Review of The Way Home (2002) by Eric C — 24 Feb 2009

***written on 31 October 2008***.

This little film is a gem, a gem that I had seen in parts before but I finally watched it on DVD complete. It is a film that once you watch and love you will want to share its wonders with the persons near you and they will love it as well. Actually I knew the existence of this film thanks to my aunt, I watched the first half of it with my family but I couldn't finished. Then my family loved the film and they were some of the persons from whom I had heard very good things about this film, other was a teacher and once she brought the DVD and again I watched just part of it since the time of the class was not enough. Now that I finally watched it complete I will be the one who will write good things about it.

Jibeuro aka The Way Home is a very simple film, essentially nothing "big" happens during most part of it but that's the beauty of it. Sang-woo (Seung-ho Yu) is one of the two main characters, he is a kid whose mother (Hyo-hee Dong) has to be outside to find a job so his grandmother (Eul-boon Kim) will look after him. We have two facts, one that the kid is quite annoying and selfish and the other that his grandmother lives in a rural village. So you can imagine a kid from the city in a complete new territory far from Seoul without TV and stuff, for sure we can understand that this situation is not comfortable for the kid and that is a little difficult but for sure is not justifiable how he treats his grandmother, who can't talk. The kid is very selfish and truly annoying and insults his grandmother or just ignore her but is quite funny to see some of his actions. There you see the rain and clothes of both the kid and the grandmother outside in the clothesline so the kid only brings with him his own clothes! But he reconsiders and brings with him the clothes of his grandmother and there's even instant karma in that scene. One of my favourites sequences is very funny and shows in a perfect way the differences between the lives of the kid and the grandmother, in that sequence the grandmother want to please her kid so she will bring for eat whatever the kid wants. As a fast food kid, hamburgers, pizza and Kentucky chicken are the kid's choices, certainly his grandmother will not find any of those stuff but she does understand his grandson when he says Kentucky chicken so she buys a real chicken, cooks it so the kid makes a tantrum (this is not Kentucky chicken!). We watch different worlds and so different persons, but the kid will change, he will see how his grandmother work hard, he will learn to value. But not only his grandma will change him but also he will receive some lessons from other people of the village, everything will make that change his way to act with people, he doesn't have to say "I'm sorry" more than once.

And if there's one truly beautiful moment, that almost made me cry, is when the kid fins what his grandma put together with his portable video game. This whole situation resumes the film, in the beginning the kid is not really concern of being in the village since he is just playing and playing but soon the battery is over. He took from his grandma to get new batteries but he could not find the necessary type of batteries. Once he is aware about the effort that his grandma always does, both pass through a store that sells all types of batteries and that for the kid is practically nothing. There's a girl who invites to play the kid, he really likes her so when the girl ask him he is very happy and he will bring all of his toys except his portable video game for obvious reasons. Once he is on his way to see the girl he realizes that his grandmother warp the video game and of course he is kind of angry because he tell her before that he will not bring the video game, he just can't see why his grandma did that. But during his journey everything goes wrong but he will learn something really valuable to end finally realizing that his grandma put money together with the video game and he cries. Certainly the love of a grandmother is unique, The Way Home is dedicated to all the grandmothers, one of my two grandmas has already watched the film and she loved it. Watch this one and show it to everyone you know, your girlfriend will love it. A beautiful film!

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