Hitting all my emotional kinks
Apr. 17th, 2011 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieBarely minutes into ep 4 of Will It Snow for Christmas and am reminded as to why I loved what bits of it I've seen as it aired. Lee Kyung Hee's dramas always create these layers of emotions of an almost hothouse intensity - the plot is always secondary to bringing out whatever mood, relationships and emotional truth she wants to convey. This brief little scene:
Oh, what an emotional punch it packs. There is so little said (she says nothing at all, actually), no voices are raised, but the hidden layers of meaning is are so powerful. (For context, Han Ye Seul was sleeping outside her faithless fiance's apartment and Go Soo, who is the man's neighbor, saw it, saw she was sick, and took her in. Now it's the next morning and the fiance stopped by). Everything Go Soo does and says seems so innocuous but is driven by his feelings for her and his anger at the man who left her. The way he politely explains what happened last night and then feels her forehead for fever, as if the other man isn't there, the way he politely tells the other man he should take her to the hospital and adds "unless you are too busy, I can do that then." (oooh burn!)
Not to mention the chemistry. Ahhh, the chemistry. I have yet to see a LKH drama without an insane chemistry between the leads.
You know, I've watched four LKH dramas - this, Sang Do Let's Go to School, A Love to Kill, and Thank You, and one of the things they have in common is that the protagonists are always outcasts - not just physically, but emotionally. Often, they are outcast in a very status sense (Rain is a gigolo in SD and a thug in ALTK, Gong Hyo Jin is ostracized as a single mother by her island community (and a mother of a child with HIV, no less)), but even if their societal status is OK on the surface, they are deeply emotionally wounded and isolated and odd. Take Gong Hyo Jin's teacher in SD - yes, respectable profession, doctor fiance, seemingly normal life, but underneath it all is someone permanently broken by her childhood and her past. In ALTK, Shin Minah's successful actress is suicidal and wandering her life in search of meaning, and in Thank You, Jang Hyuk is broken by his gf's death. That ever-present trauma and fragility is present in both the protagonists of WISFC - sure, they both have normal 'societal' lives - he's an architect, she's a medical student, but they are both so very broken. From what I remember of my first 'sort-of' watch of this, she wanders through life as walking-wounded, mourning her brother, lacking confidence and hope. And for him, the scars of his childhood remain and the guilt over things that aren't his fault and a deep-seated belief of being unworthy of any possible happiness.
Anyway, ILY, drama!
Oh, what an emotional punch it packs. There is so little said (she says nothing at all, actually), no voices are raised, but the hidden layers of meaning is are so powerful. (For context, Han Ye Seul was sleeping outside her faithless fiance's apartment and Go Soo, who is the man's neighbor, saw it, saw she was sick, and took her in. Now it's the next morning and the fiance stopped by). Everything Go Soo does and says seems so innocuous but is driven by his feelings for her and his anger at the man who left her. The way he politely explains what happened last night and then feels her forehead for fever, as if the other man isn't there, the way he politely tells the other man he should take her to the hospital and adds "unless you are too busy, I can do that then." (oooh burn!)
Not to mention the chemistry. Ahhh, the chemistry. I have yet to see a LKH drama without an insane chemistry between the leads.
You know, I've watched four LKH dramas - this, Sang Do Let's Go to School, A Love to Kill, and Thank You, and one of the things they have in common is that the protagonists are always outcasts - not just physically, but emotionally. Often, they are outcast in a very status sense (Rain is a gigolo in SD and a thug in ALTK, Gong Hyo Jin is ostracized as a single mother by her island community (and a mother of a child with HIV, no less)), but even if their societal status is OK on the surface, they are deeply emotionally wounded and isolated and odd. Take Gong Hyo Jin's teacher in SD - yes, respectable profession, doctor fiance, seemingly normal life, but underneath it all is someone permanently broken by her childhood and her past. In ALTK, Shin Minah's successful actress is suicidal and wandering her life in search of meaning, and in Thank You, Jang Hyuk is broken by his gf's death. That ever-present trauma and fragility is present in both the protagonists of WISFC - sure, they both have normal 'societal' lives - he's an architect, she's a medical student, but they are both so very broken. From what I remember of my first 'sort-of' watch of this, she wanders through life as walking-wounded, mourning her brother, lacking confidence and hope. And for him, the scars of his childhood remain and the guilt over things that aren't his fault and a deep-seated belief of being unworthy of any possible happiness.
Anyway, ILY, drama!
