Romance
SNOWDROP: SOOHO’S LOVE SONG
Not a review, just my thoughts and feelings.
“I want to live singing
those kinds of songs
to the people I love”
Lim Sooho
A gentle breeze brushes his face and Sooho opens his eyes.
The wind caresses him.
He looks for her, turns his head and finds her there, close to him.
The anxiety that makes his heart clench whenever Youngro is not by his side subsides.
Their gazes meet and Sooho gets lost in her eyes.
He could spend his life getting lost in those eyes.
Every time he looks at Youngro, he remembers the moment her hands had awkwardly grasped his and they first exchanged glances. The control he had always had over his emotions crumbled to dust along with the tower of matches falling on the table.
He had lived so many lives before that day.
In so many different places, met so many people he couldn’t remember their faces, but he did not know what butterflies in the stomach were up till then, Sooho.
He had never experienced that weird feeling of mixed astonishment and pleasure.
He had never felt so helpless.
Meeting Youngro had felt like the breeze coming through that window.
It caused him to open his eyes and unveil a truth he had not thought possible.
That girl with the big eyes, small nose and soft lips that reminded him of the bunnies he used to play with as a child. She had, by touching him, led him on a journey of self-discovery.
Of a self who he did not know existed but desperately strived to be.
There, where he grew up, he was taught that the reasons why life is worth living are the same it’s worth dying for.
Sooho firmly believes this and has always lived by that credo.
Family, honour, loyalty, driven by an unmatched sense of morality.
Meeting Youngro reminded him, however, that the key to his life is love.
It has always been love, even if he has not always been fully aware of it.
That’s what she asks him in the attic, Youngro, while making coffee.
She asks him how he ended up living that life he’s living, and he cannot answer.
He cannot come to terms with the fact that the desire to save Soohui, that gesture of love towards his sister, led him to give up his choices.
In front of Youngro, he unravels.
He surrenders to the dream of being happy.
To the hope that love will make one happy.
And he kisses her.
Before Youngro, love had only brought him pain.
Love and pain for his father’s death.
Love and pain for the mother’s rejection.
The love for Soohui and the pain of living the life Lim Jirok had written for him.
Thanks to Youngro, it is finally clear to him what it means that what you want to live for is what you would die for.
Youngro awakens in him wishes and hopes that he had forgotten having inside.
He sees himself as a child, sitting around the bonfire, dreaming of living the life narrated in those songs his father sang.
When he discovers that life exists, it is too late to live it.
Still, that discovery is a katharsis and frees him from regrets. Loving Youngro gives meaning to everything. He falls for her and finds his purpose in loving her and spending his life by her side.
If he cannot live with her, she is worth dying for. Sooho feels the pain of the events that “turned him into a person who cannot be with her'” very deeply but still wants his love for Youngro to be the reason behind his choices. Youngro is his choice, and Sooho cannot accept giving her up. He cannot imagine feeling alive without her.
“If I were a normal guy, I would have spent all of my time with you.”
He records it on tape, in the dormitory, with the foreboding of not having a future with Youngro and not wanting one without. In the end, he is able to do just that: to spend every minute he has left with her and make it count.
He is not the master of his time, far from it.
But he can decide its intensity.
Despite all circumstances, despite fate, Sooho turns his life, from the moment he returns and takes her hostage, into an act of love.
He had already gifted her the dove, which he valued more than his own life, because, when leaving her, he wanted to give her his whole self.
In the days of the kidnapping, thanks to his feelings for her, Sooho is able to gain awareness of the fact he wasn’t living the life he wanted, not until he met her.
Youngro makes him the person he wants to be, and he discovers he is human in a way he hadn’t thought possible.
He wants to hug her, hold her, make her laugh and make her happy. He wishes to surrender to himself, but he can’t. His every glance is a “what if…”.
He is not allowed to show ordinary gestures of love.
Every moment he spends in the dormitory there is something he would like to do but does not do, would like to tell but does not tell.
He says goodbye so many times, and every time it is like dying inside, so he feels all the time given to him as a gift.
The knowledge that she loves him too is the only happiness he is granted.
And that’s enough.
And it makes him willing to give up his life for her.
Youngro saved him, giving him hope for a better meaning, a beautiful one.
He tells her that if the two of them had been ordinary people, he would have wanted to live his life singing songs to the people he loved.
