Moebius

2013 family drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: After a wife discovers that her husband's been cheating on her, she does what most women would do and attempts to castrate him. After failing, she decides to castrate her son instead. After all, she did catch the kid masturbating earlier. Then, a bunch of other stuff happens which I can't really talk about.

This was mentioned by a friend of mine named Eric. I'm not even sure it was recommended, and due to its taboo subject matter--a bit of incest, castration, dick eating--I'm not entirely sure I'd feel comfortable recommending it to anybody I know with the exception of my mother-in-law. That would be hilarious.

The drama's twists and turns themselves are almost enough to keep my interest, but South Korean provocateur Kim Ki Duk has some other tricks. Most notably, this movie has no dialogue at all. With the exception of about five minutes of screen time, there are only four characters--two of them played by the same woman, the mesmerizingly attractive Eun-Woo Lee. And none of them have a single line of dialogue. Everything is unspoken. And I think that does two things here. First, it makes the experience a very cold one. The divides between the characters seem even wider because they don't communicate, and it's enough to almost make the viewer uncomfortable even when they're not cutting off penises and eating them. Second, it really forces the viewer to focus on what's happening. So much of what is going on requires the interpretations of the audience, and without dialogue, you're forced to closely examine a lot of stuff that you wouldn't otherwise want to examine. It makes for a unique experience.

If you're very very adventurous, you might want to check this out. I think going in with a rudimentary background on Buddhism might help as this seems to be a parable about the First Noble Truth, the one about how pleasure and pain both bring suffering. The way that's illustrated here might be my favorite sex scene of the year, by the way.