The Classic starts with Ji-hae and Soo-Kyoung attending the same university. Soo-kyoung and Sang-min are dating, but Ji-hae also had a crush on Sang-min. One day Ji-hae finds an old dusty box full of letters and a diary of her mother's first love, coincidentally similar to her situation with Sang-min. The movie then shifts to 1968, where Ji-hae's mother, Sung Joo-hee and Oh Joon-ha first met in the countryside, which is also the most romantic and memorable journey in the movie. Unfortunately Joo-hee was already a fiancé to Yoon Tae-soo, Joon-ha's best friend, through an arrange marriage by his father.

The director Kwak Jae-Yong link Ji-hae and her mother Joo-hee's story by occasionally shift back and forth between the two. Most of the movie was about Ji-hae's mother. So, there wasn't much story about Ji-hae and Sang-min. This gives less character development to Sang-min. The director also presented similarities and repetitions in events happened during Ji-hae's time and Joo-hee's time. For example, Ji-hae and Sang-min running in the rain was similar to the countryside scene where Joo-hee and Joon-ha were caught in the storm. Also, the scene where the group walks home from a school polka dance, Joon-ha and Joo-hee constantly glancing at each other was similar to Ji-hae and Sang-min in the art museum.

The pacing of the movie seems a bit slow in the middle. This leads me wondering where the story and the characters are heading toward to. Then the climax of the movie came in to resolve that problem. The movie also presented me a short battle scene that reminds me so much of Forest Gump.

The ending is where the director finally tied both stories together. The ending was sad, happy, and very emotional. I haven't seen such an emotional ending since Final Fantasy X. It is a video game, but it has a well developed story and characters. While the ending in Final Fantasy X is not similar to this movie, but the emotional impact was felt the same. As the character Sang-min said while directing his play, "you have to feel both happy and heartbroken."

In conclusion, this movie is simply also one of the best films of the year. If Korea had their own Academy Awards, this movie should be nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Score, and Best Cinematography. The movie offered so much memorable scenes that were beautifully captured by its cinematography and the music that accompanied it, this movie itself is a classic!

Very briefly, Classic tells two love stories, a girl falling in love with her best friend's beau, and her mother's first love, mainly through her eyes, browsing through the latter's diary.

The focus is mainly on the mother's story, with a little bit of the Cyrano plot, but the letters play a much smaller part here. The biggest flaw here is that the reason for Ju-hie (the mother) parting with Jun-ho is not convincing. That these two people, truly in love, would part just because Tae-so tries to hang himself for not being able to win the heart of a rich girl his father wants as a daughter-in-law verges on absurdity. In addition, to have Jun-ho go to war and blinded so as to craft a tear-jerking scene also fails to move, at least not this viewer, who was deeply moved by My Sassy Girl.

The second story, of the daughter Ji-hae, likewise fails to strike a cord of resonance, mainly because of the unimpressive performance of Cho In-sung as Sang-min. Generally, the plot is too contrived, culminating in Sang-min being the son of Jun-ho. The very essence of the plot, the unfulfilled love of the first generation finally answered in the second, backfires in taking away some of the beauties in the simplicity of the two separate love stories.

While a bit of a slip when compared to My Sassy Girl, Classics has individual scenes and elements that are commendable. I particularly like the two love scenes in the rain, of mother and daughter, both beautifully filmed to bring out the best of the traditional charm in Korean romances. The title melody (Korean, I think) is hauntingly lovely, though not as captivating as "I believe" in My Sassy Girl (which has to be the most beautiful film melody in recent years).

Son Ye-jin is unquestionably the reason to watch this film. While not as pretty as Jun Ji-Hyun (My Sassy Girl), Son has her own quiet charm that grows as you watch. After an impressive debut in Lover's Concerto, Son has considerable challenge in playing both mother and daughter in Classic. In an interview, director Kwak said that initially, he intended to have two actresses play the two roles but as shooting progressed, he became convinced that Son should play both. Looking at the result, I think that separately, Son did well on both roles. However, if you put them together, the inhibition of the "modern" daughter and the expressive style of the "traditional" mother blur the difference between the two so that the plaited hair of the mother sometimes serves as the most distinctive difference. Maybe I'm too critical.