This is what he does, first in the days of the kidnapping, then by dying in the attic.
He saves her as well, in his own way, and gives her something to hold on to.
Sooho’s life is the love song he sings for Youngro.
Pinching the strings of the guitar, he looks up.
This time he does not have to look for her, she is there.
Sitting at the table where they met, she looks at him and smiles.
She smiles.
He sings words of love.
Her eyes gleam.
It was his dream.
She made it possible.
Their eternity.
Talking about Snowdrop without devoting a special room to Lim Sooho wouldn’t be possible, because Sooho is the core of Snowdrop, his heart the protagonist of this poignant journey.
However, Snowdrop is undoubtedly a choral series, Sooho just gives “La” to what happens in the path of each character.
In the claustrophobic days of the kidnapping, everyone inside the dormitory comes to terms with the choices they made, regrets and dreams, even more than with danger and drama.
And at the end of those painful days, every character emerges from that dormitory having found their true selves, just like Sooho.
Snowdrop is an unconventional drama, everything related is so peculiar that the story is impossible to overlook and unthinkable to forget.
Not only because it is a love story lived in secret, told with delicate nuances of the script and the expressive intensity of the actors, enough to make it an imperishable ode to Love with a capital L that deserved the favours of literature and poetry over the centuries.
It is also a truly unique story of courage, from genesis to airing and beyond.
It has been thought out and wanted for years, and when it evolved from paper to project, nothing was simple, obvious nor ordinary.
Maybe this is the reason it ended up being one of the most loved series.
Because you can feel the passion, tenacity, and courage, put into its realisation.
Cast & crew must have experienced a siege-like reality, just like their characters in the dormitory, entrenched behind the will to make it through the storm they lived when filming.
Great, absolute credit for the amazing success of the project undoubtedly goes to the director, Jo Hyun Tak.
No hesitation, no second thought in telling a story that deserved to be told.
The strength of a true leader, hidden behind smiles and jokes, to make the atmosphere the most comfortable despite the issues and pressures..
Because you need to be fearless and have boundless trust in the actors you work with to entrust so much of the narrative to close-ups.
Only the greatest. Rarely in cinema, let alone in the series.
Opposite of an entertainment based on easy attractions and not always attuned to narrative and introspection, Jo Hyun Tak turns strongly against the tide and chooses to let us into the characters’ minds by letting the actors’ showcase their full expressiveness in front of the audience.
Snowdrop’s intensity lies pretty much in this, in its being filled with close-ups to introduce us to the narrow and somewhat intimate dormitory’s atmosphere.
Every close-up gives the audience a sense of the subtlest emotional perceptions of the characters.
The actors are responsible with every muscle of their face and nuance of their expressions of telling us the fragile interactions between the characters, in all the shades of their emotionality, palpable thanks to the highliting of every single ripple.
As a director, you must have a lot of courage to make such a prevailing use of close-ups.
So much courage and the luck to be able to count on a cast beyond comparison, in its ensemble and as individuality.
Jan SeungJo, Yoon SeAh, Yoo InNa, Kim MinGue, Jung Eugene, Jang InSub, Kim HyeYoon, Kim JongSoo, Heo JunHo, Park SungWoong, Lee HwaRyong, Jung YiSeo, Choi HeeJin, Jung SinHye, the sweet Kim Misoo, and all the others, performed what in another series and another context would have earned nominations, awards and recognition.
Not in Snowdrop, unfortunately, because all the courage shown by Jo HyunTak and the JTBC did not match an ounce of it in the shoes of sponsors and critics.
The series with the highest Twitter engagement of 2022, globally speaking, will enter 2023 with the knowledge that the recognition has not rolled in, neither will roll in.
As if awards counted, as if they were the measure of the value of art.
Art cannot be judged, only loved.
Love and courage count, and Snowdrop is full of them.
When I talked about Jo HyunTak’s brave choices in filming Snowdrop I deliberately skipped the bravest one, to give it the attention it deserves.
As the female lead in his drama Jo HyunTak casted Kim Jisoo.
The reasons why choosing Jisoo as the protagonist sounded risky and illogical were many, and they all seemed well-founded.
But they do not count, do not matter anymore.
Because by challenging clichés and prejudices and trusting his instincts, Jo HyunTak has given us the Youngro we all love and will carry in our hearts forever.
Youngro was not an easy character to play, far from it.
