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Mother
We all
know mothers share a very special connection to their children. Their
possessiveness, protective instincts and overwhelming affection for
their wailing creations are littered all over literature, art and film,
as well as every day life – and for the common man, it has a complex and
significant bearing on his life. Does poor Oedipus or Norman Bates from
Psycho come to mind?
It is this uniquely powerful relationship between mother and son that
South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho uses in Mother to give a murder
mystery more than just cheap thrills and predictable outcomes. Set in a
small and simple Korean town, a single mother goes to great lengths to
prove that her handicapped son, Do-Joon, is wrongfully accused of
murdering a young girl. With an unfeeling police force working on the
case, lawyers who settle for the easy way out and her own son’s mental
inability to recall the night of the crime, the odds are against Do-Joon’s
mother in finding the real killer but it is her maternal instincts that
drive her beyond what most would bear to do.
With such a compelling plot, director Bong doesn’t merely rest on his
laurels as a recognised filmmaker in South Korea, having given birth to
The Host which ate up mass audiences in the South Korean box-office in
2006. Instead, he stretches his capacities as a director to its limits
through his visually captivating style and attention to detail and
perfection, which is flawlessly supported by the energy and life that a
strong cast is able to endow on the engaging intricacies of the
characters. It is through this visually and dramatically powerful
execution of Mother that carries the story beyond the standards of an
‘average’ thriller, and lifts it to heights of a ‘sensational’ and
‘original’ quality that you can rarely find in such a popular genre.
The special features included on the DVD include the ‘Making of Mother’
with a documentary-style logging of the first and last days of shooting,
an ‘Interview with Director Bong Joon-Ho’, ‘Interviews with main
characters, the director and other characters’ as well as ‘Production:
Behind the Scenes’ which provide a small but adequate window into
director Bong’s conception of Mother, the efforts and commitment
nurtured into the film by the cast and crew, and the light-hearted,
humorous attitudes of those who made such a serious and dark film
possible.
After the many years that director Bong worked on the film, Mother has
been set free into the international market like a child of his own –
one that will undoubtedly grow and stand as one of the bright beginnings
of a successful film industry in South Korea, and one that will
hopefully be challenged and triumphed by future productions.
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