Mimang (2023)

Mimang 🚗 미망

Mimang follows a man and a woman over fours years of life, and the people they encounter as they walk through the changing streets of Seoul. 

Mimang has many different meanings in Korean:

“Being unable to make sense from ignorance.”

“Being unable to forget what one wants to forget.”

“Searching far and wide.”

The meaning changes depending on the context it’s used in, and I think part of the reason for using Mimang as the title is because this movie is going to mean different things, to different people. 

Depending on your life experience this movie may mean everything to you, remind you of a single memory, or mean absolutely nothing. 

It’s not a traditional narrative story but more of a character study told through conversation, showing how people change over time, and the noticeable differences based on interactions they have with the same person at different points in their life. 

Even though I never felt emotionally invested in what was going on, the growth of characters over the four years is something I feel like I get now, in a way I wouldn’t have understood when I was younger. There’s people we have had in our lives that were nice to have around but time, space, and life are forces that pull in different ways and may not allow for those things to exist passed those certain moments. This reminded me a lot of a Korean movie I watched last year, The Novelists Film (소설가의 영화). In the same vein it uses conversation as a means to convey the human experience, as mundane or blasé as it may be. 

Mimang makes you a fly on the wall, an honest observer to the moments you may forget - but that are never really gone. 

Enjoy! 

7/10 🍿 🎥 

Runtime: 1hr32mins 

Where: Toronto International Film Festival

Mimang Review (2023) The Richmond Reviewer.
미망 Review (2023) The Richmond Reviewer

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