Mother (Joon-ho Bong, 2009): South Korea

Reviewed by Zach McClellan.  Viewed at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, part of AFI Fest 2009.

Mother, Joon-ho Bong’s  solo follow up to his hit, riot of a monster film and one of my faves, The Host, delivers as one hilarious, captivating mystery film.  Bong uses a similar formula as in The Host, combining horror or mystery suspense with humor, ridiculous situations, and hilarious dialogue.  Surprisingly, a lot of humor translates well from Korea to the USA, mostly intentionally.  I often found myself cracking up and  then a few moments later suspicious of characters and events in the film, desperately wanting to learn more about the event which kicks off the mystery in the film.

The film starts off with a strange, but beautiful sequence of a wheat field and the protagonist, Mother(Hye-ja Kim) walking alone and then dancing. Kim uses a powerful performance to show that her character is an over-bearing, overly-protective, and persistent detective in her ongoing investigation to prove her son is innocent of murder.  Her son, Do-joon(Won Bin), is a simple-minded young man who desperately wants female attention other than his mother’s and  who’s best friend, Jin-Tae(Jin Goo) is a suave, street-smart tough guy.  After a funny scene involving a drunk Do-joon getting kicked out of a bar for hitting on the hostess’s daughter, Do-joon is slowly stumbling home when he finds himself following a girl in a school uniform.  Unresponsive to his blatant flirtations, she hides from him in a dark alleyway.  The whole scene is beautifully shot by Kyung-Pyo Hong with shadows and the blue glow from the moonlight giving it a mysterious feeling.  Seeing it as not worth the trouble or scared, Do-joon stands outside the alleyway and yells, “What?!  Do you not like guys?!”.  A large rock then flies out of the darkness and towards Do-joon, missing and smashing into the ground behind him.  Do-joon  turns around and leaves and the screen goes to black.  A single shot from above shows he then crawls into his mother’s bed while she’s sleeping and holds her breasts for comfort while he sleeps in what appears to be a mildly incestuous, but loving relationship.

The film’s story thickens when the next shot slowly pans upwards to reveal the school girl eerily bent over the ledge of the rooftop of the building she was hiding next to the night before, dead and bloody and on display.  The shot immediately reminded me of J-horror(a specific genre of horror films from Japan) because of the way her long black hair just hung there and her school uniform.  Police trace Do-joon to the crime scene, arrest him and because of his possible learning disability his mother refuses to acknowledge, coerce him into signing a confession to the murder.  The mother, fully aware of who her son is and his gentle, child-like nature; and because of her over-protection, vows to prove her son’s innocence, if it means investigating the murder herself.  Through her investigation, information about the murdered girl and the town people who know her come to light, further complicating the story with twists and turns that I never saw coming.

I believe the core message of Mother is that a person is capable of anything for someone they love, especially if that person is family.  Overall, Mother is one of the best mystery films I’ve ever seen with humor that kept me laughing the whole way through.  Joon-ho Bong has created a truly beautiful film that is equally entertaining.