Leah (Tiffany Chu) was adopted when she was very young, and she has no memories of Korea where she was born–only of her life in America. She now returns home to Korea in search of her birth mother. However, along the way she will meet new people, learn new things, and ultimately be forced to come to terms with all that she has experienced throughout the course of her life. Motherland depicts Leah’s journey as she refuses to give up, determined to understand where she came from.
The somber tones that are strewn throughout the course of Motherland help to set the tone and the mood of the film early and often. I’m not sure that viewers ever feel anything other than something akin to sadness, and the score often does a really good job of keeping us grounded, with Leah, throughout the course of Motherland. As the film develops we continue to get this same feeling, and we feel almost trapped, again, a feeling that Leah would likely be experiencing at this point in her life. Motherland can be a challenging film to watch, as we rarely get a break in the heaviness of the topic–but, in many ways, this is a fair reflection of the real world. This film captures the essence of the real world, and it really does a stellar job of ensuring that viewers understand the tone every step of the way.
Chu’s eyes are her most prominent feature, and they are used to develop emotion throughout Motherland. She finds ways to manipulate her eyes, to make them water, to swell up–and as she uses this feature to her and the film’s advantage, viewers are almost mesmerized by them, incapable of looking away and falling into those ocean-like eyes, and getting lost in her performance. She’s ultimately the key to the film, because she is the character that guides us through the film (not to mention it’s her story). This is just a small piece of her massive repertoire, however–as every step of the way she works to reel in viewers and make them part of the story.
What works in an interesting way for Motherland is the language barrier. I’m not entirely sure that Writer Minkya Kang and Writer-Director Christina Yoon intended for the language barrier to play the role that it did–but it works. There is such a massive disconnect between Leah and the other characters throughout the film, and she often struggles to converse with them. This adds a layer to the separation that she feels on her journey toward finding her birth mother. This extends Leah’s story into metaphor, and it allows the story to take different forms–appealing to viewers in new and interesting ways.
Motherland keeps viewers on edge from beginning to end, refusing to relent in regard to its intensity. It’s that intensity that keeps us in line and engaged from beginning to end. With that intensity we are able to understand Leah’s story, even though there is (and should be) a disconnect between viewers and what we see on screen–and that makes the film feel very real. I don’t think that we are meant to understand everything that happens throughout the course of Motherland–and because of that we are drawn into an honest story that resonates with us and both warms our hearts and tears us apart.
Directed by Christina Yoon.
Written by Minkya Kang & Christina Yoon.
Starring Tiffany Chu, Young Yoon, Chaeyoung Kang, Taewoo Kim, Kyung Hong, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/10
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