Oththa Seruppu - Meaning behind Glasses,Mirrors and Lenses

Movies with special attributes like, happened in a day, or happened in a single room are always 
an amazing audience by their focus on story and simplicity. Oththa Seruppu also one of them, but 

which is more than one of the above mentioned, Played by one character. When you have a story 

like this, you have to be very careful with elements inside the frame. It should be engaged, not bore to 
the audience. Parthiban brilliantly achieved by his facial expressions and method acting. And film asks 
money skeptical questions on money, economy, and relationships.

Most of the frames were filled with reflections on water, glass, and mirrors. But is it only places 
for style purposes?. Absolutely no. So let us dig meaning behind the glasses, mirrors, lenses in the 
movie.

"Eye Glasses - Represents the kindness"

Parthiban's son's frame starts with the eyewear of him. Of course Parthiban's frame also 
often filled with this. There are no characters to show kindness, only aggressive cops, who want to 
know the truth and close the case file. Another character comes with eyewear, who is a 
psychologist, yeah there is no doubt, she shows sympathy for the main lead. It represents
 innocence, in the form of wearing in the eye. At last, police inspector also showing kindness,
 Parthiban just says, "Sir, antha cooling glass super!". Which shows he is also eventually the 
one to show sympathy towards him. So here glass acts as innocence, kindness and empathic 
eyes.

"Camera, Lenses- Represents law and order."

In the story, all raw statements by the protagonist are recorded by the camera , it doesn't capture
 emotions. Like law and order, portrayed in the film. For some reason, emotional moments are 
not captured through the lens. In one scene where the psychologist gives her opinion, scene spanning
 cyclically on doctor's eyewear, camera, and window repeatedly, which shows that doctor 
wants to free him(window), out of law and order (camera) from her empathical eyes (eyewear). 
 Camera movements are widely used for this visual storytelling. 

"Broken mirrors- Broken humanity"

The story focuses on how money and rich lifestyle changed his wife's mental state. He breaks 
Gandhi's photos. And later repair with black tapes. These entire pessimistic things are performed by 
the protagonist, to show his belief about humanity in the movie. 

Not only these metaphors, candles, water reflections are shown brilliantly. Every time he sees his face 
in a mirror, he reminds his older self. Many directors master the technique of telling a story visually.
 In Oththa Seruppu, these elements are necessary to avoid the boring stuff and showing variety in 
visuals. Parthiban brilliantly places metaphors additionally, which comes from his filmmaking 
skill. Definitely, his films are worth studying.

A Bittersweet life-Seeing the Cinematic beauty

Sometimes the movies give the experience of reading a poem, Whether it may be the shots or well-crafted dialogues. A Bittersweet life is one of them, the movie, however, its poetic terms and cinematic beauty is still pure and really engaged the audience until the ending. The movie contains a lot of metaphorical visuals and narration. But unlike normal films, the writer heavily focused on giving the justice to the most of the lead characters in the film. So in this article, let us see some writing hooks, pinned by the director Kim Jee Woon.

"As for me, the poetic justice is not which is beating, and killing the character, it is based on the subtext of payoff what he did to others"

     Every writer must give the conflict between two characters when they are about to break their relationship in a story. For instance, let us see the moon's characterization. In one scene he cuts protagonist's finger by the rod. It is brilliant that foreshadowing Sun-woo's(the protagonist) imperfectness in targetting the aims. So when he tries to shoot the moon in final,he mistargets and fired his finger like he did to the Sun-Woo.

    And another character the man with the hat(who asked to say SORRY). When he tied Sun-woo there is one lady who didn't help him. After he starts to taking revenge, Sun-woo tied him as same as himself, but also with that lady so that she can't help him like the previous scene. And that one is the real poetic justice.And for Hee-soo(Female lead), Mr.Kang gifted blue lamp, but the protagonist gave red lamp like she wishes, Which is the subtext for she wanted real love, not like Mr.kang.

   There is a lot of beautiful visual metaphors in the film. When he killed his enemies, the camera compares the straight line of blood together. Maybe its some visual beauty but it may stand for his straightforward journey for revenge. When he entered the hotel, the camera didn't take any panning, tilting like those lines. And there is our protagonist in slow motion straight movement. That is the subtext for his concrete thinking for revenge.

  Every time when Sun-woo standing in front of the mirror, he saw his inner-self. The film majorly hooked the theme of how the hero found their self-identity. (We can discuss it in another post). When it comes to Mr.Kang, there is no any subtext, only the blindness of punishment like he did to the protagonist previously. There is a lot of poetic terms that we can speak in this film. The film looks like that story is plain, but it can be explored deeply unlike any other normal action thrillers.

Memories of Murder-Thematic suspects

  2003 Bong's Memories of murder, of course, which starts my interest in watching Korean cinema after Oldboy. Recently watched Snowpiercer which is stunning more than any Hollywood films. Memories of murder contain a lot of matter in it. The genre is more promising to watch the film. Most of the writers deal with the theme in terms of character, they bind theme and concepts within their dialogues and character's expressions to reflect the main symbolism of the film. Surely it is not an easy job to do. For instance, let us takes Oldboy, all characters are bind with incest and love, it is a theme but the plot is previously built by the revenge. Majorly it is very rare to see the film, whose theme is constructed within the plot and not within the characters. Memories of Murder is one of it.

                 "It is not about the killer but the suspect still matters and the nature of impression".

 The film's central concept asking many skeptical questions such as "Who is killer?'. But in terms of discussing it, let us see "Who is suspect?". As per the dictionary,"Having an idea or idea of impressions of the existence, presence or truth of(something) without any certain proof". The film deals with these above words. And those or ideas and proofs. Let us see the ideas and proofs of our major characters. And at the final, we are going to know how they failed in front of the theme.

  First, detective Park Doo-man whose idea is "Seeing raw witnesses" yes, of course, he believes what he sees, and what he believes. He believes that boy (Kwang-ho) is the killer by seeing the footprints and his monologues. Another example is his propose about the hairless men because he didn't seen any hairs of the murder. Shortly he sees collective ideas and proofs even it didn't make any sense or not. The character arc is brilliantly done by writing the other detective character  Seo-Tae-Yoon. Whose idea depends on collective documentation. He believes documents and his instincts. He often says "Documents never lie".He believes the collective idea of information more than witnesses.

If we dig deep the theme, it describes the nature of witnesses and impressions. And it shows the dynamic nature of suspect. From the above quotations about the suspect, the last words are "Without any certain proof". Of course the film itself, there are only suspects no any killers. In real world or in other films you may find real killer but this film is not about the killer it is about the suspects. That is why the killer is unknown in the movie.

Before the ending, we see both detectives are failures from their ideas. Documents are fooled Seo and "seeing raw witnesses", the eye contact of Park Doo-man also didn't help him. Which means suspects are always dynamic. And there are no static impressions on the killer. And like early cases in the film, that final suspect also moved from the inspection. Like I said the characters are failed, from their impressions. But what about the final moment? let me explain.

The film is melodic and more than any mystery and crime genre. Again the film's theme is constructed by plot, not from the characters. The theme should always win at the final. That is why the ending makes more sense. We see characters are failed, but the theme alone stands. In last frames that school girl said"Just a kind of plain". Yes of course, as per the theme the suspect is always without any certain proof and he is dynamic. Eventually, Bong staged thematic succession at the ending by failing the characters.