As someone deeply familiar with the social context of South Korea, this film resonated with me on a profoundly emotional level. It was a work that delivered not only various moral lessons but also a stark warning about the aspects of human nature that we must all recognize and guard against within ourselves.
I was reminded of the film Frankenstein, but while that movie relied on grandeur, The Face masterfully conveys the diverse "faces" of humanity through the humble, gritty corners of Korea. It captures a sensory experience that finds a twist—much like a warm ray of sunshine—amidst a stagnant, musty atmosphere.
The name that serves as the film’s central, recurring pulse is Jeong Young-hee. She is a woman shrouded in mystery, without even a single proper photograph left behind by her estranged family. The curiosity of her "hidden face" and her death from over 40 years ago kept me gripped until the very end.
One of the film's most striking keywords is "Interest" (or Curiosity). The protagonist’s husband, Lim Young-gyu, is a man born blind who overcame his disability to become a master seal engraver with 50 years of experience. While he is the subject of a documentary, he is also an object of "interest" to those around him—whether that interest manifests as ridicule or admiration. In the past, he was mocked for his blindness; later, he gained fame for his talent in carving beautiful characters into wood despite his sightlessness.
The revelation of hidden secrets brought a simultaneous sense of shock, relief, and gratitude. This was likely because the film’s direction forced me to follow the perspective of their son, Lim Dong-hwan, causing me to deeply synchronize with his emotions.
The film constantly haunts the viewer with the question: "What did Jeong Young-hee actually look like?" Surprisingly few people actually knew her, and those who did—starting with her own family—described her as "ugly." Hearing this term for the first time at a funeral was incredibly jarring and unpleasant. Why was there such an obsession with her physical appearance? I felt this was a deliberate cinematic device, as such a fixation felt almost surreal and difficult to comprehend through a purely realistic lens.
The second keyword is "Memory," or perhaps "Perception." The film illustrates how we live through imperfect memories—distorted and refracted by overflowing emotions. Jeong Young-hee was someone universally disliked, both by the family she left behind and at the factory where she worked. The reason? She "spread strange rumors." However, the audience and her son, Dong-hwan, intuitively realize the truth: she was simply a person who spoke only the facts of what she saw and heard. Her stubborn honesty is depicted through a visceral, albeit uncomfortable, scene where she soils herself just to keep her word about returning from the restroom within a minute.
This leads to the final keyword: "Truth." The flashbacks shown toward the end are essentially the subjective imaginings of the blind Young-gyu. His imagination, reinterpreted through a sense of victimhood, defiles the "face" of the wife who was the only one to truly recognize his value.
Young-gyu knew how to engrave beauty and understood the "truth" that the ugly is despised while the beautiful is praised. Yet, did he fail to realize that the words of others and the situations they create are not always the truth? Why did he not "feel" the truth in the face of his kind and righteous wife, whom he could have touched and understood most accurately?
Young-hee, who spoke only facts, eventually triggers Young-gyu’s latent insecurity and rage by saying, "You are the only one who doesn't just see me as ugly like the others." Young-gyu misinterprets this as her mocking him, as if she were using her own "ugliness" to highlight his pathetic state. This loss of reason shatters their lives.
The recurring theme of "Ugliness" reveals the cowardice and shamelessness of those trying to evade responsibility. The factory manager calls Young-hee "ugly" because she exposed his sexual assault; others do so because she revealed the infidelity of a powerful father figure. Only at the end, when her photograph reveals a perfectly ordinary face, do we realize that "ugliness" was merely a subjective label placed on someone who made them feel uncomfortable or guilty.
Ultimately, the film suggests that "Ugliness and Beauty" are subjective, and asserting such subjectivity as absolute truth is an act of extreme rudeness. If we only point fingers at the antagonists, we are no different from them—evading our own flaws by blaming others. What matters is communication and taking responsibility for one’s own perspective.
My final takeaway was that those swayed by the subjectivity of others lose sight of the essence of life. Regardless of how others treat or manipulate us, we must hold onto the truth we have found and experienced ourselves to protect what is precious. The world is full of dangers, but in this film, the greatest threat to what is precious was oneself. Truth and beauty are things that, much like a blind man, we must reach out and "feel" over and over again to truly grasp.
Young-gyu claimed to know everything, but in that moment of certainty, he became truly blind to the truth. By chasing an idealized version of beauty, he became a "murderer" who destroyed the real beauty right beside him. As the PD’s cry echoes: "You shouldn't have solved it this way!"