Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

MartinHafer A few years ago, this film was completely restored and has recently become a classic to many people. Because of this, I expected a lot from the film. Imagine the surprise when I saw it...and I felt like the film was just chock full of plot problems.The story is set in the household of a nice-guy music teacher. He's very devoted to his family...and that's much of the reason so much of the movie doesn't make sense. You see, after clearly establishing in the film that he's a very nice guy, the family gets a crazy manipulative maid and she seduces him. Then, after she becomes pregnant, she falls down the steps and she loses her baby. It gets REALLY crazy now...she then murders one of his children in front of the family and they do NOT call the police or throw her out because the wife and husband are worried the publicity will cause him to lose his job!!! Then, through the remainder of the film, she torments and threatens the family repeatedly. Then, after a crazy ending, you find out it's all a dream and the guy (who WAS dead) then lectures the audience about affairs!!So what didn't I like? Well a lot of it was just how unbelievable the plot became. A film might get the audience to suspend disbelief once...but not again and again and again...which you have to do here. Also, what makes it worse is that early in the film you see rat poison and again and again the film telegraphs that this will be instrumental to the film. Why is this a classic? Perhaps because the acting is good and the plot salacious. But it lacks believability and really annoyed me because of that, the poison and the cop-out ending. Not a classic in my mind.

jukangliwayway Well what I didn't expect was that this seemingly average film with all it's simple elements or limitations has managed to turn it into something complex and with thrilling unpredictability. I was shocked - to actually see this masterpiece hiding in obscurity, and enjoy it immensely. Everything about it screams classic, and yet it's techniques are even better than most modern movies. The director is a genius. The story itself, instead of sticking to the formula of its genre, has written a convoluted story of human morality, obsessive love, betrayal in such a way that you really can't predict what will happen; and made it so thrilling that you find yourself on the edge of your seat, waiting for the scene to unfold. What also made this film more interesting is that the villain is a female sexual predator with a seemingly unstable personality - which defies how Korean women at that time should act in society. This antagonist gets what she wants and she took control and made everyone around her submissive to her wishes. I wouldn't expound on the plot/story anymore. You just have to watch it.The acting is great. One of the best from any cast I've seen. Even the children were so damn effective (esp the boy). The housemaid, hands down, is the star of this movie. She is so freaky and terrifying, but still managed to evoke my sympathy. The couple did great too. Each one of them are worthy of praise because if handled sloppily, their characters will lose something. Whether they'll lose the sympathy from the audience, or credibility. Superior acting. (I've read that the actress who played the housemaid has been so effective that women hated her so much that movie producers were hesitant to cast her in other projects. Her career went to a screeching halt. Pity.)My favorite aspect of this movie is its camera works. Wow. I really love it. It reminded me of Hitchcock, with its playful camera angles, & uncommon camera movements, zooming in and out from one room to another in a fluid technique. Every shot has a purpose, even the littlest, seemingly random things in the house helped in adding to the sinister feel of the movie. Add in the piano sounds properly injected in scenes, the result is an ominous, creepy mood all throughout. The editing is very clean and seamless. I really like that fade out-fade in transition of scenes. Unlike the movies nowadays with their lazy editing.This film has been restored and the result was great with sharp black & white photography, and even with those scenes that are patchy/blurry, the product is magnificent. The lighting is great. Again, this is a superior movie, can't stress that enough. :)The Verdict:This is a great film. So simple and yet so complicated. It teaches you that love should be taken seriously and treated responsibly, and that one mistake, whether it's intentional or not, could turn your world upside down. A brilliant, timeless masterpiece that must have been controversial during its time, and still relevant in this modern age.

Drago_Head_Tilt A piano and music teacher (Kim Jin-Kyu) and his seamstress wife (Ju Jeung-Ryu) are busy being middle-class and upwardly mobile, renovating a second home and buying all the new material goods (including a TV set). Enter into this already somewhat dysfunctional setting a simple-minded housemaid (Lee Eun-Shim) with her eyes on him. One act of infidelity and a myriad stupid reactions to it fueled by desperate, stifling adherence to social conventions results in a bizarre, absurdist psychodrama that must have packed quite a punch at the time. Thanks to a restored DVD print remastered by the World Cinema Foundation (thanks Martin Scorsese), modern audiences can now enjoy this unique cult gem (and do double-takes at the fourth-wall-breaking coda). With Um Aing-Ran and Seong Ei-Ahn (later a very famous actor) as the young boy. The great b/w photography is by Kim Deok-Jin. Director Kim (apparently quite the auteur, and here's hoping for more of his works are re-released soon) more-or-less remade the same story twice (in 1970 and 1982), and 2010 saw an official remake.Movie reviews at: spinegrinderweb.com

mlovmo-2 I bought this film on NTSC-VHS format from an online Korean business called koreapop.com. The copy evidently had been put together from two or three diffrent copies of the film, since some parts of the film looked like they were in better shape than others, and also there were English subtitles in some parts, but not most others. (Note that I bought this film knowing that it would be in Korean, with no subtitles).This movie features what is probably the first scene in cinematic history where a woman rapes a man- a whole 25 years before Isabella Rosellini raped Kyle McCallahan in "Blue Velvet"! As a Korean movie, it's story challenges traditional Korean propriety. The housemaid character is a castrating hose-beast: Not exactly the kind of Korean woman portrayed in most Korean movies made then or now. Director Kim Kiyoung tends to turn the conventional Korean-movie plotline on its head in this movie, since there is no real "happy-ending", in fact, things just seem to get worse and worse. The only other Korean movie similar to it in this sense, is the recently released "Kilimanjaro" (also an EXCELLENT film). This movie is indeed a Korean-movie classic. It's just too bad that the remaining copies of such classic Korean films are not given the best of care, since many, like this one, are in fairly rough shape. I hope that the Koreans will take more pride in their cinematic history and prepare for better archival storage and restoration of their nation's film legacy.