Directed by: Bung Jun-ho
This film is already a run-away blockbuster in South Korea, topping consecutive weekend domestic box office totals for the last two weeks (May 29th-June 6th), beating out Hollywood heavyweights Terminator:Salvation and Angels and Demons. Korean cinema is renowned for its melodrama and although it's palpable in Mother, the subject matter is what makes this movie interesting.
Known only as Mother, (Kim Hye-ja) this matriarch lives in a rural community with her son Do-joon (Won Bin) above her oriental pharmacy. Do-joon is handicapped by mental and emotional suffering produced in part by his mother's overburdening parental care. Mother keeps Do-joon in an almost infantile state by feeding him, sleeping with him and arranging her entire world-sphere around him.
Mother is an exploration not only on the nature maternal love, at one end of the spectrum its dignity and at the other, its potential cause for harm. The film might also be taken as a subversive comment on the nature of parenting in South Korea, a society not alone in the world well-known today spoiling its children to an excessive point. But there is a flip side to this.
There is an excessive strain put upon Korean youth to follow strict social norms and an intense pressure to succeed that more than counterbalances any parental over-indulgence. This can be evidenced in the compulsive military for males, the the high suicide rate of adolescents caused be the annual University entrance exams, which still determine, to a very large extent, the success one will have for the future, and the exorbitant amount of money spent on education.
It all starts at home. Mother is worth a watch.
