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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 |
# ¿ Aug 1, 2023 16:16 |
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# ¿ May 14, 2024 16:32 |
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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 |