3-Iron

Director Kim Ki-duk uses silence as a mysterious character and as a multiple metaphor in the movie. Silence can mean so many unspoken emotions which will hit you hard like a golf ball from a 3-ironed golf club. When you stare at painting, you observe the character present in the frame so closely to absorb something that every other aspect surrounding will be negligible. Similarly Kim kept his two protagonists silent, so that the audience could observe the characters so deeply and understand that intimacy and connection they both shared for each other. Silence is also a metaphor for the kind of people in this movie. People who are invisible, unvalued , unloved and lovely. No one hears them, no one cares or loves them. But Tae-suk a silent drifter enters these people's houses and heals their pain. Especially for Sun-hwa who was an unhappy, abused wife. Tae-suk's character also indicates social and economical inequality, a man with no family, no money enters specifically in rich people's houses and spends his day at his leisure, also his obsession with the golf(often referenced as a rich people game). Everything indicates his desire to live that life but also a sense of pity for those people, because despite having everything in their life, they are not happy. I loved the ending, how Tae-suk literally becomes a shadow. Almost like a ghost lurking behind their backs. He hides himself in the 3rd dimension of the frame where the human eye cannot reach. And that the final shot of the film, in which Sun-hwa and Tae-suk merge together and stand together on a weight scale that displays a weight of zero, implies that he has absorbed her completely and now she is also a shadow just like him invisible to our eyes. A union that only they can understand and feel because its not embedded in a reality or a dream. I say that because i feel both of these characters can be pigments of the imagination of each other. Tae-suk can be that invisible hero who saves her from this abusing marriage and evokes those suppressed emotions which were lost somewhere. Likewise Sun-hwa can be a figment of Tae-suk, we see whenever tae suk enters any house he takes a selfie with photos of people who lived there. Almost trying to console himself from his loneliness, so he must have imagined Sun-hwa in that empty house after seeing her photo frame on the wall and hearing a call of an unhappy husband. This movie can be so many things both meaningful for some and stupid and silly for some, it is ambiguous, mysterious and something which can be fully absorbed only by heart who understands those feelings. A truly unique romantic film.