“You’ve never seen an apple before. Not even once. To really know what an apple is… to be interested in it, to understand it, to converse with it, is really seeing it. Gazing at it for a while and observing its shadow… feeling its every curve, turning it around, taking a bite out of it, imagining the sunlight absorbed in it… That is really seeing it.” – Poetry teacher, Kim Yongtak
The significance of seeing the world in a meaningful way is at the heart of Lee Chang-dong’s gentle, yet devastatingly humanistic film, Poetry. The masterwork grasps a certain intangibility of life; a certain meaning of existence that can only be seen if, coincidentally, one tries to understand the film like a poem. In the same way that we’ll never “see” an apple until we try to “understand” it, we’ll never truly see a tree, hear a bird sing, or come to fathom, in any meaningful way, the existence of another human being until we really try. Mija, the film’s protagonist, is a 66-year old raising her teenage grandson, Wook, in a tiny, cluttered apartment in an unnamed South Korean city. The film begins with her being diagnosed as an Alzheimer’s patient. With the onset of this disease, her life begins to lose meaning: words fade from her vocabulary, connections with the material word diminish, and people don’t seem to make much sense to her. Considering this, her pursuit to study poetry is a way to imbue her life with new meaning. And while this pursuit begins as a pastime, it soon transforms into a passion and, finally, becomes a means of transcendence; a means of seeing the world and the people close to her in a way that could only be described as beautiful, genuine and poetic. For while Mija does not initially understand the death of the young girl, Agnes, through poetry, she is able to see it clearly.
Lee begins the film with a mesmerizing image of rushing water in a river stream. What will follow is the root all conflict in Poetry: a lack of empathy – or understanding – of another human being; something that Mija will desperately try to amend. Gazing at the stream, we share the same thought with a young child on the riverbank nearby: is there something in the water? What slowly emerges into view is the corpse of a young girl. Her name is Agnes; and as revealed later through her diary, she accused six classmates of having serially raped her. One of these classmates is Wook. While quiet and calm, this sequence reveals a heartbreaking truth; a certain poetic clarity to the reason and rhyme behind Agnes’ death. Her corpse, drifting in the river, seems to say that her death was anything but tragic for those who caused it. The fact that her body was tossed away, and the indifferent, lifeless way in which it floats along the river is symbolic of the very indifference she was killed with. In this sense, while the extended length of this sequence allows the viewer to meditate over, and grasp the implications of Agnes’ death, it also sets the stage for understanding the apathy associated with it; an apathy that Mija – and the viewer - will ultimately understand through poetry. For to the boys who threw her into this river, killing her was not an incident that struck a moral chord; it was not something that they felt the need to repent, but rather something they actively sought to escape.
We first see this indifference take form in the way in which Wook, and the fathers of the accused, handle Agnes’ death. And as Mija tries to comprehend this tragic situation, we too learn from her increasingly poetic view of the world. For instance, one afternoon, a father of the accused contacts Mija and sweeps her off to an afternoon meeting at a restaurant with the rest of the fathers. Together, they have decided – with the school’s blessing – to give the dead girl’s mother a large sum of cash as a way of maintaining her silence on the matter. This is, by all means, a bribe in the simplest of definitions. “What’s done is done,” one of the fathers expresses. Another orders a round of beers and pours Mija a glass: “Ladies first,” he says. One of the fathers goes on to add, “Although I feel sorry for the dead girl, now’s the time for us to worry about our own boys.” Mija’s face is empty as she sits wordlessly, learning for the first time what Wook has done. What does all of this mean for Agnes and her family? There is something inhumane in the way in which these fathers are shown casually drinking beer, discussing rape, murder, and sums of money as if it were all a part of some business transaction. Mija drifts outside the restuarant, opens her little notebook and begins writing: “Blood... a flower as red as blood.” As Mija learns more about poetry, she eventually comes to understand and explain that “red flowers represent pain.” She doesn’t fully grasp the implications of Agnes’ death just yet, but she knows that there is great pain involved; a pain that is symbolic in the flower outside the restuarant, but absent from the meeting taking place inside. It is a pain that is, essentially, being brushed under the rug instead of being seen and handled for it really is by all those involved.
This apathy is not only isolated to the parents of these boys; it bleeds into the way in which Wook, and his friends, deal with the situation. Throughout most, if not all of the film, Wook is seen carrying on with his life pretending as if nothing has happened. Before school in the morning, he demands his grandmother to make him breakfast. He sits at the dining table surfing through the channels on his television until he reaches a show that makes him laugh. Evidently, there is only one thought that comes to Mija’s mind as she cooks and watches her grandson: how could someone, after being the cause of so much tragedy, laugh in such a carefree manner? Additionally, Wook and his friends are seen in an arcade, joyfully playing videogames and ignoring the facts of their reality. And when Mija asks him the most important question of the film – “Why did you do it?” – he has only silence to offer. From this point, it becomes clear that Lee is using Mija – and her poetic aspirations - as means to uncover a certain truth behind the death of Agnes that Wook, his friends, and their parents are all missing. Wishing to understand the life of this poor girl like no one else in the film, she visits her funeral. Here, she steals a photograph of Agnes, goes home and leaves it on her dining table for Wook to see in the mornings. For if he had been pretending like nothing happened, Mija tries to make sure that he remembers the smiling face of the girl he violated. Nevertheless, it seems to barely affect him. And for Mija, her plight to understand Agnes and to repair the damage of her death will only be fully realized once she truly begins to understand poetry and how to see the world in a meaningful way.
