LogFAQs > #949175522

SwiftyDC posted...

I stopped and thought about the opening and ending scenes. On the bus, she started dancing after her acupuncture. In the opening, she was dancing without the acupuncture as she had forgotten her needle kit in the burning house. Probably thinking too much into it but I thought that was interesting.

I don't think you're thinking too much on the specifics, but you might be thinking too literal. it makes sense, this movie is mostly told from the perspective of the mother who in addition to practicing acupuncture also dabbles in other types of holistic medicines (like the concoction she gives her son when he's injured, or the one for fertility), good fortune offerings (the beer, I think, to the police officers), and when the movie shifts perspectives it ascribes meaning to other things (Do-joon's method for memory, Ah-jung's rice beer as a metaphor for control), so we're often in very elevated, other worldly territory. but I think that second dancing scene is all about catharsis. she was in the junk collector's place to "open his heart" via that meridian in the thigh she mentioned, but she achieved the same effect on herself after she learned the truth about the night of the murder.

there's probably something to be said here about her feeling great shame after learning the truth about that night and lashing out, connecting that to her shame about Do-joon remembering that his mother tried to kill both of them when he was five, and how immediately after that the mother was overwhelming by maternal instinct to protect her son at all costs.

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ICON:
Kiwami means extreme.