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 Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1OwDXmdedQis House of Hummingbird (2018) is a drama film about transformation and what gets sacrificed in transition; a coming-of-age story of Eun-hee, a young schoolgirl from a working class family that strives to rise above their station, against the backdrop of early 1990's South Korea’s coming-of-age to neo-liberalism. The film is structured novelistically through Eun-hee’s perspective, the youngest of the family who is neglected emotionally and abused physically. As a mediocre student under the pressure of Progress, she feels no sense of place until she meets a private tutor who takes her seriously as a full person.  “Why do the people here hang banners? -So that they don't get their homes taken away. Why would someone take away someone else's house? -There's so much absurdity, right? It's so sad. The houses look cold. -Don't pity them. What? -We shouldn't pity them, because we don't know anything.” I realize this film sounds like misery porn with the complementary sentimentality to balance, but it is as far from either of those as possible. Writer/director Bora Kim’s debut feature is brimming with life from the script to the visual & sound design, and the story is told with tremendous patience and assurance, and as a low-budget indie film, unexpectedly took national/international film festivals by storm. Also, I’m really a stickler for movie endings, and I think this one just nails it. Now I’ll make a desperate appeal to pop-culture and possibly cut my own legs off by contrasting it to the Barbenheimer: House of Hummingbird is almost an inversion of Oppenheimer, a bio-pic about an important figure of a world-historical event. Now I thought the film was good, but there’s a tendency of the bio-pic to feel like a collection of hits rather than an organic narrative. Furthermore it’s a story mostly interested in the psychological states of and interpersonal relations between Oppenheimer and his comrades/adversaries. It’s the story Nolan wanted to tell, to search into the inner of an individual centered around factical events, but I think this direction loses an important dimension of truth, best exemplified by the controversial third act. That is to say, House of Hummingbird’s fictional & unassuming story unusually expresses truth, embodying Lacan’s dictum that “every truth has the structure of fiction”. Barbie has rightfully brought feminism to the forefront of pop-culture, but its white liberal brand’s fixation on culture itself is, in my opinion, debilitating. House of Hummingbird is also a deeply feminist work, but one that is situated materially and historically. I know it’s cheap to compare the politics of a massive budget IP comedy-drama to a low budget serious indie, but I like to cheat. Writer/director Bora Kim is currently working on her next feature, something I’m shaking with excitement for, a big budget feminist sci-fi flick. For the U.S. and Canada, House of Hummingbird can be streamed for free with no ads on plex tv, no account needed: https://watch.plex.tv/movie/house-of-hummingbird It’s also available for free, but with ads on: Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhKUrPM7O-I Tubi https://tubitv.com/movies/100002626/house-of-hummingbird Unfortunately, I’m not sure if it’s available to stream in other regions. KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 1, 2023 16:16
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Watched this today. What a sad yet beautiful movie. I loved how many little stories they packed into Eun-hees life. Almost all of them heartbreaking in their own ways. I really liked, and was saddened by the Yuri story. Park Ji-hoo and Saebyuk Kim were great.
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Aug 18, 2023 23:30
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Was certainly not easy to track this film down, but worth it. So delicately observed, and some lovely tableaux shots in the family home at the start, like the bit where the uncle is trying to leave and the family assembles.
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Aug 30, 2023 23:36
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Appreciate you giving the movie your time. It was striking how Eun-hee's relationships (and non-relationships) are drawn with such sensitivity & specificity, but particularly the female ones. When Yuri, the girl that’s crushing on Eun-hee, unexpectedly visits her in the hospital, it’s too adorable. Later, Yuri gets over the crush and unceremoniously discards her while Eun-hee protests about how much she was willing to make it work.
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Aug 31, 2023 14:05
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Watched this last night and it was a really wonderful film. Very sad but also quite beautiful.KVeezy3 posted:
I don't know about other regions, and if you're in the US it depends on your library, but it's also on Kanopy if you're trying to get all your MotM in by year's end (like me).
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Dec 27, 2023 17:56
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