She enters the world of Snowdrop being yet almost a child, a naive dreamer, and ends up on the floor in that attic like a woman so aware of the meaning of life that she promises to keep on living to the man she loves and who is dying, showing a sign of courage lacking in literary characters like Juliet.
Courage, again, is the protagonist of Snowdrop’s beauty.
Because if the director showed courage in choosing her, Jisoo showed just as much in accepting the role.
To debut as a protagonist in the role of such a complex character required unique, specific, in a way, unusual skills.
Jisoo understood this and put in what an inexperienced person could put in: the humbleness of knowing that she was not a master of acting techniques or experiences like others.
Once she has put her humbleness at the disposal of the story, the result will have surprised the mean-minded, because her Youngro is the best Youngro the story could have had.
The Youngro that Snowdrop deserved.
Without claiming to build her character’s emotions, Jisoo gave Youngro her own.
She lived with her every moment and let expressiveness spring from the defences let down, from an invaluable emotional vulnerability.
The journey of growth that Youngro makes throughout the story is Jisoo’s journey.
With the freshness only a debutante could give to the character, she gave us a performance worthy of all praise and all love.
Of course, like any actor, she did not make the journey alone.
There was the director.
There were the other cast members.
There was Jung HaeIn.
Jung HaeIn.
Blessed be the tenacity Jo HyunTak demonstrated by wanting him as Lim Sooho.
Blessed his insistence and that famous case of beer because the moment Jung Haein embraced Snowdrop, he allowed a masterpiece to come to light.
A wonderful human being like Lim Sooho comes to life, almost like Michelangelo’s Prigioni, who shed their formless rock because they want to live.
Jung HaeIn created Lim Sooho with his bare hands from ice, a chisel from marble, and the colours of the soul on a blank canvas.
In the most delicate moment of his career, when he was marking the turning point he had so patiently built, – which the world was praising with D.P., and which he wanted to continue with titles as purposeful as Connect and Veteran – to accept the role in Snowdrop meant questioning the image the establishment had of him at the time, by exposing himself to the media storm and the petty retaliation that would have ensued.
Besides, he never lacked courage, at every step of his outstanding career.
Retrace the footprints of Jung HaeIn’s journey and you will see a consistency and coherence that is truly rare in today’s cinema and entertainment.
Never was a character of his taken for granted.
Never has he made banal choices.
Never has he backed away from challenging the canons of a society that can and must change.
He is the one behind his characters, those choices, those challenges.
Jung HaeIn is behind Lim Sooho.
He is In Lim Sooho, around Lim Sooho.
The reason for so much love toward the character he was playing can only be told by him, the actor.
What is certain is that nothing about how Jung Haein became Sohoo was imaginable or predictable.
He took the soul of this North Korean boy who was too young to be so broken, too good to not deserve a chance, and that soul he encapsulated in his heart.
With every beat of his heart he made him live and gave him a stage and a voice to tell a story that could not remain untold.
The artistic moment Jung HaeIn creates by performing Sohoo belongs to those masterpieces that escape all evaluation because they are too far above the ordinary canons of judgement.
Jung HaeIn does not play Sooho.
Jung Haein is Sooho.
Heart to heart, like a medium accepting to be entered by a wandering spirit, Jung Haein gave himself to Sooho.
He gave every part of himself to him, every cell of his body, every muscle, tendon, look, smile and tear, every chord of his soul.
He expressed his feelings and emotions with imperceptible nuances of poignant intensity.
He narrated Sooho’s thoughts and feelings with the contraction of a jaw, an arm muscle, or from the back. From the back, motionless.
No one before, only him, always.
Sooho passes through the Snowdrop days like an icy meteor entering the atmosphere and from ice directly becoming fire, to burn with a very short and very intense life until it is extinguished.
His story is so desperately sad as to be unacceptable.
None of us left that attic with comfort or hope, quite the opposite.
Sooho’s death is so bloody unfair, heart-wrenching, filled with anger and despair.
It is of poor worth knowing that a slightly different direction at one fork in the road could have been enough to save him, with an arc almost more consistent than the succession of events leading to his death.
We have travelled the whole journey by his side enough to know why he dies, there, in that attic. We cry with Youngro, and we would like to hold him, to keep him there.
But he dies.
With his eyes open, he never stops looking at Youngro, because he is dying and Youngro represents his own forever.
