Review of Pieta (2012) by Özkan T — 15 Apr 2013

Kim Ki-Duk's confrontational style is enough to elicit nausea, but also a powerful, inseparable connection between the viewer and what is being seen. The emotion of Pieta is similar to the plethora of other Korean revenge films, but the way the film gets there is different from the majority of these films.

It's about a callous, unfeeling, powertripping young man who intimidates people into paying back loans. If they cannot, he collects the insurance from the injuries he inflicts upon them. And for what? The film doesn't show his benefit from this way of life, rather, it shows how he feeds off of it, how he cannot live any other way.

The bitter isolation that comes with such an aggressively self-interested lifestyle (which the film implies is caused by his lack of parenting) leads this man to never receiving a healthy dose of the feeling of the title: Pieta, or pity in Italian.

This blindness to the suffering of others allows him to continue this work, until, out of nowhere, a woman begins following him and begging him for forgiveness. She claims to be his prodigal mother, and she is played with the utmost conviction and the deepest humanity by Jo Min-soo.

The way the film resolves is unexpected, and though it left a bad taste in my mouth from the relentless tragedy depicted, I was also left feeling a little more enlightened, a little more in tune with the human need to branch out and to recognize the pain others feel.