MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: PIETA (2012)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Thursday, November 5, 2015

PIETA (2012)

Korean director Ki-duk Kim shows an easy command in this twisted Mother-Love saga, seasoning his revenge-thriller with family secrets & sick comic touches. Superbly structured, the story follows a cavalier loan-shark collector who specializes in crippling tardy clients (often with their own tool-and-die equipment) then sitting back to collect accident insurance as payoff. Complications arise when he’s confronted by a mad woman who claims she’s the mother who abandoned him 30 years ago. Seeking forgiveness, nothing seems to faze her, at one point adding a kick to help her son break a guy’s tibia at work, at another, lending a hand to help get him off. Yikes! Could she really be his mother? Or is this some test or trick from his rarely seen boss? Kim probably takes more time than he should teasing this out, but solves his puzzle in satisfying fashion with wonderfully clean technique and vivid perfs all ‘round. Jung-Jin Lee, who plays the blankly vicious, oddly sentimental enforcer brings sleepy bedroom eyes, incipient jowls and just a hint of a snarl on the upper lip. He’d make a perfect Korean Elvis. (Count that as a SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY.)

DOUBLE-BILL: More (even better) Korean Mother-Love in Joon-ho Bong’s MOTHER/’09.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

Thursday, November 5, 2015

PIETA (2012)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE