Director Yeon Sang-ho is best known for his iconic zombie epic, Train to Busan, which almost single-handedly revived the floundering genre almost a decade ago. His latest, a super low-budget drama made in just three weeks with a skeleton crew and based on Sang-ho's debut graphic novel, is worlds away in style, but equally dispiriting and nihilistic in its worldview.
Lim Yeong-gyu (Kwon Hae-hyo) is a blind seal engraving master entering the twilight of his life. His son, Lim Dong-hwan (Park Jeong-min), helps a film crew document his father's life as a celebration of overcoming adversity. One day, they receive a phone call from the police, asking Dong-hwan to help identify the remains of his mother, thought to have been missing for 40 years. Nobody seems to know what happened to her, how she disappeared, or even what she looked like. Everyone just agrees on one thing: she was hideous, and because of that she probably deserved everything that happened to her.
Already, this is a deeply distressing and bleak starting point. Watching the setup, where Dong-hwan interviews old colleagues who fondly remember abusing his mother as if it was a bonding experience, I could feel a knot in my stomach grow tighter. For 100 minutes, writer/director Sang-ho doesn't allow the audience even a moment of respite. If there's a way to make things worse, he takes it.
Which is both a strength and a disservice for the material. By refusing an easy way out, Sang-ho forces us to witness the casual cruelty of every society, and how we collectively abide ostracization of others. By not showing us the supposedly ugly lead character's face, Sang-ho pushes us to confront our own demons and preconceptions of superficial ideals about beauty. In the end, does it matter how a person looks? It shouldn't, but we can't pretend like it doesn't.
However, Sang-ho never quite finds a conclusive note to pin all this misery on. The conclusion, which I won't spoil, feels both too easy and too open. It's the kind of final shot that works best in a short film. In a feature, it comes across as a cheap emotional gimmick that feels more of a shrug than definitive statement.
Which is a shame, because there's still a lot to admire here, especially in the uniformly strong performances. Jeong-min is particularly impressive in the dual roles as the son, Dong-hwan, and as the young version of his father in the past. It's such a disappearing act that I didn't even realize I was watching the same person until the credits came on.
Director Sang-ho, for all his nihilism and brutality, luckily reserves most empathy to the unseen mother at the center of all this hatred. At no point does it feel like that the material is laughing at her. It's a saving grace that makes the film palatable. Sang-ho might not allow us to know her, but he refuses to let us even remotely laugh at the misery induced by others. I've seen plenty of similarly themed films in the past that do so, and they're repugnant. It takes a skilled and humane enough artist to know where the line is, and Sang-ho achieves that.
The Ugly is still a difficult film to recommend. I'm not entirely sure it makes a strong enough case to warrant such misery. By the end, I was exhausted, sad, and angry. But I didn't feel like I knew anything more than I did going in. It makes me wonder about the value of a film that just reinforces the notion that people can be terrible. Yes, it's realistic, but at what cost?
And yet, The Ugly is well-directed and acted. It is the work of a talented artist who understands how humans function, especially when we're at our ugliest. To wish that this film was kinder proves director Sang-ho's point in a way. Like an old folktale – the kind Hans Christian Eriksen would have told – it is ultimately a simple morality play, reminding us to do better.
In that sense, it's a success.
