Columbus

I really enjoyed this movie, even though it was easily the slowest paced movie I have ever seen. I'm not sure why this worked. It was almost as if the movie gave the viewer time to think about the characters because there were so many pauses in dialog. There was a mysterious "real life" experience to watching the movie, unlike any I had ever had before, and I found myself thinking about the characters for days afterwards in the way I might think about a puzzling friend. "Columbus" should have been boring, but it wasn't.

"Meth and modernism are really big here." Casey (Haley Lu Richardson)

If you need an example of a modern art film, look no further than the Columbus film of Korean director Kogonada. It's a minimalist treatment of familial interaction and non-sexual intimacy worthy of Richard Linklater in his early Sunrise franchise. Its greatest achievement is bonding architecture with humanity so that the former becomes a character itself.

As for the light tone of the opening quote, Columbus the film, in an act of humane tenderness, never makes fun of the people or the city.

Korean Jin (John Cho) meets Casey in small town Columbus, Indiana. Although it feels a bit like a clichéd cow town, contrarily it has some of the best modernist architecture in the USA just as the couple deal with modern challenges as they blend their millennial dysfunctions with the seriousness of love and death. He is visiting his comatose architect father while she is fighting with herself to stay at home and tend to addicted mother while a university offering her fulfillment for her architectural enthusiasm is trying to tear her away.

Although the two are developing love that is chaste and from afar, their conversation gradually takes on depth mirrored in the growing presence of buildings from the likes of Deborah Berke, Eero Saarinen, and James Stewart Polshek, a conjunction of the real and almost ethereal, as several of the stunningly stark, simple and transparent buildings reflect. That the director chooses to shoot a whole scene in a mirror, and others briefly is a tribute to the interest he has in appearance and reality and the importance of place.

This intensely and immaculately filmed indie is a fitting declaration of the melancholy unity between living lovers and dynamic architecture. Enjoy the view and dialogue; movie-making doesn't need to offer more.

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival 2017 (website: iffr.com), where it was selected for the Hivos Tiger Competition. Relevant drama, realistic people, realistic situations, and realistic issues everyone can be forced to deal with when it happens to them. Pity that the dialogs were not always completely understandable, so I missed some nuances but certainly not the main topics at hand. Another minus point is that it took some time to establish who was who and what their relationships were. So I have to recommend everyone to read the synopsis beforehand.

The situations of the two main protagonists has many similarities that binds them together after a random encounter while taking a smoking break outside, though it takes some time before they really open up to one another and clarify their respective situations towards another (and implicitly to oneself, as a side effect). For some reason, festival visitors were only halfway impressed how their issues were portrayed, as this movie ranked at a 80th place (out of 172) with score 3.856 (out of 5).

Korean tradition states that when a parent dies, the son should be there when it happens, otherwise he cannot really mourn. So Jin is forced to wait until either his father is stable enough to bring him back to Korea, or when he fully recovers, or when he dies within the foreseeable future. The latter option is preferable, from a purely practical viewpoint, all things considered and setting all feelings aside. Anyway, Jin is here now following the "family first" tradition in his country to drop everything in case of family issues.

Similarly, Casey is in a limbo wait state because of her mother. She postpones her plans for the future more or less indefinitely, very possibly even until it is too late for starting a promising career. Her mother stays a few times in some sort of clinic, and the interaction with staff is a bit cumbersome, though not clear (to me) what exactly the problem is. It looks like staff finds excuses on behalf of her mom why she cannot answer the phone or why she cannot meet. There was one example where Jin and Casey were outside the clinic, discussing the architecture of the clinic as exemplary transparent (plenty of glass), allowing them to see one of the nurses answering the phone but apparently acting differently from what she promised to do. It is one example where the architectural tour through the city coincides with their domestic issues.

Precisely this common dilemma brings Casey and Jin together. That they meet is pure accident due to Casey taking a smoking break outside, and Jin is outside walking and thinking in himself. Jin's father is a scholar in architecture, while Casey recently finished her study in architecture, and often giving tours through the city for interested guests. Apparently, the city where it all happens, is full of original architecture, ahead of its time when it was built. Their relationship starts thus on architecture as a common ground to talk about, and it takes some time for both to open up about their real problems centering around their respective parents and how to escape from their respective wait states.

Parallel to her encounters with Jin, Casey meets many times with a colleague at the library where she works. She interacts with him while at work and during smoking breaks. Their relationship is warm and intimate but not in the sexual sense. At the same time Jin meets with his sister every now and then. These parallel interactions offer ample opportunities to clarify the situation they are in, but not on the deeply-understanding-level as Casey and Jin together do.

All in all, the dramatic developments are logically arranged in a perfect screenplay, that allows us to identify ourselves with all the protagonists, each of them relevant to the story in their own right. This movie stands out positively in the Tiger Competition, half of which was a waste of time, but this one certainly was not.

The cinematography and music is as architectural as Columbus, Ohio. Every image is focused on and framed by the architecture present. This beautifully emphasizes the thing that brings the two leads together. While it isn't necessarily a shared interest, architecture becomes a means to discuss what ails their lives. They come to compliment each other, in their differences. They are both very real, honest, open characters. The dialog asks the big questions: Is work more important than family? Is family more important than going after your dreams? The characters play with these ideas and confide in each other's different experiences.

This movie is written, directed, and shot in the most architecturally stunning way. The performances are natural and honest. All around this is a must see. I cannot recommend it enough.

The architecture on display in Columbus, Indiana is beautiful in this film, and I loved the little signs of how it related to the characters and their feelings in various scenes. John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson play people who meet by chance, and despite their age difference, support one another as each is dealing with changes in life. They're both so unforced and simply fantastic, and neither the script nor their performances ever gives in to clichés about the relationship they form. I also loved Rory Culkin in this, especially in the scene where he's talking about attention spans and video games. It's all very intelligent and the shot compositions are routinely gorgeous, with director Kogonada making use of symmetry, blurred light, and mirrors to great effect. It is a bit on the ponderous side and thus may not be for everyone, but I really enjoyed it.