She takes a poetry class, and the movie features considerable reading and discussion of poetry. She lives alone with her teenage grandson and has to cope, after her slightly befuddled fashion, with the fact that he's apparently done something terrible. It's got a director and a star you've most likely never heard of, and its central character is an oddly girlish 66-year-old woman who dresses like a dingbat and is probably suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's or a similar dementia disorder. It's in Korean, and it's a fairly slow-moving character drama, not a ghost story or a shoot-'em-up. Let's review: "Poetry" is almost two-and-a-half hours long. So why didn't I rank it as my Salon Pick of the Week? (Even though - in case you're keeping score at home - it is now No. This word gets chucked around too much by critics, including me, but I've seen the film twice and I strongly suspect it's a masterpiece. You'll cry, you'll laugh - you won't want to leave this story and its unlikely heroine behind. I'm here to tell you that Korean director Lee Chang-dong's film "Poetry" is both beautiful and moving, a quietly haunting meditation on death and life that combines lovely cinematic craft, a memorable central performance and prodigious emotional depth.
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