The Korean movie “Poetry” which opens at the Pasadena Playhouse 7 today, is a subtle examination of two women: one in her sixties and a girl who we never really meet, but who is the catalyst for the events. Each is victimized by men in different ways.

At the beginning, we hear the sound of water and see a river. Then we hear the voices of young children, boys. There’s no translation to their conversation. One of them spots something floating and at first he isn’t sure what it is. It’s just a speck of white, but we soon see this is the body of a girl floating face down. When the camera zooms in for a close up of the body, we see the movie’s title, “Poetry.” Why the girl drowned becomes the basis of far reaching tragedies.

From there we see another mother on TV coverage, a woman somewhere in the Middle East who is emotionally torn up by the death of her son and the violence in that unspecified area. This news coverage is being watched by patients waiting to see a doctor.

The older woman is Mija (Yun Jung-hee) who is one of those women who dyes her hair black and dresses neatly–like a lady. She is middle class, but has an air of refinement above her economic status. There’s nothing in her clothes that suggest trendy or even classic, but rather unassuming and inoffensive. She is waiting to see a doctor because of some tingling in her arms and her inability to remember words like electricity or wallet. The doctor tells her she has Alzheimer’s disease.

Mija cares for her grandson Wook (Lee David) because her daughter is divorced and has moved to a different city to work. To earn money, Mija cleans house and bathes an elderly man (Kim Hira) who has been paralyzed by a stroke. Mija is someone who cares for people, but neglects to care for herself.

Of the people she sees daily, no one seems to really listen to her. Not the daughter of the elderly man whom she tells about a mother, driven mad by her daughter’s suicide. Not the neighbor drying things. Not her grandson. She tells no one about her diagnosis even though she speaks with her daughter regularly.

Mija enrolls in a poetry class at a cultural center, despite the passed deadline. One gets the feeling that she might never have dared such a thing before but this is a coping mechanism. Maybe it was on her bucket list.

The male teacher tells the class, “The most important thing in life is seeing…It’s important to see things around us.” For most people, he assures this mixed class of men and women of all ages, they have never truly seen something as common as an apple.

In the movie, the story of the young girl, Park Heejin, and Wook and his friends parallels that of Mija and the fathers of Wook’s friends. We only hear about what happened to the children, but we see how Mija is coerced into following the decisions of the group of fathers, despite her own feelings and despite her economic status. Although the men call her an “old clueless woman,” we come to understand in the end how much she really sees.

Mija is the only one of the group who attends a service for the girl, Park Heejin, whose Christian name was Agnes. Sitting in the back, Mija seems out of place, but a couple of Agnes’ schoolgirl friends stare at Mija.

Is it a coincidence that the girl is named Agnes, after the virgin martyr, the patron saint of chastity, gardeners, girls, rape victims and virgins?  Saint Agnes was about 12 when she refused to marry the prefect’s son and was condemned to rape at a brothel before her execution. If so, one wonders if the same care was taken in the choice of Korean names?

In the movie, Agnes left a diary about her situation, saying that the six boys raped her at school for six months. According to the vice principal at the school, few people know about the diary, but perhaps he is wrong.

From another woman, Mija learns that instead of looking for poetic inspiration, one should look for true feelings and write things down with honesty.

In the United States, it would seem impossible to consider this movie without reflecting on Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project and the suicide of Tyler Clementi. Clementi was an 18-year-old student at Rutgers University in New Jersey who jumped off the George Washington Bridge on 22 September 2010. His sexual encounter with another man was live-streamed on the Internet by his roommate Dharun Ravi and another dorm mate, Molly Wei without his knowledge.

Last year’s suicide of Phoebe Prince perhaps is closer to the situation represented in the movie, but while Prince’s situation resulted in a Massachusetts anti-bullying task force and legislation on anti-bullying, her suicide did not spark  a national or international movement.

If gay and lesbians are 10 percent of the population, consider that women and girls are 51 percent. For women, the constant and life-long male condescension and cruelty and the invisibility of women against male concerns is demoralizing. Unlike gay and lesbian men, women have no choice of being in or out of the closet.

The ugliness of the male chauvinism, in different aspects of life, contrasts the beauty that Mija attempts to see. This seems to be the theme of “Poetry.” Even something that seeks beauty like poetry can be degraded from Mija’s viewpoint. Yet this movie isn’t heavy-handed. South Korean director Lee Chang-dong layers images poetically. There are no pronouncements of facts or legal or moral concerns. Lee just introduces images, that slowly, quietly and naturally lead us to the ending.

Yoon, who came out of retirement for this movie, leads us down this path, in a delicately nuanced performance that suggests both clarity and a growing fog in the mysteries of the mind and the love of a mother and a grandmother.