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100Daring in the ways only quiet, unhurried but finally haunting films have the courage to be. A character study of remarkable subtlety joined to a carefully worked-out plot that fearlessly explores big issues like beauty, truth and mortality, it marks the further emergence of Korean writer-director Lee Chang-dong.
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100Beauty comes to us unexpectedly. That's the message of Poetry, a Korean movie about an aging housemaid that turns out to be one of the best films of the year.
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Apr 7, 2011100A heartrending film, Lee's Poetry is indeed a work of art.
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100Yun's performance is remarkable. The journey Mija takes is painful and hard and - for us, watching - sublime.
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100This is a movie whose power comes from the alignment both of Mija's discovery with ours and of a tremendous writer and director with his star.
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100Facing a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, the older woman enrolls in a poetry class, desperate to find the words to describe beauty before language fails her. She does even better: She herself becomes a kind of poem about what it means to really see the world.
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100The importance of seeing, seeing the world deeply, is at the heart of this quietly devastating, humanistic work from the South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong.
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100A perfectly paced and performed character study of a woman raising a child on her own who must contend with a heinous act of violence.
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91It may go without saying that Poetry adopts a lyrical tone, but this forms the crux of its appeal. In this case, the title says it all.
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90Yun's performance is genuinely beautiful, a haunting expression of life, of its disappointments and its possibilities, rendered in a way that befits the title.
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88Lee doesn't make exploitation films, and he doesn't find conventional answers. He is puzzled by the mysteries of inexplicable behavior.
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83Whenever all the pieces are in place, though, Lee reverts to the kind of storytelling he does best.
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80The premise of this South Korean import may call to mind that of another, Bong Joon-ho's recent suspense film "Mother," but Poetry is another bird entirely: true to the title, writer-director Lee Chang-dong is principally concerned with rendering emotions that seem inexpressible.
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80Yun is quite simply spectacular as a woman who holds steadfastly on to her dignity and empathy, even in the face of unspeakable tragedy.
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80Calmer and less shattering than his masterly psychodrama "Secret Sunshine" (2007), Poetry is a deceptively gentle tale with a tender ache at its center, as well as a performance from Yun Jung-hee that lingers long in the memory.
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75Yun, a veteran Korean actress, gives a splendidly layered performance.
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75Poetry, which rightfully won the best-screenplay prize at Cannes, never resorts to exploitation. Under Lee's guidence, it is a mature film for mature audiences.
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Feb 7, 201170Not everyone will wax lyrical about this enigmatic and troubling film, which is also Chan-dong's most slow-moving one. But those with an eye for reading between the lines can find layers of meaning.
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70It comes together neatly, perhaps too neatly to be … poetry. But it's not prosaic, either. It has a lucid grace.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 4 out of 6
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Mixed: 0 out of 6
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Negative: 2 out of 6
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Boring, lacking anything that could intrigue or engage me. Stopped it mid-way. Unclear how this movie was rated positively by twenty five people.