Columbus

Greetings again from the darkness. The first feature film from Korean writer/director/editor Kogonada provides intimate and revealing slices of life that are somehow simultaneously familiar, thought-provoking, and enlightening. There is so much going in this seemingly quiet little story that we are left thinking that it could easily have been split into 2 or 3 movies.

Haley Lu Richardson stars as Casey, a local girl who works in the library and as a tour guide. She's clearly smart, and readily admits to sacrificing her future for the responsibility of looking after her mother (Michelle Forbes) – a recovering addict to both meth and "s***heads". Her exchanges with Gabriel (Rory Culkin) carry the weight of intellects-in-development, as well as strained attraction that is regularly shut down through sneakily awkward and uncomfortable moments. Their back-and-forth on reading, video games and attention spans is one of the best on-screen exchanges we will hear this year.

The film begins with an elderly man having some type of seizure, sending him to the hospital and canceling his scheduled architecture presentation. His son Jin (John Cho) arrives from out of town and the next morning has an initial inelegant crossing of paths with Casey. The lack of connection between the two transforms in a beautifully written and photographed scene the next day. Shot from the other side of the window glass with no audible dialogue, we witness the moment Casey lets down her guard and Jin becomes enamored. It's a unique and wonderful scene – so quiet, yet it changes everything.

Columbus, Indiana is the other star of the film. Its famous modern architecture is featured prominently throughout as Casey guides Jin to her favorites. Their corresponding conversations, usually while puffing on cigarettes, gradually become more detailed and more revealing. Doorways, bridges, windows, and buildings become part of the conversation, and crucial to the look and feel created by cinematographer Elisha Christian.

Mr. Cho captures the stoic nature of a son inconvenienced by a Korean culture that requires him to be present should his father die. He is miffed by the need to 'adequately grieve' for the man who never put his own life on hold for his son. Ms. Richardson is the revelation here. Having seen her in SPLIT, THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN, and THE BRONZE, it was obvious she had screen presence, but here she shows the depth and range that portends a long and varied acting career. Her slumped shoulders and panged expression are spot on for a 19 year old who is too smart for her situation, yet too young and unworldly to know how to forge ahead.

Kogonada proves himself a sly storyteller as well as a master of visual setting, utilizing language, architecture and above all, conversation. At one point, Jin asks Casey "Are we losing interest in everyday life?" This filmmaker is doing his part to keep us aware and interested.

The architecture on display in Columbus, Indiana is beautiful in this film, and I loved the little signs of how it related to the characters and their feelings in various scenes. John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson play people who meet by chance, and despite their age difference, support one another as each is dealing with changes in life. They're both so unforced and simply fantastic, and neither the script nor their performances ever gives in to clichés about the relationship they form. I also loved Rory Culkin in this, especially in the scene where he's talking about attention spans and video games. It's all very intelligent and the shot compositions are routinely gorgeous, with director Kogonada making use of symmetry, blurred light, and mirrors to great effect. It is a bit on the ponderous side and thus may not be for everyone, but I really enjoyed it.

My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library, which is fitting since the girl in the movie works in a library! Set in and filmed in Columbus, a small city of almost 50,000 in southern Indiana. Known for its architecture, that theme plays a strong role.

John Cho (about 44 during filming) is Jin from South Korea, he has come to Columbus after his father becomes very ill, too ill to fly back home. He has work to do, translating books from English to Korean, but is expected to stay for his dad who may or may not recover.

In his random wanderings he encounters Haley Lu Richardson (about 21 during filming) as Casey, recent high school graduate who chooses to stay in Columbus to be with her mom who is in a recovery process from drug use. She works part time in the Columbus library, she wants more but is uncertain how to get it.

This is a rather "quiet" movie, much of it has Jin and Casey getting to know each other, view architecture together, discuss its meaning, and ultimately what each wants in life. All this could naturally set up a romantic conclusion but it doesn't go there, he even mentions that he is much older than she.

We enjoyed the movie, it was interesting seeing the architecture, and as the movie ends we can see some development in Casey's path. A nicely worthwhile movie.

"Meth and modernism are really big here." Casey (Haley Lu Richardson)

If you need an example of a modern art film, look no further than the Columbus film of Korean director Kogonada. It's a minimalist treatment of familial interaction and non-sexual intimacy worthy of Richard Linklater in his early Sunrise franchise. Its greatest achievement is bonding architecture with humanity so that the former becomes a character itself.