He looks at her in those last moments to always have her by his side, she will be all he remembers.
Though, he will not go away either.
He will not disappear.
The deepest mark of Snowdrop’s worth as a story and Sohoo as a character lies in Jung HaeIn’s final speech at the end of filming.
He says it between tears that flow as uncontrollably as Sooho’s feelings, leaving it there in a broken voice… Sooho will never be forgotten.
By saying that, magically, he turns him immortal.
Every time a tear is shed, or an emotion felt in his name, Sooho’s story will have made sense, and he will be alive in the hearts of those who remember him.
In the heart of Youngro.
Every day.
Until the end of time.
Because that is the power of Snowdrop
The power of love.
Love makes you immortal.
Federica
Edited by Emilia
Credits for the pictures to JTBC, Twitter account spicyhaein and Instagram account k_drama.photo
Mary Kills People – Raised by Wolves
It is a weird thing, trust, a delicate feeling. Whether you give or receive, you have to handle it with care because it takes very little to damage it and only a little more to break it.
When that happens, when you stay there, knowing that something that could have been will never be, fragments strike you like the reflections of sun on the water caressed by wind.
It is such a precarious feeling and it is said to be easier to love than to trust and to have someones confidence is an honor more precious than being loved.
Raised with Wolves’ absolute protagonist is trust.
Trust that you would give but too much pain keeps you from daring.
Trust that your logic would never give but the heart has already granted, no matter what.
Trust that has always been there, you’ve just never thought to call into question and that, however, is likely to crumble apart, crumbling even you.
I don’t want to sound corny though, watching Mary Kills People one episode after another, I am invariably struck by how much and how well everything contributes to a riveting, engaging narrative.
Examples are in every scene, proving mastery and dedication of all the professionals who contribute to wrap such a beautiful product.
Grady waiting for Mary framed by water transparency or Ben talking on his cell with the picturesque lake on his back, are just two examples of the will to engage the viewer in sharing not only a tale but the emotional warmth of the scene.
You can breathe harmony and mutual understanding behind the narrative, even in conflicts.
The continuity of direction by Holly Dale, undoubtedly ensures consistency to the canvas, from background to single details. Characters, scenery, lines, lights and sounds, everything spreads real emotion, rough, conflicting and uncertain, just like those in real life.
The most intense tones are those generated by conflicts and hardest conflicts are those within each character.
Trusting another person means giving that person the power to break your heart and hoping they won’t.
This hope is so fragile in Des… He is determined to avoid Mary, to give her the chance to break his heart.
Fear of betrayal, by the only person who counts on him, is so big that he prefers to play himself in the role of the villain, compromising its principles and let it all go to hell, not to have to test his friend loyalty.
Ben, on the contrary, wants to conquer Mary’s trust, intimately gratified by her cry for help.
Deserving, perhaps, even more than conquering, aware that he had tried to betray her confidence before earning it.
Then he says what he shouldn’t say, does what he shouldn’t do, goes where he shouldn’t go, as he didn’t know whether it is strongest the desire that Mary trusts him, or the confirmation that he can trust her.
His feelings for Mary, the irrational instinct to protect her from her own vulnerabilities, are so strong and pressing that, for Mary, he is willing to go to the limit of what his ethics allows. Maybe he would be ready to cross some limit too because of Mary. After all, Ben is aware he has got her and understands her reasons. However, knowing what Mary is doing, he disapproves, though, as only one who loves can do, he is ready to accept it…Indeed, he has already done so, almost earlier than Nicole (Hats off to Charlotte Sullivan’s extraordinary skill, delivering a character so complete and complex, with just a few brushes as an expert painter).
Ben accepted Mary without wonder and shyness, he doesn’t let what Mary does to be a reason to hold back his desire to be there for her.
He doesn’t allow Mary to be defined by her mistakes…
Ben’s ability to see the good in Mary is amazing in spite of the truth of what she does, which is, for him, burning, crystal and inescapable.
Ben seems ready to do anything for Mary. He admits with candor to Frank at the district.
For some reason she chose him. Him, the son of a happy couple who share a serene retirement in Florida. He, who was brought up on good and right, cannot hold back.
He cannot remain emotionless to what he saw in Mary, when, alone and desperate, she came knocking on his door.
That evening, two solitary beings took refuge in one another.
He is so sure of the vulnerability he saw behind her strength. A strength that only fear and pain feed.
