Decision to Leave
- 3 minutes read - 560 wordsI gave up writing reviews of movies because:
- I never felt I got the balance right between describing the plot and why I liked the film.
- I don’t watch enough movies to be able to draw comparisons that are interesting, just between the small subset of total films that I have watched.
- I don’t know enough about film making to properly describe why a movie made me feel a particular way and how to discuss the different possibilities available to the director, the actors, and the other artists involved with creating a movie.
But of course, every now and then you see a movie and think “wow! I need to tell people about this”. And for me that recent film was “Decision To Leave”, a Korean film that was released last year.
It’s tricky to explain what “Decision to Leave” is about without giving too much of the plot away, especially if I also want to explain why I enjoyed it so much. Basically, a detective falls in love with a suspect in a murder case, realises that she might actually have done it, lets her go and then moves to another town to get over it. Well there’s more to it than that but that will do as a description for now.
What made “Decision to Leave” so compelling?
- The setting. Most of the Korean-ness of the movie comes across in food and customs and so on. Beyond that there’s a sense of universality to the story and with the odd tweak the action could be happening almost anywhere. (I guess a Hollywood remake could be due any minute now.) One of the reasons I love foreign movies is that they allow you to see other places and live there for a bit (at least in an emotional sense), but this film also has very universal views about sex, about technology, about social media.
- The acting. As I said above, I don’t really know much about film so I could be writing absolute rubbish here, but the performances felt very natural to me. At least in the sense that the main characters are essentially playing roles throughout - the police detective has to conceal his feelings while continuing his investigation, the suspect has to simultaneously disguise her actions and motives while also attempting to seduce the detective.
- The cinematography. Not just the choice of shots but also how natural they all feel. There were some points when shots melted from one to another in such a clever way, and at other points really striking choices had been made about how to stage a particular scene. (And this is the point where my not having watched many films lately kicks in, because I have really no idea to what extent these shots and choices for staging are novel or not…) The film also looks really expensive, or rather not cheap. There are drone shots, beautifully lit night-time exteriors and interiors, and the transitions between some of the shots are really compelling, just the right side of the line between showy and showoff-y.
So that concludes my rather brief review of Decision to Leave. I recommend it if you like well-acted and visually striking films with a compelling and satisfying story. If the subtitles put you off, don’t worry, I’m pretty sure an English-language remake will be just around the corner!