This movie can be easily described as self-indulgent or too artsy with it's extreme length, long shots and unexplained sequences. After watching it I wondered what is the point? Romantic angst and it's relation to depression? Human's existential crisis and our folly attempts to find meaning in love? A commentary on art and it's irritating inability to fully display our inner world as completely as we want it to?
The more distance I got from the movie, the more I thought about the experience of watching it, the more I started to like it. The more I found it resonating with me throughout my daily life, as I think more and more about the characters. I think about what it means to watch someone eating. I think what it means to look out of the window of a car at the streets of Seoul. I think about unrequited love. I think about how Moroccan dance reached Korea. I think about the frustration of observing someone repeat your mistakes.
Most importantly, however, I think how some movies are meant to be felt not grasped. The narrative is simple, useless, almost like a distraction from the art itself. I shouldn't be obsessed with understanding every reference and the purpose behind each scene. Instead focusing on the emotions that are elicited and asking why did this make me feel this way? The depression, the bleakness, the mental illness that is portrayed in art, does it serve to remind us of our suffering or to liberate us from them by offering us a fresh perspective on our inner world?
