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This review has **spoilers**.
I saw this movie years back when it came out. I loved the show "The Walking Dead". Glenn Rhee played by Steven Yeun was my favorite character. So when this movie came out I had to watch it because of Steven Yeun. This movie's tags have it as a thriller/mystery. It is so much more. Crime drama, a sociological view on South Korea, a view on economical classes. I love crime drama movies and this fit well in that category.
This story has three main characters. Lee Jong-su (Ah In Yoo), Shin Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jun), and Ben (Steven Yeun). The movie starts out with Jong-su meeting a childhood neighbor Hae-mi. They reconnect and you spend the first part of the movie learning they are both working/lower class people that are in a current struggle in their lives. You learn so much about these two characters, who they are and what they want in their lives. I applaud director Chang-dong Lee for this. He pulled this off quick but in such a wonderful way. I appreciate what Lee did throughout the entire film. He doesn't spoon-feed the viewer or hold our hand telling us what everything in the film means or what is happening. I love this!! There's absolutely no exposition. You learn everything by CLOSELY watching our three characters and you have to view things from their point of view. You have to pay attention to every conversation, to all that is said.
Jong-su falls in love with Hae-mi right before her trip to Africa, where she intends to be in an endeavor to find meaning in her life, a "great hunger" she speaks of. Hae-mi asks Jong-su to take care of her cat while she is away. A cat that Jong-su never sees. There is cat food there, the cats water and food bowls and it's litter box that does contain the cat's waste but Jong-su never sees the cat. Hae-mi tells him that the cat is just fearful of strangers and hides from them. This plays an important part in the film. People that pay attention understand the significance of this. Others that don't pay attention claim there was never a cat and that it was a metaphor, a delusion or even a figment of Jong-su's writing, a story he is to write. Coming back home she informs Jong-su that she's finally coming home, Jong-su goes to meet her at the airport where he notices she is with Ben. Yes, Ben enters the scene and now we have our three protagonists. Ben is obviously very wealthy and rich. He makes a comment that he has never cried nor felt sadness. That is key to figuring out who he is and what he is all about and what he does. The three spend time together. This is where director Lee shines in getting us to learn about the three characters. This is where he shows us the economic inequality in South Korea and how our three characters fit in that society.
Two books are sort of mentioned in this film. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jong-su mentions that his favorite author is William Faulkner. Faulkner's book "Barn Burning" shares the same themes that are mirrored in this movie. Social class, poverty, family disfunction and violence. Jong-su says ""When I read his work [Faulkner's], I feel like I'm reading about myself." This movie is also based on Haruki Murakami's short story "Barn Burning". Jong-su tells Hae-mi that Ben is like Gatsby, that South Korea is filled with Gatsbys. Jong-su, Hae-mi and Ben have a little conversation where they mention metaphors. That conversation is key to understanding everything in this film. The last night the three characters spend together, we learn a lot more about Ben. If the viewer takes note about their earlier conversation with metaphors, you understand it all right then and there. Hae-mi goes missing. The third act of the film is Jong-su trying to find her. We learn how others including her friends and family view Hae-mi, as a liar. The viewer in now conflicted. Are we to believe that Hae-mi is a liar? This is the struggle that Jong-su is dealing with. Does Ben know where she is? He says he doesn't know. He even has a new girlfriend. The anxiety is high at this act in the movie as we follow Jong-su in his endless pursuit in trying to find out where Hae-mi is.
This is where it all breaks down for the viewer. If the viewer paid close attention to it all, you know what happened. You see Jong-su in Hae-mi's empty apartment typing/writing on his computer. The viewer that wasn't paying attention thinks that Jong-su made everything up. That Hae-mi never existed, that her cat never existed, that all the events that happened never happened at all. That it was just a story that he is writing. This is where the majority of spoon-fed, hand-held viewers get thrown off. They do not understand what is going on here.
The end, the climactic end. Jong-su knows now what happened to Hae-mi. He figured it out. He confronts Ben at a very specific and ironic place. A place that Ben humorously says that the place he was told to meet Jong-su at, has lots of greenhouses. Ben meets the same fate as Gatsby in the book The Great Gatsby but poetically he also meets the same fate as the abandoned greenhouses that he used to burn and make disappear as if they never existed, that even the police would not care for or have the time to bother with. The film ends with Jong-su driving away.
Right there when the credits started, I knew I just watched something special. A film that doesn't come around too often. A film I love and appreciate dearly. I highly recommend this film to all people that appreciate a film that challenges the viewer to pay attention to and challenges the viewer to think.