He is so sure as to follow his instinct leading him to her side. He moves us most with the sincerity and tenderness with which he proposes the trip to Florida with Mary or with looks and the sweetness he reserves for her,later, at every Nicole sympathetic allusion.
This is why the disappointment of then, it hurts so much ….
That’s why Ben does not have the clarity of mind nor the calm to understand that Mary is going to tell him exactly what he has just found out.
Mary’s “I want to be honest with you” has a tremendous, unappreciated value.
Mary confirms his instinct, Mary trusts him.
But in Ben’s ear, on the pontoon, there is only the cry of pain of his broken heart and Mary’s sincerity, the reciprocated trust, is lost in that echo of pain.
Ben was freaked out by Mary’s vulnerability and fell in love.
Jumping to conclusions during the phone call, believing everything he had imagined about her suddenly wrong, miserably shatters the confidence he felt, the trust he thought she deserved.
Even before being betrayed by Mary, Ben is betrayed by the collapse of his expectations. Doesn’t wait, doesn’t listen, he overreacts.
It’s too painful to think that Mary is not as fragile as she looked in his arms.
In front of her, he was incredibly himself.
Too much pain to think that she has not reciprocated.
It is not the thought of a Mary “worse” than he thought to crush Ben’s heart and logic,
it is the horror at the thought of exposing himself, to have been true in front of someone capable instead of pretending emotions, fragility and involvement.
Once undermined the trust in Mary’s emotional honesty, there is no room for his feelings.
Ben goes away, leaving Mary torn and lonely.
Lonely.
That’s how Mary has always seen herself. How she always felt.
The immensity of pain inside her to suggest that such an immense sorrow could not be shared, could not be understood and loneliness was the remedy to survive.
Keeping all this pain inside, though, because your sister does not deserve it, your husband would not understand (and that’s how he became an ex) and taking this almost clinical detachment from any emotional involvement, makes you tougher, preventing you from trust issues, pushing people away, even daughters.
The fear of allowing the ones she loves to come too close to her runs deep and corrodes her soul like a burning fire.
Mary can only rely on herself.
An indelible pain which will never die, as she says, has been caused by those who loved her most.
She is no longer used, not capable and too afraid to trust. She would not trust Ben and she is committed to strenuously keep him away since the beginning, at her wake up in the motel.
She slams in his face that he cannot be trusted because he is the one always working, the one pretending.
She shows coldness, distance. She knows how much any weakness could cost.
And trust would be for her an unforgivable weakness.
The temptation to break her haven of loneliness’ barriers is great, the price is likely to be very high.
Mary would like to give up, oh how she would.
Close her eyes, shoulders enclosed by his arms as when he taught her to aim, protected.
“To properly aim you have to control subconscious”, he said.
Surrounded by him, her inner demons silent at last, she felt herself, without fear and the shot was direct and precise.
I wonder what she thought.
Taking a deep breath, the warmth of Ben on arms and back, she must have thought how everything would have been easier, in that warmth, finally protected.
However Mary seems to resist there and later, during the walk.
Yet, Ben’s protective desire to crumble Mary’s solitude broke through, the sincerity of his feelings not unheard.
She needs just a little encouragement by Nicole as she had already settled inside her that Ben and what he means, is worth the risk.
Sadly just to hear his voice in delivering her real name, it’s enough to know her choice was late.
Nothing ever easy for Mary.
The resolution to confide, to share everything with Ben, not just the loneliness, is a difficult and important step, so bitterly reviled by the simple lack of timing.
Not enough strength to grab Ben, to stop him, yelling at him that what he found out was exactly what she went to tell him. That it’s what she meant her “to be honest”.
He should just listen to her.
She is so resigned to being disappointed by those who love her that she doesn’t even try, does not believe it.
It is easier to keep protecting herself, to see in Ben’s reaction a cold pro calculation rather than his disappointed irrational bitterness.
Easier to whisper to herself “I told you so,” and letting him leave, rather than risk of not being trusted once she explained.
Rejecting because of the dread of not being accepted.
Expectations play a role in the episode secondary to that played by the trust.
Ben and Mary, they wound each other because of the fear of being hurt, because of hesitation in believing, afraid that trusting each other will mean to concede too much into their vulnerability.
To protect themselves, expose both of them to a bigger pain.
To trust means exposure to risk of suffering, of course.
