Be With You
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One of the best and worst places to ugly cry while watching a movie is in the middle of a trans pacific international flight from Korea to the USA.
Tears are streaming down your face, the hum of the plane is strangely comforting, but at the same time you get the occasional concerned or amused look from fellow passengers around you.
So this was me with Be With You, a Korean movie starring Son Ye Jin and So Ji Sup (2 mainstays in the Korean movie/entertainment industry). It’s a movie about magic and grief and love.
Basically, a father and son lose their wife/mom. But strangely before the mom dies, she promises the son that she'll be back with the rainy season. Lo and behold, she does come back, but she has no memory of her adorable son or her husband and she has to learn about this strange new life she has. The story ends with everyone realizing that she’ll actually be gone when the rainy season ends. And basically, this rainy season they have together is the father and son’s way of gradually being able to accept her death.
The ugly crying came from a few different things. One, I cry a lot watching movies about love because I am very pessimistic about love on the surface but deep down I am a total romantic (a reluctant, skeptical romantic you can say).
In this particular movie and moment, one cry moment was when the movie was exploring the idea of choice in love: choosing to prioritize your relationship over things like money.
I cried because the movie made me think about how I’ve been feeling very alone in the way I view true romance. One of the ways being I hate when people (especially people around me who I love), take their loved ones for granted. I hate when people think love is made from some kind of destiny and that meeting “the one” means you have to try less hard to make a beautiful relationship. I am firmly in the camp that love is a continuous choice: you have to continuously choose to give love to the people you love. And that means sometimes, you have to not choose other things (which might be work or money or whatever).
The second cry was me totally falling for one of the many heartstring pull moments in the movie. The thing about these moments is that you totally see what the movie producers are trying to do (they are trying to get you to cry). And when it doesn’t work, you kind of feel like you won! And when it does work - you just totally bawl and you go “good one, producers, you got me there.” Is that toxic? I dunno.
Anyway, the heartstring moment that totally worked on me: the mom goes to see her son’s school performance when all the students announce their dreams. And instead of talking about his dreams, the son talks about how he’s going to do all the things his mom used to do for him with his dad and how he’s going to be OK.
Yup. Producer got me good there. 30,000 feet in the air!
All in all. Three ugly cry stars.