone rings, it is his pregnant wife. They talk affectionately about the birth of their son.
Wide-shot of the whole workshop. The boy continues the call. It is a tiny, cramped, messy place. Among the working devices, a guitar is in the background.
The dialogue with his wife is touching, the boy replies with simplicity, innocence, candid: “Did you have an ultrasound? Who does he look like? Ah, no, he doesn't have to look like me, or he'll end up like me. Look better."
Lee Kang-do enters. Close-up, shallow-space, he sits in front of the boy, who lowers his head. He quickly looks up and asks for an additional loan, even though he knows he cannot refund it. Shot-reverse-shot with Lee Kang-do. He asks for more money because his son will be born in one month "I want to give him everything a child must have, I will feel guilty, if he is born because I want him, I have to take responsibility". He is willing to do anything, without hesitation: "happy to become disabled."
The two characters are facing, Lee Kang-do's arm is on the guitar.
Lee Kang-do grabs his hand and puts it under the puncher. The boy is scared but seems to accept it for the love of his son. Mid-shot, the frightened boy keeps on speaking, starts to sing: "but now I'll make a sacrifice."
Lee Kang-do stares at him, but a breach has opened in his heart: "I envy your son" and leaves his hand. “Any parent wouldn't do the same, your parents would have done it” is the boy's answer. Therefore, Lee Kang-do gives up, no longer wants to be his torturer "Play it for your child", gives him the guitar, the insurance claim sheet and goes out. When he is in the alley, he hears a scream, the boy sacrifices his hand for the well-being of his son.
The sequence is harsh, claustrophobic, suffocating, black. The limited space sharpens the bond between the two men, creating intimacy. Even a father can immolate himself for his children. However, there is a difference. The father is naïve, shy, superficial. He does not have the determination, the moral and physical strength of mothers, who are ready to plan the most ruthless and atrocious revenge.