Tags : Cinelogue

While phrases like ‘raise awareness’ and ‘challenge’ are thrown around in documentary film all the time, this film, in succeeding to get a man released from prison, seems to cheapen those terms as used in relation to most other examples in the field. The story told here, through interviews, reconstructions and a subdued but ominous Philip Glass score, is of Randall Adams’ imprisonment for the murder of Dallas County police officer Robert W. Wood in 1976.

Bong Joon-ho goes to great lengths, including the aforementioned scenes, to express the intimacy, the oneness, of mother and son. The profundity of which may be fathomed in the fact of sleeping together; it is even, and most strongly, to be found emanating from her face. Kim Hye-ja dominates this character, and by extension the entire film, with her face—and especially her eyes—more than anything else.