Media Log 2: Movie Analysis for Miracle in Cell No 7

THERE IS NO SOLUTION BUT ONE 

A movie that brings everyone’s eyes to tears as it gradually breaks your heart because of the pure love of Lee Yong-go, a mentally impaired father, to his daughter Ye-sung, a six-year old girl. Ye-sung is a fan of Sailor Moon. 

This movie seeks the attention of the public not just because of its family-related issues but also because it tackles about certain global social, political and educational issues. People do not only watch it for its content but rather because of the striking realities about today’s world. Filipinos are able to relate, feeling the pain every time they watch it. Some would repeatedly view the film and still cry on each scenario over and over again. 

It can be seen on how people tend to use someone’s weaknesses, illness and love just to get what they want. In the movie, they took advantage of the protagonist to accomplish their job to make him look guilty. They wanted him to look like the real criminal just to have someone to blame and to excuse them from their workload. Justice was not well served to people like Lee Yong-go. It was denied because the authority took sides. People are really afraid of the authority that is why they just follow what they have been ordered because they do not want to lose their jobs or they do not want the authority to destroy their lives by hurling wrong accusations about them. Sometimes they are left without choices; but if they were to choose between the right and the wrong, they knew that there will always be consequences. That is why, they will opt to choose those that will not harm them especially their family. This was very apparent when Lee Yong-go’s lawyer did not do his job well to protect his defendant. 

Prisoners are always being regarded as bad people even though some of them are just victims of wrong accusations. Most of them had their life-changing experiences when they were in jail and were able to make new friendships. They have found true and lifetime friends who will not leave them behind because they have had the same experiences. After they have paid off all their wrongdoings in the past it seemed that they are still bound to pay further for a lifetime, this is because people around them still judge them, even after serving their sentence. Most of them are taken for employment because of their police records. Just like in the trial in the last part of the movie, the ex-convicts said that they have been branded as to say nothing but lies anymore. 

Illiteracy is also somehow tackled in the movie. People get to bully them for not knowing how to read or for reading and writing slowly. But in this movie, it is taught that everyone could learn how to write and read as long as you are patient to teach them how to do so. Also, if they really want to learn, they must first have the initiative to learn so that they could acquire easily what has been taught to them. 

After years of suffering from the truth that his father died helplessly, Ye-sung, Lee Yong-go daughter, did her best to prove his father’s innocence by becoming a lawyer and re-opening the case of his father. Her love for his father was indeed immeasurable just like how his father loves her. She ignored the fact that she may be opposing the authority or not. For her, she must seek the justice for his father. She wanted so much for justice to prevail – that justice which was not given to them when she was still young because they were poor, powerless and lacked knowledge about the things that were happening around them. 

It is observed and proven in today’s society that rich people get what they want because they have the power to control everything. They could even control justice in their hands. Just like in different political situations here in the Philippines, even though they are proven of graft and corruption, they could still go outside the prison or enjoy their lives inside the prison because they are given everything they wanted to have. People tend to get frightened and manipulated by those politicians over and over again. It is like a cycle that will never end because of the truth that lies behind it—that we are afraid of the authority and powerful people and it is really hard to change and overcome.