🔸️I've been hearing a lot of complaints that a little brat like Sang Woo is not a realistic portrayal of a naughty kid. Well. I grew up with my grandmother who is currently 83 years old. I was spending the holidays at her house with no hot water and a toilet outdoors. I can't compare that to the rural Korea of 2000s, but as I watched the movie I felt so strangely familiar with its world.

🔸️Moving from the small apartments with almost sterile cleanliness that my mom maintained to the house with mosquitoes, bugs and mice running around always required an adaptation period. Old people can't put as much effort into cleaning, and their eyesight and memory are bad. I would often ask grandma to cook something, and when she put the salt in twice or even trice I would push the dishes aside and say they are disgusting. When grandma didn't understand what I said I would call her deaf and not repeat my words on purpose. I would sometimes refuse to thread a needle for her. She didn't kick me out of her house, and she wasn't saint nor very patient. She just new I was a silly kid. After a couple of days of being squeamish I started washing the dishes and dusting by myself, and even eat the soup with a drown midge in it. In the end of the summer I didn't want to come back home.

🔸️집으로... is everything but manipulative. The kid in the story isn't coming over the grandmother's house voluntarily like me. He has problems in his family, he feels abandoned for a weird person he doesn't really know. If you look into your childhood you could probably find the moments you acted like Sang Woo even if you didn't admit it to yourself. There are many moments when the boy does good things, he's not plain evil. It's insincere to call him a piece of sht because most of us were the same and have forgotten that.

As I looked at Kim Eul Boon I couldn't stop thinking how much has she lived through. She saw the Japanese occupation and all the Six Republics of Korea. And how many more old people lived off their gardens in the same conditions as the main character in 2000s?

🔸️The movie might not be the most subtle or "intellectual", but it has a strong core. I see now, Minari was definitely inspired by The Way Home. There is nothing extraordinary in its cinematography, or acting, or the screenplay, but all of them are very organic. That's what makes people love the movie.