Pieta

Synopsis: Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin) is a ruthless debt collector whose loan shark boss preys on small artisan businesses.  If they default on their debts,  Kang-do indifferently maims his victims in order to collect the insurance money. One day a woman (Cho Min-soo) appears on his doorstep begging forgiveness for abandoning him as a child. Initially Kang-do rejects her but she persists and gradually he allows emotion to enter his life.

Feted South Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s Pieta, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2012 Venice Film Festival is a film that seems so rooted in its cultural context that it is difficult to review. Conceptually it is one of the most stunning releases of the year but one suspects that it would have much greater resonance for a home audience,

Setting his story in a near-slum section of Cheonggyecheon, a district of Seoul that once was a thriving factory town but is now slowly being replaced by corporate high rises, Kim is evidently making a comment on the dog-eat-dog economic conditions of his country. Kang-do is emotionally disconnected, brutalizing his victims without compunction and in turn abused by his boss, living alone in a crummy apartment without any human interaction. The viciousness of his acts is especially shocking because it is at once terrible in its consequences – Kang-do’s victims lose their ability to work ever again - and yet so banal in its execution, the victims seemingly accepting it as a fact of life. It is this resignation which ultimately gives Kang-do his power.

The transformation that occurs with the appearance of a woman who manages to access Kang-do’s long-buried emotions is remarkable. Slowly he responds to her maternal caring and begins to feel some empathy for his victims, eventually deciding that was he has been doing is wrong. Although as the title indicates, Pieta is about a mother’s sorrow, it is not in the way that you might initially think. There is a twist in the tale and Kang-do comes to realize that humanity too comes at a cost.

If Kim has come up with a powerful idea, his way of realizing it is very different from the Western tradition. There are few dramatic moments and the dynamic between the two characters is subdued, their emotional state being more implied than demonstrated, at least until the shocking finale. This detachment means that Pieta is ultimately a film that will be appreciated intellectually rather than, as in the Hollywood manner, the emotional roller-coaster ride on which it takes you. It is a powerful work none the less.

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