The film takes a long road to spirituality, though, with plenty of stops for violence and perversion along the way. Like Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, this story is determined to put core Christian principles to the harshest tests imaginable. What does it mean for God's forgiveness to extend to everyone? Can a just God really forgive every sin Gang-do commits — sins that seem to get worse with each scene, and which go unpunished amid a grim temporal landscape of unchecked decay?
Then Pieta, which won the Golden Lion at last year's Venice Film Festival, gets even more complicated. The woman's seemingly boundless compassion for Gang-do, however unearned, starts to rub off, inhibiting his ability to do his job as his capacity for sympathy starts to flower. He's changed by her kindness toward him, even if her seeming goodness is not what it first appears.
Which raises another question relevant to modern Christianity: What does it mean to practice virtue in the service of a faith that can never be verified — one that might even be misplaced?
Kim offers no easy answers, and never backs away from the toughness of the questions, in a film that's ugly in both its material and its presentation. Apart from a few shots of nature breaking through on the edges of the city, Pieta stays deep in the squalor of its setting, often using a handheld approach that makes escape feel impossible.
It's tough but rewarding viewing, highlighted by Jo's enigmatic performance; she suggests there may be divine motivations behind her character's professed reasons for helping Gang-do, then never quite abandons that suggestion even after Pieta reveals the true source of what drives her. That's fitting for a film that, even amid the muck and blood, holds out the possibility of finding some hard-won hope. (Recommended)