As for the light tone of the opening quote, Columbus the film, in an act of humane tenderness, never makes fun of the people or the city.

Korean Jin (John Cho) meets Casey in small town Columbus, Indiana. Although it feels a bit like a clichéd cow town, contrarily it has some of the best modernist architecture in the USA just as the couple deal with modern challenges as they blend their millennial dysfunctions with the seriousness of love and death. He is visiting his comatose architect father while she is fighting with herself to stay at home and tend to addicted mother while a university offering her fulfillment for her architectural enthusiasm is trying to tear her away.

Although the two are developing love that is chaste and from afar, their conversation gradually takes on depth mirrored in the growing presence of buildings from the likes of Deborah Berke, Eero Saarinen, and James Stewart Polshek, a conjunction of the real and almost ethereal, as several of the stunningly stark, simple and transparent buildings reflect. That the director chooses to shoot a whole scene in a mirror, and others briefly is a tribute to the interest he has in appearance and reality and the importance of place.

This intensely and immaculately filmed indie is a fitting declaration of the melancholy unity between living lovers and dynamic architecture. Enjoy the view and dialogue; movie-making doesn't need to offer more.

Much like the city that bears the film's name, Columbus is a rare unspoiled gem in a sea of same-old, same-old. It's a spellbinding whisper; a soulful, sweet and self-assured voice that you can only hear if you can calm your mind for long enough. The film takes something as simple as two strangers getting to know each other and elevates it to an art with unspoken spiritual dimensions. Every frame truly is a painting here. The colors on the palette – our actors and the man made wonders that occupy the space.

The film begins with the collapse of an elderly Korean scholar who was in town to give a talk on modernist architecture. He slips into a coma, anticipating the arrival of his son Jin (Cho). Jin in turn is forced to put his life in Seoul on hold as he waits for either the death or recovery of his estranged father. While this is happening, Casey (Richardson) a bright, kindhearted towny and unabashed lover of architecture approaches Jin while out for an afternoon stroll. The two kindle a friendship that subtly shifts their perspectives; a bond that is as deeply felt as it is melancholy.

No words can truly describe freshman writer-director Kogonada vision in this film. Dreamy, contemplative, ethereal – all worthy words in any context but in film they come not as adjectives but unfortunate value statements. We as a culture have silently, perhaps subconsciously ascribed these words to mean languid and boring, refusing to acknowledge any portents of purposeful design. I myself have fallen into this trap plenty of times. I've watched a grand total of three Yasujiro Ozu films over the course of my life, and all three times I have been left wanting.

Kogonada is certainly mimicking aspects of Ozu here, including a deeply wistful tone and using water as a leitmotif. But Kogonada's approach does have some stark differences. For one, large generational shifts in understanding are treated in an overall positive light. Casey's astute work friend Gabriel (Culkin) expounds with increasing clarity the idea that different interests and habits don't necessarily mean we lose sight of what's important. As the film meanders through its story, the camera holds lovingly on Indiana's strange architectural wonderland as if to say the wise and the eternal can coexist with the new and the modern. In its own unassuming way, Columbus almost acts like a critique of a critique.

Most of the time however, Columbus is a beautifully captured human story pure and simple. The odd coupling of John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson is reminiscent of Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray in Lost in Translation (2003) only both are objectively less world-weary. As an actress of incredible, disarming vulnerability, Richardson fills every room, field and parking lot like a beam of sunlight. She's always had warmth to her popular performances but with Columbus she proves that she's much more than a pretty face. John Cho likewise is tremendous as the prickly and wounded Jin. The script requires that the narrative chips away at his tough exterior slowly. Thus all the guilt, anger and regret he wells up inside needs to stay just exposed enough to hold the audience interest. It's a harder thing to do than it looks but thankfully Cho pulls it off with aplomb.

If Columbus has any fatal flaws it strictly has to do with scale. The film dwells on the inscrutability of life and the beauty of the world if one only looks, but then folds all these ideas in a movie tacitly about daddy issues and life no longer being a tutorial. Additionally it can be argued that if this is a movie about looking, watching and appreciating, than why are we following two people who use looking, watching and appreciating architecture as a cudgel?

Personally when I watched Columbus I was struck by its serenity. It reminded me of a Lao Tzu poem I once read that more or less goes like this:

The supreme good is like water, Which nourishes all things without trying to. It is content with the low places that people disdain. This it is like the Tao. In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family, be completely present. When you are content to be simply yourself And don't compare or compete, Everybody will respect you.