- Jeong: 8/10
(SPOILERS BELOW)
God, this movie was so tragic, almost enough to bring me to tears at the end. The literal title for this South Korean movie is "My Heart". An elderly woman (Sun-mi) sits in a beautiful meadow and starts talking (in narrator form) about her past. We then see her life, which as the only other review (at present time) of the movie here put it, "... how she then struggled through life, against the most cruel and hopeless circumstances." She is married off at a young age to an even younger boy who doesn't even seem to be a teenager yet. Her step-mother is very cruel to her, and works her like a dog for years. Her husband goes away and returns about ten years later with a girl... who is pregnant. Realizing this isn't the right girl for him, the step-mother is suddenly nice to her daughter-in-law, almost as if she realizes something Sun-mi's husband wants a divorce from her down, and she quietly leaves the house, never to return. She settles in her own small house in an isolated area, and meets a potter. She eventually marries this kindly and awkward man and gets him off the booze, which he had problems with. One day, he spends all the money he made from selling pots on some expensive face powder for his wife. He is talked into having a drink with a friend, and one turns into many. As he's walking home, he realizes he has left the powder behind, and goes to retrieve it. He has another drink, and walks home in the pouring rain, drunk. He drops the powder box in the raging river and tries to grab it, but falls in as he clutches it. He ends up drowning, and the next time his wife sees him, he's a corpse. She takes the powder box as a lasting reminder of her husband, and leaves his house (with many unsold pots still there), carrying only a few possessions - just like when she left her mother-in-law's house. Sun-mi finds work doing some sort of agricultural work in harsh, snowy conditions. There, she befriends a wandering young lady with a baby, who has fled an oppressive husband. They form a older sister/younger sister bond, and the main character becomes attached to the child. One day, the "younger sister" leaves with her child, after a man who now legally owns her (having won her in a bet with the woman's real husband) almost finds her. However, one day the baby appears, and the woman is gone. Sun-mi picks up the baby and races to the river, where she sees her "younger sister" sailing away on a raft. In another gritty, tear-inducing scene as she races to the bank, she yells to the baby, "That's your mother! That's your mother!", knowing he'll never see his true mother again. Once again, Sun-mi loses someone close to her. However, she has the baby and raises him as her own. Back to present day, her son is a tall young man in university, and arrives home for a stay. He treats his "mother" (I don't think he knows about his true mother, but in this sort of movie it doesn't really matter) so well, worrying and caring about her. He goes back to school, and the now elderly Sun-mi watches. It's probably the most emotional part of the movie - she has a content look on her face, because after all the hardship, she finally found something, and has a young, well educated son to be proud of. Really, an excellent movie, grim and depressing, almost too depressing at times. My only gripe is that the transitions from eras of the woman's life were often too quick - like she went from being about 18 to being 30 or 40-something. Highly recommended though.
