Film Blog: Mother and Poetry
By Iggy Cortez
A still from Lee Chang-Dong
More often than not, elderly women are relegated to the margins of international cinema, fulfilling the subsidiary roles such as the protagonists’ mother, the wisecracking sidekicks or mystical sages that guide a film’s hero. Rarely are they allowed to become the protagonists of their own narratives. However, the success of two critically lauded South Korean films in which an elderly woman is the sole protagonist has created an opportunity to start thinking about films that engage with aging alongside the development of a national cinema that shows no signs of slowing down.
