{"id":13414,"date":"2020-02-16T20:00:39","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T01:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=13414"},"modified":"2020-02-14T23:15:26","modified_gmt":"2020-02-15T04:15:26","slug":"grass-2018-hong-sang-soo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/13414","title":{"rendered":"Grass (2018, Hong Sang-soo)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;How&#8217;ve you been?&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;ve been drinking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Opens with long-take conversation about a dead friend, the camera zooming in then panning back and forth.  He (Ahn Jae-hong, his fourth Hong film) walks out to smoke while she (Gong Min-jeung, her third) is still yelling at him.  Then we see Kim in a corner typing on her laptop, not looking up, commenting on the couple&#8217;s conversation in voiceover.  Separate shot, so she&#8217;s possibly not there at same time &#8211; could be writing about this, or inventing it and we&#8217;re seeing the fiction she&#8217;s creating.  Later it&#8217;s established that she hangs out at this restaurant and overhears conversations &#8211; in any event, it&#8217;s a heavy opening scene.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/grass1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Conversation 2 is Ki Joo-bong and Seo Young-hwa, both Hong veterans, and there&#8217;s more death talk.  He is depressed, attempted suicide over a love affair.  She has a new place, and he is persistently asking if he can move in, but she refuses, the string music getting fuller and louder.  I think both men have been actors so far.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/grass2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Next couple is outdoors, oooh, and he&#8217;s another actor, though he wants to write screenplays.  He is Jung Jin-young, the film director in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/13045\">Claire&#8217;s Camera<\/a><\/em>, and she is Kim Sae-byuk of the Hong movie that premieres next week.  Anyway, she says no, so the actor corners Kim instead and asks if she wants to cowrite screenplays &#8211; there are some persistent dudes in this movie.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/grass3.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>The fourth couple is there to see Kim &#8211; it&#8217;s her brother (Shin Seok-ho of <em>Hotel by the River<\/em>) and his fiancee (Ahn Sun-yeong of <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/12612\">On The Beach At Night Alone<\/a><\/em>).  Kim is dismissive of their relationship, and shitty to her brother: &#8220;They call themselves men, but in dealing with pain, or when ending things, they act like cowards.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/grass4.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Another conversation in the same restaurant during dinner &#8211; and it&#8217;s more people blaming each other for a suicide.  Each convo has been a single take, and this one is unusual for not showing the man&#8217;s face.  She is Lee Yoo-young, the lead of <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/12789\">Yourself and Yours<\/a><\/em> with the slippery identity, and he is newcomer Kim Myeong-su, who makes her cry as &#8220;Oh Susanna&#8221; comes on the radio.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/grass5.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Four from earlier end up drinking together, Kim still listening in (&#8220;Do you know I hear everything you say?  I have good hearing, you know?&#8221;), and they repeatedly invite her to join them, which she finally does.  &#8220;By the end of the film, Areum is forced to reckon with the very people she so casually, even callously inserted into her writing&#8221; &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/film.avclub.com\/hong-sang-soo-s-grass-turns-banal-people-watching-into-1834030162\">AV Club<\/a> made more sense out of it than I did, comparing the story to <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/12170\">In The City Of Sylvia<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/grass6.jpg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;How&#8217;ve you been?&#8221; &#8220;I&#8217;ve been drinking.&#8221; Opens with long-take conversation about a dead friend, the camera zooming in then panning back and forth. He (Ahn Jae-hong, his fourth Hong film) walks out to smoke while she (Gong Min-jeung, her third) is still yelling at him. Then we see Kim in a corner typing on her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1049,1814,2427,607],"class_list":["post-13414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2010s","tag-hong-sang-soo","tag-kim-min-hee","tag-suicide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13447,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13414\/revisions\/13447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}