"Film purposefully misleads us into thinking Ding Dong, the Retard, was innocent of murdering the girl, then flips on us later. That's not a "twist" but mere false information."
I could not agree more. If we are going by what information we are provided in the film (which is the point in watching films), the blood following the hit and run could have been Jin's or Joon's, and Joon could have been the one to kick off the car mirror. Adversely, we can take that none of it even happened, or it all happened even differently than what we were shown. Or you could deduce even more ambiguity; that the mother did not kill the junk collecter and Joon never even saw the girl (following the film's logic one could also assume everything we were shown was false, thus defeating the purpose of a story all together...). It's hack film making at it's worst. I was disappointed as I like some of the director's previous works (notably Memories of Murder). It has nothing to do with pace, but story telling. Added to this is the mother's sudden windfall when she initially cannot even afford the lawyer, and the picture on Jae Moon's cell phone of a man she never met, mar the direction even further. Excellent performances and beautiful use of mise en scene ruined by a shoddy story. Is there truly no one else that feels this way?
"I promise to start growin' dope again and get my life back on track."
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jamasian_man
15 years ago
Nope. I loved every minute of it. You can't trust what the director shows you sometime. That is how twists are formed. The audience does not see something at the beginning of the film because it is pulled over their eyes and foreshadowed, only to be shown later.
You go back and watch the film again and it all makes sense. This is why the son says he did do it, until his mother tells him that he didn't. There is a theme of repressed memories with the acupuncture on the bus and the attempted poisoning when he was 5.
Ah-Jung met the junk collector already once before, and she took a picture of him. She was gonna have sex with him again, (junk collector fails to tell this part obviously) because he had a place to lay down and had rice with him.
The son represses his memory of killing the girl and is later told that JP did it, and so accepts it. But at the end scene where he is eating with his mother he remembers why the body is left on the roof, and his mother keeps quiet about it.
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Zerose
14 years ago
He didn't repress any of his memories. Some of his cognitive skills are impaired. When we absorb what we see, our memory bank registers it while relaying a message to our consciousness at same time, which enables us to recall it any time we want. In his case, he absorbs what he sees, his memory bank registers but doesn't consistently let his consciousness know. He can't recall it at will because he (the conscious) simply isn't aware of it in the first place.
Memories enter his conscious randomly when his memory bank and his conscious connect, hence his recollection of the poison incident.
I'm relying on what I know about an actual person who has a similar disability so Joon might have a different disorder. If it's the correct disorder, then I thought the film portrays this disability quite well, even though it does leave out a common effect of the disorder.
This disorder wouldn't allow Joon to remember his way round (such as going home from Manhattan to his home at night). People with this disorder tend to have a rigidly fixed physical routine, otherwise they will lose their way.
More than you would want to know, I bet!
But at the end scene where he is eating with his mother he remembers why the body is left on the roof, and his mother keeps quiet about it.
He didn't remember. He was speculating why the body was left up there. He didn't realise he was describing his own reasoning for putting her up there.
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