After watching a couple of average to mediocre movies over the past few
days I was looking for a really good movie and I found one, Oasis. Actually, Oasis is one of the best movies that I have seen in awhile, and is definitely best Korean movie that I have ever seen. Oasis is fabulous in almost every aspect: story, acting, production, and filming. As a result it won 13 awards and has one of highest IMDb ratings I have seen. Oasis stars Kyung-gu Sol, So-ri Moon, and Nae-sang Ahn, and was written and directed by Chang-dong Lee.
As the film opens, Jong-du (Sol Kyung-gu) has just been released from prison and is freezing in his short sleeve shirt in the middle of winter. Jong-du is a sociopath who flaunts society's rules, unaware of or unconcerned with the consequences of his actions. Unable to hold a job and always on the edge, he has been in jail three times: for attempted rape, causing an accident while drunk (he took the rap for his elder brother), and armed robbery. On the spur of the moment, he decides to visit the family of the man killed by his brother and apologize. When he arrives, he finds a husband and wife moving out of their apartment, leaving the husband's seriously disabled sister, Han Gong-ju (Moon So-ri) for the neighbors to look after.
Jong-du is attracted to the disabled woman with cerebal palsy who seems barely in control of her own body. He returns for another visit but it sadly ends up in a disturbing sequence that is very difficult to watch. Surprisingly, Gong-ju invites him back once more and the two slowly begin a friendship based on their mutual feelings of isolation. He provides her with the closeness she desperately needs and she finds someone to care for, maybe for the first time in her life. As their relationship becomes known, both families are scandalized and, aided by the prejudices of society, transform the innocence of their love into something sick and twisted.
Oasis is a literary film. It is great to watch movies with imaginary scenes dreamed by Gong-ju. These scenes are sentimental, but they are incredibly beautiful and delicate (pigeons and butterflies flying in her room, for example). And the scene where Gong-ju sings a song to another protagonist Jong-du must be one of the most beautiful scenes of "expressing love" ever depicted by a film. Thus, I highly recommend that anyone see Oasis.