It was a strange thing to do indeed. The first time, I had no idea whether Yeter was actually going to die, or something else would happen, such as a dramatic change in her life, or she wouldn't change or die at all and the title would mean something else altogether (I went to the movie with absolutely no previous info, just the way I like it best) - hell the movie could have been a comedy for all that I knew. But no, Yeter simply dies. So of course, when I saw the second title "Lotte's Death", I knew that Lotte was going to die as well. In fact, I loved the directness and frankness of the two titles. Thing is that the movie is not quite, or not just about Yeter and Lotte, but more about human bonding and human affection.
If you want to see it technically, the movie is about the regenerative abilities of the social network. In warmer words, it is about an individual's ability to survive in an ever changing social universe, where the persons, loves and hatreds he or she takes for granted keep shifting or disappearing. In even warmer words, it is about opening yourself to others, about going past the affective limits you have set for yourself, about unbuckling the various safety belts to reach beyond them. Yeter and Lotte were both braces and limits of their respective universes, keeping irreconcilable elements in balance and away from each other. With their disappearance, the two universes collapsed - and the last part of the movie sees how the remains of the two worlds reached beyond their balance and reconnected to one another. So the deaths of the two women were exactly that which the titles implied: two important chapters of the story, the first two of three. Thus the titles - and frankly, it hadn't mattered in the least that I knew Lotte was about to die (like I said, "Yeter's death" could still mean several other things to me) - though the two coffin + plane scenes were the very definition of irony, touch of destiny or good dark humour.
Additionally, that's why the ending makes every ounce of sense possible; seeing the father return and the son hugging him in tears would have been irrelevant (...not to mention flat and cheesy). What we see is the son opening his heart again to his father, and the final image is an awfully powerful illustration of this - the son waiting, on the shore of a (still) empty sea; maybe the awaited one will return, maybe not, but the waiting is there.
http://tinyurl.com/cuatro-balas
http://tinyurl.com/do-my-will
reply
share