Black Stone

We all thought art is history. It has been exiled to museums for safekeeping. And our generation won't produce it no more.

Then I stumbled upon this film! It was so unexpected!

If I was given a chance, I'd delete Hollywood & Bollywood forever - to replace them with South Korea.

Today's audience have no idea, a lot of films that were made in the early period of when film itself was born were gutted in fires (they are irreplaceable as it is). Thanks to those industries, now the art of cinema is being lost with pop culture's obsession of stardom and glamour.

Very few South Korean films are bad, almost all are good. This one was over the moon.

Now, of course, it is not for everybody. I understand some might find it a slow-burner, usually art films are.

The difference is, this one was not trying your patience & keeping you with the story to the end.

This one is not a sleeping pill, unlike the countless productions billed as art films - it is a poetry.

Not just the last sequence, that drove me to tears. I'd be murmuring to myself those lines the boy was saying, for a long, long time (I only read the captions in English) :

"I a sinner, I have shoplifted expensive whiskey from the supermarket, I have crossed the road when the traffic was red, I have smashed car window..."

Then, the black stones.

Just hats off to Gyeong-Tae Roh! You did it! This world is a more beautiful place with directors like him existing, completely - not without.