Those we love can hurt us more than anyone else, even not on purpose.
What Ben and Mary must both ask themselves, from the depth of their solitude, is whether the warmth of the presence of each other in the other’s life is worth the risk of getting burned.
Federica
Edited by Lisa
Mary Kills People – Bloody Mary
When life get really messed up we get strong.
Unusual and weird are the circumstances in which we first meet Mary Harris with her simple gesture of getting rid of heels so she feels more dynamic, more comfortable, making her one of us, actually.
Mary Harris is not a criminal.
Mary Harris is not a heroine.
Mary Harris is a woman.
A twenty-first-century woman, mother, family helm in her hands; established at work, responsibilities burdening on her too often, plus a deeper dimension, more personal and thoroughly less shareable in which she needs to move following her values, her sense of ethics, her need for answers.
She reminds you of someone doesn’t she?!
The magic touch, the sign of the uniqueness and value of this series created, written, produced and directed by women, is maybe the authenticity of Mary since the first frames and in every single moment of this premiere, her daily routine narrated with priceless candor.
Mary is not perfect, in fact quite messy.
Mary is not invulnerable and doesn’t even try to fight against her weakness.
Mary is not emotionless, a whirlwind of feelings simmering far beneath the surface of her apparent control.
I have to admit that after this first episode I’m in love with Mary!
And, if possible, I fell in love with Caroline Dhavernas too, thanks to her way to approach the character of Dr. Harris, making her so real, so close to each one of us, simply and actually.
In this dynamic premiere, serious and funny at one time, viewers are thrown into the middle of this woman’s life, while she admirably unravels between her family, daughters and ex -good in his mood and maybe in his intentions, but rather inconclusive, with his compliance as a choice to escape responsibilities – and work, in fact, the works.
Engaged in E.R. we see her sharing her boss’ responsibilities simply because, as often happens, “you’re so much better than I am…”
But it’s the other job the one that unveils her involved body and soul, the support work, shared with Des, incomparable, the amazing Richard Short, in helping terminal patients to choose to die.
We do not know why she does it, we still do not know her history enough to understand. What we can get, however, because we see it, is the consistency and the dedication, with which Mary validates value of freedom to choice of each own life.
This is nothing to do with financial business.
Quiet and discreet as she is, we must bow to the amazing Tara Armstrong for her delicate touch in picking up a subject as thorny, exploring it in substance, no space left to any hint of controversy, simply highlighting Mary’s deep moral involvement.
As though much of the routine was something to be done and what she does with Des something she cares to do, the intensity of her emotional involvement properly tells us about something that’s inside out justified, rather than seen as a cold business.
Suddenly the effort to get out of the chaotic routine, always showing an excellent mastery (kudos to Dhavernas for her astonishing delivery ), reveals the passionate fragility of this woman, with all her need to get lost and to vanish into something to find herself back, to know and to feel that she is still alive, mind and emotions trapped in the Mary that everyone expects, but still hers, still throbbing.
Knocking on Joel’s door, approaching him on that couch, and breaking in a blow all the rules of common sense and of protocols so meticulously prepared as walls, erected to protect her vulnerability, respond to an impulse much more emotional than torrid.
In that bare and depressing room, in the frenzy of desire, there’s the Mary that no one knows, the Mary no one imagines, the woman who needs to close her eyes disappearing in intensity of sensations.
That she chooses Joel, that meeting him exacerbates her need, all of this is really really understandable.
We all are Mary when Joel’s apartment door opens, we all are bewildered as she is, swallowing empty because Joel has the appearance, the look, the voice of Jay Ryan. If they had cast him just for this “power”, they would have hit the target, totally.
However, it’s Jay Ryan, indeed.
Immediately after that priceless gift, all natural and physical, to arouse lustful thoughts, the powerful compelling intensity of his emotional performance takes over and prevails, and you totally forget the appearance, empathetically captured, bewitched by an emotional universe that strongly reveals the complexity and the depth of character’s personality.
Even about Joel we know nothing, except that he is torn.
Torn, fragile, tormented, both in front of the mirror than sitting with Mary and Des, his eyes wandering restlessly to not leave open too many windows, then suddenly direct, to inspect others’ cracks to look for a control he knows he has no more but which is accustomed to manage.
There’s too much, in Joel, because Mary did not choose to return.
