The Bow and the arrow

"Strength and a beautiful sound like in the tautness of a bow.

 I want to live like this until the day I die."

KIM Ki-duk  creates wonders with  magnificent silence in his movies. Cinema is an art of storytelling in which some uses dialogues and some uses events, but KIM uses silence as a medium for his magnificent piece of art.

Silence is the most beautiful thing in this whole universe. Everything springs from the ultimate silence, the treasure of wisdom, knowledge and realization originates essentially from the deep silence. We, often fail to recognize the sound of silence and the beauty of it. The sound of silence wrapped around us has many stories to tell, but we evade from the loneliness and the silence created by the loneliness.

We speak better when we are silent. The movie is also noted for its silence of the male protagonist and the female protagonist until the end of the movie. They don’t speak, but smile. The male protagonist is an old man and the female protagonist is a girl who could be most probably at the age of sixteen. The story is about a relationship between the old man the girl. The old man neither recapitulates nor shares anything about the girl. They live in the middle of the sea, surrounded by water everywhere she lives all her life in the boat without any idea about the external world that awaits her in the future.

There is mystery about the man towards the end of the movie. Old man marries the girl and they take a small voyage on another boat. Finally, old man plays the bow and the girl lies into the music. Old man jumps in the sea and the boat continues its journey towards the mother boat with the girl who is sedated by the music played by the man on the bow. There is a spiritual and highly mysterious representation of the events that the girl starts to enjoy her sex with the old man in the sedated condition. The arrow which has been sent by the old man at the time of his suicide reaches back to the boat and amazingly falls in to the gap of the girl’s thighs. From here onwards she begins to have her orgasm. And finally we see the virginal blood on her underskirt.

All this events have been witnessed by a young man who loved the girl. The mystification of the death of the old man, the spiritual orgasm and, finally, the virginal blood show the everlasting relationship between the old man the girl created through the beauty of silence the mystic communication of the bow music.

The movie is highly spiritual and recommends audience participation in the process of silencing the whole life in to a small boat anchored in the middle of a calm sea. The movie romanticizes the maximum levels of silence and the music without any lyrics.