Poetry 2011

Yang Mi-ja is a 66-year-old grandmother living on government welfare, balancing a quiet, fragile existence with the responsibility of caring for an elderly, stroke-stricken man and supervising her ill‑mannered, 16-year-old grandson, Jong-wook, whose mother lives in Busan. The film opens with a haunting river scene: children play on the bank while the body of a girl in a school uniform drifts by, a memory that will echo through Mi-ja’s days. As she navigates her own fading memory and the pressures of poverty, Mi-ja’s world begins to intersect with a crisis she never expected to face, one that tests loyalty, morality, and the price of truth.

A visit to the hospital reveals Mi-ja’s growing forgetfulness and a diagnosis that hints at early stage Alzheimer’s. The doctor urges caution and perhaps a deeper look from a specialist, but the moment also places her in a state of quiet vulnerability. On the street outside, she witnesses a woman overwhelmed by grief, her 16-year-old daughter having drowned, a scene that shadows Mi-ja’s own sense of vulnerability and aging. Back at home, Mi-ja’s daily life is intimate and demanding: she supports the wealthy, ailing man she cares for, and she shoulders the burdens of Jong-wook’s unruly adolescence while his divorced mother remains distant. When Mi-ja asks Jong-wook about the drowned classmate, his evasive response underscores a widening chasm between generations and a sense that the truth about the girl’s fate may be harder to face than he can bear.

A chance to reinvent herself arrives when Mi-ja notices a poster for a poetry class at a local community center. Motivated by a simple classroom assignment—to compose one poem by the month’s end—she begins to see the world with a poet’s eye. Under her teacher’s guidance, she starts keeping notes about what she sees, gravitating toward imagery of flowers and the ordinary beauty of daily life. The new project offers Mi-ja a form of solace and a way to express memories she struggles to articulate, a bridge between her fading memory and a present that feels increasingly elusive.

Meanwhile, Jong-wook’s nights take on a more troubling texture. He invites five of his schoolmates over to their home at odd hours, and Mi-ja, ever trying to be a gracious grandparent, offers snacks and warmth before they vanish into Jong-wook’s private space. A later confrontation with one of the boys’ fathers reveals a far darker truth: the group has repeatedly raped a girl named Agnes over the past six months. The discovery is not shared with most of the school or the wider community, but the mothers and fathers fear retaliation and scandal, and they propose a settlement of 30 million won to Agnes’s widowed mother to avert a police inquiry. Mi-ja, who cannot afford her five-million-won share, is pressured to obtain the money from her daughter, Jong-wook’s mother, creating a painful knot of obligation and secrecy. The gravity of the situation is compounded by Mi-ja’s own fragile health: she is once again diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and she remains reticent about the full truth of what she has heard, quietly choosing to shield her family rather than reveal the uglier details of the crime.

As Mi-ja tries to navigate these pressures, she becomes a regular at the local poetry readings, where she encounters a brash man who reads luminous poetry only to follow it with crude sexual jokes that offend her. An amateur poet explains to Mi-ja that this man is a policeman with a good heart, recently reassigned from Seoul after exposing corruption within its police force. The tension between beauty and bluntness, between craft and crude behavior, mirrors Mi-ja’s own struggle to maintain dignity while the world around her grows more complicated.

A painful boundary is crossed when Mi-ja, after a sexual advance from the elderly man she cares for, temporarily quits her job. She eventually returns, compelled by a memory—the journey to the river where Agnes jumped, a hat slipping into the water, and a walk down to the riverbank where she writes in the rain. After this visit, she allows herself to be intimate with the elderly man again, but she does so with an emotion that feels strangely absent, as if the act is a performance for a memory rather than a connection in the moment.

A reporter begins to press Mi-ja for details about the settlement and the granddaughter’s mother’s willingness to accept the money. Mi-ja’s casual answers hint at more truth than she intends to reveal, and the interview leaves her unsettled as she realizes how easily her words might be weaponized. She later repeats what she told the reporter to the fathers, who react with a mixture of disappointment and resignation.

Mi-ja is then sent to the countryside to persuade Agnes’s mother to accept the settlement. In the fields, she finds the mother and a quiet, ordinary life that briefly distracts Mi-ja from her task. She talks at length about the weather, flowers, trees, and fruit, and for a moment forgets the urgent purpose of her visit. She turns away, embarrassed by the memory of her mission, and continues on her way, leaving the crucial negotiation unresolved. The encounter marks a turning point in Mi-ja’s conscience, exposing the gap between the social pressure to settle and the moral weight of failing to confront the truth.

Back at the poetry readings, Mi-ja sits outside afterward, crying quietly. A policeman who had attended the reading notices her distress and asks why she cries; she remains reticent, slipping away and making a phone call that signals she is trying to connect with someone who might help her navigate the storm within. When she returns home, she takes out a photo of Agnes—the image she gathered at the memorial service—and places it on the table so her grandson will see it.

In the days that follow, Mi-ja faces the reality that she cannot contribute her portion of the settlement. Agnes’s mother, who previously seemed bound to the arrangement, accepts the revised terms and the compromise that will end the case. Mi-ja summons the elderly man and asks for the money she needs, deliberately withholding the reason. He pays her, and with the funds now secured, she phones her daughter to come home and issues simple, practical orders: Jong-wook should bathe and trim his nails. That night, the same crude policeman and his partner come to take Jong-wook away, and Mi-ja does not protest. The sense of complicity in an entire system of oversight and silence becomes more pronounced, even as the family’s immediate needs are met.

The film closes with a quiet, haunting image: the poetry teacher discovers a bouquet on the podium beside Mi-ja’s poem, “Agnes’s Song,” but Mi-ja herself is absent from the room. Her daughter returns to an empty home and calls Mi-ja’s phone, receiving no answer. The teacher begins to read Mi-ja’s poem aloud to the class, while Mi-ja’s voice enters in a reflective, almost ethereal narration. Then Agnes’s own voice takes over midway through, following her from the science lab where she was assaulted, to the bus, and finally to the bridge where she would leap. Agnes turns toward the camera with a half-smile, and the film ends on an ambiguous, unresolved note about Mi-ja’s fate and the truth of what has been witnessed, leaving the audience to ponder the cost of memory, silence, and the moral weight of communal complicity.