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Directed by Joon
ho Bong
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Mother
There
are some tricks that a good actor or actress learns early on; the problem is
that they are often forgotten when the actor gets a role. One of them is always to fight against
revealing emotion; in other words to let the plot carry the story. Try and minimize your own angst, your
own happiness as the plot reveals them.
Few American actors have this; one that comes to mind is Meryl Streep, who always holds something back unless she is
deliberately letting it all out.
On the other hand, Mark Ruffalo always lets
us know everything that he’s thinking; we read him like an open book. What
leads to these notes is the performance of a South Korean actress named Kim Hye-ja, who plays the mother in Bong Joon-ho’s
film “Mother.”
Usually photograped from the front in closeup, so her face is always revealed, she makes her
chiseled features stand for every emotion she’s required to face in
“Mother.” In the film
she runs a small apothecary shop and is also an unlicensed acupuncturist.
She
lives with her 20-something-year-old son, who is, there is no other word for
it, a retard. He has the mind of
a six-year-old. The two of them
sleep together on a mat, she feeds him his meals and
tries to keep him safe. |