Poetry: Destroyed by Bad Editing

“Poetry,” the new film from South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong, should have been wonderful, but it is destroyed by a terrible editing job. Almost every scene is five times longer than necessary, creating a maddening feeling of languor, and extraneous material also clouds the focus of the film. There is a masterful, melancholy film somewhere deep inside the 100 or so hours that Mr. Lee shot for this project. But the editor had no idea how to whittle down the footage to find that film.

Bad editing is so common nowadays. Yet prominent critics never complain about it. We will only get better editing if we start demanding it. If critics remain silent, filmmakers will never know that there is a problem. This gives me a feeling of doom because there is no sign that top critics have noticed all the weak editing on movie screens today.

“Poetry” tells the story of a lower-middle-class, semi-educated grandmother who’s been discarded by just about everybody in her life. Her teenage grandson has been left in her care in a tiny one-bedroom apartment for reasons that aren’t explained. She tries to provide parenting, but the boy basically ignores her – just like everyone else does. Yun Jeong-hie, who was a big star in the 1970s, plays the grandmother in a gentle, slightly over-sweet way.

This lonely old woman has two main things going on in her life. She is taking a poetry class for the first time, trying to see life in new ways so that she can write her first poem. She has also just received news that her self-absorbed grandson has committed a horrific crime. She is given the opportunity to sweep the crime under the rug if she can come up with a huge sum of money. Even if she does decide to do this, there is the problem of coming up with the money. She is juggling several huge dilemmas when what she really wants to do is write a poem about birds, trees and flowers. One scene captures her denial particularly well. When she is first told about the crime, she goes into something like catatonic shock. Then she silently gets up right in the middle of the meeting when people are speaking, walks outside, and starts marveling at the flowers.

Struggles with denial, aging, loneliness, grand-parenting, and learning to see life in new ways toward the end of one’s life is terrific subject matter. But it’s almost too much. When a movie is in so many places, it’s especially urgent that the editor know what he’s doing. Sadly, that was not the case here. What we end up with is something like a rough draft of a masterful film, more than a finished product. Maybe in 10 years a brash young filmmaker can remake this film and do a better job. This is one film that is worth remaking.