Mother

Released by: Magnolia Films
Released on: 7/20/2010
Director: Joon-ho Bong
Cast: Hye-ja Kim, Bin Won, Ku Jin, Yoon Jae-Moon, Mi-sun Jun
Year: 2009
Purchase From Amazon

The Movie:

Borrowing a little bit from Alfred Hitchcock's playbook (it's not hard to see the influence that Psycho had to have had on this picture), Korean director Joon-ho Bong's follow up to his massive monster mash blockbuster, The Host, is this oddly compelling mix of horror, drama and rich black comedy.

When the film begins, the titular unnamed matron (Hye-ja Kim) walks through a barren field towards the camera, as ominous and intense looking as can be, before dancing to a quirky guitar score and, amazingly enough, making it look perfectly natural. From there we cut to the herb store where she works as we see her approached by simple minded twenty-seven year old her son, Do-joon (Won Bin). As she works the paper cutter, she watches him struck by a speeding car, cutting herself as his body is struck and understandably dropping everything to check and make sure he's alright. This sets the tone for the film as we realize here how much he means to her. Do-joon's actions, however, show just how overbearing she can be. He admits without any sense of social mores that he sleeps with his mother, and lacks the social graces to know what is or is not considered acceptable in casual conversation.

Things get complicated when Do-joon innocently follows a pretty girl to an abandoned factory. He watches her, fairly innocently, and leaves but is spotted. When the girl is found dead in the factory later on, he is, of course, the prime suspect in her murder. He's arrested, and his mother makes it her mission to prove that he's not the culprit. As she deals with lawyers and cops and tries to piece together what really happened, her psyche starts to shudder a bit as she resorts to some rather unorthodox methods. She thinks her son's only real friend, Jin-tae (Jin Goo) might have something to do with it, but the mystery is far deeper than his philandering ways - but she'll figure out, regardless of what she has to do on the way.

Remarkably well photographed in such a way that the camera gives us as much insight into the various characters that populate this film as the dialogue does, Mother is fairly brilliant work of quirky humor and pitch perfect suspense. At the heart of all of this, however, is a performance of immense power from Hye-ja Kim. She's an odd looking woman, at least she is in the way that she's been made up to look in this film, and has an intensity to her screen presence that Joon-ho Bong is only too happy to rightfully exploit. He's found in her the perfect star to play the part, and she does it so well that you will forget you're watching a performance and almost believe you're watching the real thing. Won Bin is exceptional as the simple minded son, but this is really Hey-ja Kim's film, everyone else in it (and the supporting cast is uniformly excellent) pales in comparison.

At just over two hours in length, this meticulously crafted slow burn of a film might seem like a chore to sit through in terms of pacing but Joon-ho Bong layers the film so well that you won't find yourself checking your watch or reaching for the fast forward button, but rather soaking in the atmosphere and trying for yourself to figure out the truth behind the 'whodunnit' aspect of the story. The film only gives us as much information as we need, as we need it, ratcheting up the mystery so carefully that the twist hits with ruthless efficiency. As much a look into the stranger and more subversive elements of modern society and parenting tactics as a Hitchcockian (or, if you prefer, Polanskian) thriller, Mother is nevertheless a nearly flawless picture made by a director whose fledgling career remains ripe with possibilities.

Video/Audio/Extras:

The AVC encoded 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p high definition transfer on this disc is a strong one, with excellent detail and texture and very lifelike color reproduction. There's a very strong depth to the picture that, while not quite 3-D, offers far more strength than standard definition could ever hope to provide, with stronger shadow detail than you'd probably expect. The color palette employed uses a lot of greens and dark blues and so you don't quite get the colors popping off the screen at you the way you might from a Pixar film, but the disc does do a great job of replicating what we can assume is the director's intended look for the film.

The Korean DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix is just as impressive as the video. Surrounds are used very effectively to build atmosphere and inevitably tension as the story starts to dig its heels in. Bass response is strong without ever overpowering the dialogue, score or effects while directional effects are plentiful enough when needed, leaving the rear channels to supply just the right amount of ambient noise during the quieter moments in the film. Optional subtitles are provided in English SDH, English, and Spanish.

The biggest and best of the supplements on this disc is the feature length ninety-minute documentary, The Making Of Mother, which explains pretty much anything you'd want to know about how this project was put together. Included here is a load of behind the scenes footage and interviews with the key cast and crew members, all of whom (not surprisingly) speak highly of one another and seem quite enamored with the project. If that weren't enough, however, some shorter featurettes nail down the specifics of certain aspects, like Music Score, a fifteen minute piece that gives the film's composer some time in the spotlight. Other featurettes include a fourteen minute piece on the Supporting Actors, a twelve minute piece on Production Design, seven minutes of Behind The Scenes bits, and an interesting little nine-minute piece on actress Hye-ja Kim.

Rounding out the extras are two trailers for the feature, trailers for a few other Magnolia properties (the only supplements in high defintion), an HDNet promo spot, menus and chapter selection. The Korean release contained a commentary (unsubtitled) that has not been carried over to this release, but there's still a pretty massive selection of extras here to take in.

The Final Word:

With The Host and now Mother, Joon-ho Bong proves himself a capable director intent on not letting his career get pigeonholed into churning out the same kind of films over and over again. A slow, brooding, and beautifully methodical thriller, Mother is a smart and quirky film that moves at a very deliberate pace but ultimately delivers clever suspense and a rich atmosphere. Magnolia's Blu-ray release is great, with a strong transfer, impressive audio, and an excellent selection of supplemental material.