There are spoilers in this review.

Beautifully filmed and well written.

I was really surprised after watching this movie because I didn't expect much. I thought I would just skim through it and be like meh but ended up watching the whole thing and even liking it!

First of all, acting is pretty good, these people know what they are doing. All characters are well written, lovable and hateful in their own ways. But I am a little bit disappointed with the screenwriting in general. I didn't expect this movie to be so black and white about the moral codes.

One of the messages is that love is timeless. I like that message the most. An old man wishing he was young again so he could love freely. It's pretty sad if you ask me, that just because he is old it's wrong to have those beautiful feelings. So he pours those feelings into a beautiful poem which, unfortunately, gets stolen by his student. It's as if his feelings got stolen and sold, disgraced. And as if that wasn't enough the student also steals the purity of EunGyo. He pretty much tramples Juk Yo's heart, smashes it into a miserable paddle. I don't know, what he does is like peeing on his teacher's face after receiving all the teaching and then stealing the rest what he could. He gets totally swallowed by greed. No wonder Juk Yo retaliates in the end, I'm not sure if he really hoped for such a thing happen in the end or if he just wanted to scare Ji Woo a bit. I don't know, but I kind of feel for him. I mean he got old, lost his glory (to Ji Woo), lost everything and then he realized that he wasn't even allowed to love because that would be simply wrong. If I was him I would wonder about it too. I mean, it's love. And well, Juk Yo wasn't even asking for much, he just enjoyed her presence and the innocence. He was probably reminded of his own youth and all that...

I actually enjoyed Ji Woo's and EunGyo's interactions. I liked it how Ji Woo was annoyed by how easily EunGyo managed get on Juk Yo's good side. He constantly listened to her and allowed he to do whatever she wanted while being extremely strict with Ji Woo. As I watched Ji Woo and Eun Gyo together I was waiting for some kind of atonement for JI Woo's character. That maybe her innocence would touch his heart too and make him view things in different light. But instead, she only turned these two men against each other. Love can be ugly too. It was clear why Ji Woo couldn't write as beautifully as Juk Yo, because his spirit was confined within the society's norms and he wasn't able to break free. Too many superficial things mattered to him while Juk Yo, well he was just a poet who loved writing, that's all.

In a way, I think Ji Woo was a really sad character too, completely trapped. He struggled to get free but he was too petty and close-minded, ambitious without the talent. Juk Yo was trapped too but, at least, he had an open mind. I don't think Ji Woo cared about EunGyo on the emotional level, he might have been lonely, he definitely was and probably smitten by the poem too. He tried to live it but... how can you live the beauty of timeless love without feeling it? Maybe Juk Yo knew it, that what he write could never be lived because once the purity is lost it's lost forever.