A mother must tear down the wall that imprisons her son while facing the
fact that she helped build it in the first place. Director Bong Joon-ho once
again focuses upon an unfocused family: like THE HOST, the film’s conceit is a
masquerade that conceals the familial trauma boiling underneath.
Hye-ja is an aging widow, her beauty fading beneath the veneer of time who
must care for her only son, a mentally handicapped young man incapable (so she
believes) of living independently of her crushing attention. Do-joon is
physically a man in his mid-twenties (alluding that she had him later in life)
but burdened with a mind that ceased growing in grade school. She has taught
him to fight, to stand up for himself, but she is always there to bail him out
of trouble though he is rarely the cause. She smothers him with love and
affection, even sleeping in the same bed together like a baby, never wanting
him to grow up and leave the nest. But one day a girl is found murdered and
evidence leads to Do-joon’s arrest and conviction.
The film becomes an investigative procedural as Hye-ja avers his innocence
because she cannot accept the possibility that her son is a murder. The police
quickly close the case and she begins to uncover her own evidence to acquit her
son, following the path of least resistance whose convoluted path becomes a
journey of self-discovery. The story is literally teaming with red herrings,
oblique motives, tortured testimony, and false leads whose conclusion becomes
an inexcusable morality, shifting culpability and audience compassion. Hye-ja finally
knows the facts but cannot accept the truth, redacting her own guilt and
dissecting the corpus delecti, leaving the audience in the position of jury to
decide if Justice has been served.
Final Grade: (B+)
