However, one only has to look at his various 'normal' interactions - with his father (who’s absolutely obsessed with finding him a woman) and his refusal to discuss why he has never married or even ever brought a girl home his on/off (increasingly off) friendship with a girl he went to university with and the fact that every time the relationship edges towards romance he messes everything up by opening his mouth and saying the wrong thing or even his work clients’ statements that they feel uncomfortable in his company - to see that he has issues with interactions, openness and even empathy to a degree too and those around him at times fail to understand where he’s coming from.Īside from him being a lawyer and Ji-woo dreaming of being one though she knows she never can be, it doesn’t take much of a step to see a link of sorts between normal man and disabled little girl even if their issue levels are entirely different and causally unrelated. That telling statement in itself quietly but completely sums up everything Lee Han deftly says throughout Innocent Witness about humanity within disability.Īgain in terms of the slowly building relationship between Soon-ho and Ji-woo, it initially appears they are a universe apart – he’s mentally normal has a successful career is a productive member of society and has (apparently) no problems interacting with all and sundry, whereas she is none of the above. Soon-ho then asks her how she managed to pretend and Ji-woo simply says she practiced. Soon-ho asks Ji-woo how she likes her new school and what her classmates are like to which Ji-woo replies they’re weird but that she likes it there because she doesn’t anymore have to pretend to be normal. When he first meets her and tries to talk to her he noticeably bends down to her level and speaks in a very clear, measured, slow and kind of loud(ish) tone – like he’s talking ‘at' someone with a reduced mental capacity – but as they slowly get to know each other his conversations become far more natural, normal, human.įrom Ji-woo’s perspective she knows she’s different but in a culminating scene outside her house in which she and Soon-ho talk about her having started at a special school (in a manner screaming of trust, understanding and even friendship on the part of both) Lee Han deftly points to the fact that that difference too comes from the point of view of ‘normal’ people with a lack of understanding. Soon-ho’s gradual understanding that Ji-woo is a person as legitimate as any other, albeit with mental issues, rather than simply being defined by her disability is also mirrored in his conversations and interactions with her as their relationship and trust builds.
Attempting to be sympathetic, Soon-ho states “If only she didn’t have autism” to which her mother responds that without her illness she wouldn’t be “my Ji-woo”. This idea is beautifully and gently underlined in a conversation between Soon-ho and Ji-woo’s mother when he discovers how young Ji-woo was when she started speaking and how soon and quickly after that she learnt to read (her mother thought her daughter was a genius until prior to her mental disability diagnosis). However, that really is just the tip of the wedge, as it were, for director Lee Han goes to great lengths to allow viewers to gradually look through her disability to see the deeply intelligent child beneath and show that though her interactions may appear stilted and remote and her behaviour, numerous physical quirks and regular vocal outbursts decidedly odd and even off-putting, there are legitimate, definable and justifiable reasons for each and every one of her seeming abnormalities, for anyone taking the time to try to understand the world from her unique perspective. On the surface, Soon-ho’s tireless attempts to connect meaningfully with little Ji-woo speak of the sheer difficulties she constantly faces in relating to others as a sufferer of 'autism spectrum disorder' and indeed the impediment to being understood by so called ‘normal’ people her condition brings, and that’s before we even mention the resultant persecution she suffers especially from her non-disabled classmates.
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While the court case/murder trial is of course at the core of proceedings with everything else revolving around it, Innocent Witness is as much if not more so a drama showing how Soon-ho’s various relationships have made him the man he is and indeed shape who he is set to become, even if he doesn’t realise it himself.
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