Analysis on Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Mother (2009)’
Whenever I see Bong Joon Ho’s work, I tend to notice a very specific and repeated theme of it. In his films, almost all of his protagonists, even antagonists, who’s in a big trouble seems not so special and normal at first glance.
‘Normal’ as in sense of what the society approves, and it even makes people wonder if there are a little nod to the question that the society, the everyday lives, which has a ‘normal’ regulations and laws that were socially agreed, is, in fact rotten inside in real life? And we don’t acknowledge it? That kind of question gains its weight, because at some point, it becomes clear that these everyday people are driven to their limits beyond their power as the story continues.
Regardless of what they may have believed in, or what they were, after the story ends, we know they could never be back to their normal selves again. And even then, the world, the ‘normal’ society continues to run peacefully as if nothing happened. It makes the audience wonder if this calm surface of a reality that we are now experiencing and standing on, has that same madness, that same history under it as we are now speaking.
This is a crucial factor, or at least a very repeated pattern in Bong’s work. It’s as if he’s saying to us, ‘What we are, or what we have been as a human, seems normal, but deep down there is a primitive madness that we all have and can’t get rid of.’ That madness, which is so well hidden, that no one took notice until one’s faith drove them to the maximum, is the scariest part of his films.
One of my favorite Bong’s film, Mother, is a very good example of this aspect. At first, the ‘Mother’ in this film starts off normal, or at least as nothing special. But our first impression change as the film continues because we notice that there is an uneasiness in the way Do Joon’s mother treat her son and how the film represents it.
Even now it is pretty normal to have a mother who is willing to do everything for their son. Especially if the society is very strict and conservative. What we expect from our truly ‘good’ mothers are generalized and judged. But Bong pushes it to highlight that ‘uneasiness’, as if trying to break the myth of the instinctive love of devoted mothers. At the end of the film, it almost feels like the director is trying to say that it is a kind of a collective madness.
The history of madness and obsession is deeply carved into our society and it usually hides its true nature. The coercion and sacrifice of motherhood, which has become the root of the patriarchal society, is constantly challenged by the human desire, sex, and something of that primitive madness in this film. The scene where Mother kills an old man and cries out for her own mother shows that we have been through this generations after generations, not even thinking of getting out of this chain.
Even in the last scene, Mother makes a choice to forget all of this, and then again melts into the collective madness, a persistent state that looks normal on the surface, but will never look normal again after watching the movie. Because we all witnessed what had emerged from the surface even for the slightest moment. Even if no one remembers, it doesn't mean that nothing happened. The madness that lurks in the thigh awakens us with horror.