In this regard, Lee includes two incredibly poignant sub-plots in Poetry: one highlighting the progression of Mija’s poetry class, and another focusing on her employment with the handicapped retiree, Mr. Kang. It is what she learns through this poetry class that will allow her to not only see Kang for who he really is, but also see Agnes, and her death, for it was most meaningful about them. For instance, in trying to reveal to both Agnes, and the viewer, the importance of truly understanding the existence of another human being, Lee includes segments of Mija’s poetry class that are centered around the theme of “The Most Beautiful Moment of My Life”. In these segments, we are introduced to Mija’s classmates and what they believe to be the most beautiful moment in their lives. Through these emotionally devastating confessions, Lee breathes life into otherwise non-descript characters, allowing both Mija, and the viewer to truly “see” these people. One woman discusses bittersweet memories of teaching her grandmother to sing, another reveals the joy of giving birth:
“I never experienced such pain before in my life. [But] amidst the pain, my baby was born. And I felt something slipping out... this fiery hot mass like the sun. The moment the baby burst into its first cry was the most beautiful, most amazing, and emotional moment for me.”
Lee even manages humanize a man who seems to characterize the type of qualities that would normally be ignored or overlooked, thus creating empathy through poetry: “I don’t have any beautiful memories. I’m sorry. For 20 years I lived in a basement room. Six years ago, I finally leased an apartment in this town which had a low deposit and monthly rent. So I moved here. I guess that was my most beautiful moment. I spread eagle on the floor… feeling that I owned the world.”
The joy this man expresses in describing this moment is enough for us to connect with him meaningfully. In this sense, taking the time to learn such facts about seemingly insignificant characters; to understand where their joys and sorrows stem from allow both Mija, and the viewer, to learn more about these people than any detailed biography could ever teach. For these are not just the happiest moments in their lives, these are moments of such intense emotion that they, alone, are potent enough to tell us a great deal about the existence of these individuals. It is from this class that Mija is able to learn to not just see Kang as her employer, but as a human being with just as many troubles as her. And it is also through this class that she is finally able to understand the significance of Agnes’ death.
While at first, Mija sees herself only as Mr. Kang’s nurse and house-keeper, she eventually takes the time to understand him and see him clearly for who he truly is – a realization that this linked with Agnes. Kang is a gruff, miserly stroke-survivor who Mija bathes, dresses and feeds. One day, Kang asks Mija to help him take a pill. Moments later, while bathing him, Mija realizes that this pill was Viagra. He pleads with her, “Please, before I die. I wanna do it just for once. I don’t need anything else. Just for once… I want to be a man. It’s my wish.” Mija looks at him with disgust and leaves. Days later, however, she travels to the roadside from where Agnes was thrown to her death – it is here where disillusionment begins to clear the fog inhibiting her perception of the world. As she watches the river flowing below, Mija's hat falls into the water where Agnes had drowned. At this moment, she develops a deep yearning to connect with the young girl. And, perhaps, it is this perceived bond with Agnes, engendered through “feeling”, that seems to compel Mija to return to Kang’s flat. Arriving there, she feeds him a pill of Viagra, gets him into the bathtub and has sex with him. Considering this, it seems as though her heightened empathy for Agnes spurs her to also experience sexual exploitation in order to gain a greater understanding, or some form of compensation, for Agnes’ suffering. For by having sex with Kang, Mija accepts and understands his desire, his loneliness and defiles her own body like Agnes had.
And so, through poetry, or perhaps through what poetry entails – trying to understand something in a meaningful way – is what, ultimately, brings Mija to amend Agnes’ death. By trying to understand Agnes and her pain, Mija comes to accept it as her own and, in a way, accepts the life of the girl as her own as well. Considering this, the one poem that Mija leaves the world with is written on behalf of Agnes. Mija writes “Agnes’ Song” with a voice the girl would have, presumably, wanted to leave behind. She has realized that for Agnes’ family, no large sum of money could ever fill the void left by their daughter’s death. And while everyone else in the film sees Agnes as just as another apple – never truly seeing her – Mija tries to understand her, her family, and her death until she can feel almost the same pain that they all must have. Thus, the poem that she writes is both for Agnes and her family. And upon hearing the poem voiced over various locations throughout this unnamed city, Mija’s voice changes into Agnes’, beautifully indicating that their destinies are overlapping, becoming one through poetry

Agnes’ Song

How is it over there?
How lonely is it?
Is it still glowing red at sunset?
Are the birds still singing on the way to the forest?
Can you receive the letter I dared not send?
Can I convey… the confession I dared not make?
Will time pass and roses fade?
Now it's time to say goodbye
Like the wind that lingers and then goes, just like shadows
To promises that never came, to the love sealed till the end.

To the grass kissing my weary ankles
And to the tiny footsteps following me
It's time to say goodbye
Now as darkness falls
Will a candle be lit again?
Here I pray… nobody shall cry… and for you to know… how deeply I loved you
The long wait in the middle of a hot summer day
An old path resembling my father's face
Even the lonesome wild flower shyly turning away
How deeply I loved
How my heart fluttered at hearing faint song
I bless you
Before crossing the black river
With my soul's last breath
I am beginning to dream… a bright sunny morning… again I awake blinded by the light… and meet you… standing by me.