[yasr_overall_rating]
While in medieval Korea, a young girl sets out to revenge the betrayal and the death of her mother. But therefore she must face one of the most powerful men and warriors of the Goryo Dynasty.
Hong-ee (Kim Go-eun) is an eighteen year-old innocent mischief girl with porcelain skin, curious dark eyes and lightsome movements of a bobcat. She lives a savage life with her foster mother, Seol-rang (Jeon Do-yeon) and a little brother, and practices marital arts to become a sword master, so one day she can find the assassin who killed her real parents. One sunny morning she accomplishes an amazing touchless leap over her favorite tall-as-a-bamboo sunflower, covers her face, and runs to the town square uninvited to participate in a public fight with the best tramp mercenary. There she catches the eye of a general, Yoo-baek (Lee Byung-hun), who admits her maneuvers are identical to the flows of a woman he once loved. This pictorial violent dance takes him back in time to when a beautiful woman threatened to cut his young throat with a sword. “Hong-yi will kill both of us” says a woman.
“Memories of the Sword” is an exquisite and engaging fable and although it takes time to get the plot and character’s intentions, it opens itself like a slow-mo rose blossom. Director and writer Park Heung-shik develops his narration in an elegant insinuating manner, slowly revealing the beauty of each petal. In the beginning, he tells us that the story takes place in the Goryeo era, when tea, riot and swords dominated. Thus, the boiling tea water fades into the rain and alluring yet vicious battles, a wave of a fan bridges different times, a fog and bamboo anticipates a teacher with a long white beard, a blood stream reveals colorless hieroglyphs painted by a blind and hurt woman. Once the audience gets it out of its head and opens its heart as wide as the eyes, the journey really begins and suddenly we find ourselves impatiently anticipating a love scene – so delicate – one might hold his breath and pray the storyteller is not going to cut it now or suddenly start thinking what a trap it could be to please our egos with self-consciousness, lies and arrogance, how hard it is to forgive our loved ones and how we inspire our children to live their lives.
Undoubtful, oriental filmmakers are impervious masters of subtle and indirect emotional revelations. Their characters’ disapprovals are quiet and build so deep – when they reach the bottom – there is no room for negotiations. In the consciousness of a western individual, they act as an Old Testament God – merciless and using others for the sake of revenge or to soothe their pain, whether these “others” are innocent children or loved ones. Hence, the villain, in a proclaimed cult, implements a 15 year plan that involves his opponent (Dae-su) in a sexual affair with Dae-su’s once lost daughter and later reveals the truth to both of them. Ki-duk Kim’s “Bad Guy” outcast falls in love with a virginal girl from a wealthy family and forces her to become a prostitute to prove the world is atrocious and full of pain. In “Memories Of the Sword,” a mother lies to her child and cripples her to retribute the one’s father and the love of her life in a memory of an old crime.
There is an opinion that a decision for a problem could never be found at the same place where the problem is. Although “Memories of the Sword” is not an easy watch, it appeals to one the most important part of our lives – human relationships. Thereby, the unusual characters, their flaws and talents might be an additional source for us to take a look at our problems through a different angle and, probably, become a little bit better.
Available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital HD January 12th
