Poetry

The woman in the lead had not appeared on screen for fifteen years. Yoon Jeong-hee retired from acting in the mid-1990s and made no films after 1994. Lee Chang-dong brought her back for Mija. The role itself comes from a strange place. Mija is in her sixties, has been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer's, and enrols in a poetry class as she begins losing words. After the film came out it emerged that Yoon's own symptoms had begun during production; the loss on screen is not an imitation. The story's starting point is also real. Lee had heard of a case in a small town where a schoolgirl was raped by a group of teenage boys. In the film Mija's grandson is one of that group, and she is trying both to find words and to decide what to do about it. It won Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2010. Who it is for: viewers who like slow, quiet Korean cinema that leaves the moral question with the audience. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a clear answer. The film punishes nobody, absolves nobody, and explains nothing at the end.