Hwal - The Bow

'The Bow' a very fine Korean film directed by Kim Ki duk, is a film that i have only recently seen. The film came in 2005. The film deals with the relationship of two people: a young girl of seventeen and an old man. As the film opens, the director shows up a bow being prepared for a lute. The old man is an expert in both playing the lute and firing arrows with his bow. The old man and the teenage girl live on a big boat moored at a deep part of a sea. The old man makes a living by inviting amateur fish-catchers, who catch fish as pastime, to his boat and spend the days on end there and enjoy fishing. He has another skiff to ferry himself between the deep part of the sea and the shore both for provisions and ferrying the partime fishermen. The rich and affluent who come to the moored boat give a lot of money for both fishing and staying on the boat. The old man lives with a seventeen year old girl. It is rumoured that he sleeps with the girl every night. The old man is also credited with soothsaying. If some one wants him to predict his future, the old man sends the girl down a row of iron stiles fitted to the hull of the ship to reach a swing suspended from the aft. He positions himself on the skiff and darts arrow at the girl, who swings rather casually. The arrows pass the girl and pierces a Godly figure drawn on the hulk. Based on the piercings the girl whispers the fortune into the ear of the old man, who in turn whispers into the fortune seeker's ear.

It has been a characteristic feature that both the old man and the girl never talk in the film for they are not dumb. The girl spends her pastime playing the bow-lute, when the old man goes away for provisions and ferrying people. Once there has been an attempt on her virginity by two of the visitors. The girl manages to escape and even darts arrows at them. The visage of the girl does not deprive her of her inner feelings. She is always found with a beady smile, even at the time of being chased by the two lechers. The old man does not allow her moving with anyone, young people in particular. Every day the old man bathes the girl in a plastic tub with hot water. She sits in the tub, nude and enjoys the ceremonious bathing and pleating of her hair. Each day, the old man marks off days on a monthly calender expecting the day of the wedding. It does not hint at a possible marriage between the girl and him. A young man along with his father forms part of a group that visits the boat for fishing. The girl begins liking the young man and expressing her interest in him, that is strongly reproached by the old man. In a conversation with his father, the young man learns that the girl was found by the old man some where on the main land when she was only six or seven and she had lived on the boat more than a decade not once stinting to the main land.

The young man presents his walk-man as he leaves and the old man is growing concerned about the relationship between the two. He rushes up the dates and tears even sheets of months to quicken the marriage. The young man comes back to inform the old man about the parents of the girl and their search for her. The girl decides to leave with the young man. The old man tows the skiff with the boat with a strong cordage rope and nooses the other end around his neck. As the cordage stiffens it begins choking his neck. Not bearing the pain, he cuts the cordage with a knife. The girl on the other hand does not want to leave and turns the boat to be with him. They marry in the presence of the young man, a rather fine ceremony of Korean practice of marriage. After the ceremony, they both travel on the skiff at sea to reach a secluded part and there the old man takes off his elaborate sartorial accoutrement and begins playing the lute. The girl is mesmerised and swoons to the music. The old man stops playing and takes up his bow to shoot an arrow, first he aims at the girl and then fires it at the sky. Then he jumps into sea to drown himself. The skiff, oared by a mysterious spirit, reaches the main boat, where the young man anxiously waits to see them both. The girl suddenly folds her legs and outstretches them to expose her pudenda and begins to succumb herself to act of love making with an invisible figure. The arrow returns and fixes itself at her groin. She wakes up with a blood stain on her cloth and starts her journey to the main land with the young man. It is highly symbolical that either the old man dies and makes love with her eerily or the girl matures of to puberty and the film ends there. The film is complemented by a lovely background score as well. A terrible film.

P S The boat follows the skiff to some distance and sinks and the girl waves good bye to it.