Too much fair, charming and tender in that wound vulnerability, in that desperate as proud request for help.
Too much wrong and perverse, at the same time comfortable and reassuring, in that nonsense, irrational attraction, in that subliminal appeal to the zeroing of all defenses.
We get Mary, totally.
For a few moments, in the arms of Joel, in the nothing of passion, all makes sense.
She is alive.
So we’re to believe and to understand Joel’s hesitation too, so much as we think we understand his abrupt reaction to Mary’s words about his disease, as much as Mary seems to get him too.
We believe we have seen the painful side of Joel’s vulnerability, the conflict between what you would like and what it is, sadly.
But Joel holds for us the bitterest of the surprises.
Conflict, hesitation, uncertainty, we took quite rightly, but his reasons are all wrong.
Joel investigates Mary and Des.
Joel allegedly pretending illness, undoubtedly simulates mood.
Yet the hesitation, transportation, conflict, sorrow, seem totally real in front of Mary and as she walks away.
Joel sees the same Mary that we see, and in spite of his will, he does not come out unscathed.
After all how can you come out unscathed and remain insensitive to the impact of so much truth,so much authenticity and honesty?
Especially when you’re the one who lies.
When you have responded to all her truth just with lies and pretense, the awareness can lash, nobody free by a brunt.
The honesty of Mary requires Joel to want to be honest, at least in responding to the desire.
Realizing it compromises the fictional castle built, the desire to close everything quickly reveals the fear which he cannot avoid to lie in response to Mary’s heartbreaking sincerity.
The clash between the emotional storms afflicting these two individuals which we have a tempting glimpse of, in this first episode, promises to be almost alone the core of the story, keeping us stuck to our chairs.
Stuck cheering for Mary, fearing what she fears, feeling what she feels, wishing for her the same she wishes. We know nothing of what will happen but we know that we will live it with the same intensity and involvement with which she will live, confident in our hearts that she will find her way to travel the path, no matter how bumpy it will be.
In the boxroom, to her daughter discouraged in facing difficulties, Mary candidly confesses that yes, life sometimes really messes you up.
When the girl,confused, asked “what do we do?”, the answer is one that worth the journey.
The fiction’s one, because we talk about a TV series, the life’s one, because in fiction we hide the meaning of truth: “We become strong”.
Federica
edited by Lisa
There is a pinch of Jane Austen in every love story recipe
Being apart of CW’s Beauty and the Beast fandom since the beginning, one thing struck me: discovering that how many Beasties are readers and lovers of Jane Austen’ novels too.
May be banal? Absurd to make any considerations?
Yes, it’s true, they are two distant worlds, two conflicting breeds.
First I believed it was just a case, with time I realized that it was almost a constant so I began to make some reflections.
They are both worlds that I love, so it has been beautiful indeed to discover that there is a sort of connection.
A first clue was discovering that Beauty and the Beast is written by Jane Austen’s lovers.
Some of the writers declared more than once their passion for reading novels by Jane Austen: a sweet surprise was to see on their board in the Writer’s Room, their good luck sentence “I love Darcy”
Loving these reading means to make it enter inside of you, of your way of being and thinking, because they will condition your growth, accompany you the whole life.
If you loved only one of Jane Austen’s novels, if you have cried with Elinor while Edward pronounced hesitant for the first time, if you hoped at Anne’s side that it’s never too late for having a second chance, if you opened your eyes with Lizzie when she learnt to look inside her heart, you perfectly know what I am talking about.
I sincerely love to think that these writers put some of this romantic way of portraying life in their work when they wrote Beauty and the Beast.
Love and the Romance don’t change with changing times.
And Jane Austen remains so alive and real among us, her skill to recall emotions absolutely everlasting.
She never ceased to make generations and generations of people falling in love, and she never won’t.
Romance is not so different if we speak about four country girls looking for a good husband, or about a NYC detective hard to surrender to love because of her heart broken over and over again.
May be she doesn’t take tea, and surely she doesn’t dance in ancient ballrooms, she is not surrounded by a calm and verdant English country, yet the delicate way according to which Vincent loves Catherine, his looking after her from a distance for 10 long years, the long run of growth that the two principal characters do before they could be eventually happy, takes us directly in that muffled world, and we surrender to love, and our hearts beat stronger and stronger.
Beauty and the Beast is a love story in which friendship, family affections, tenderness, responsibility and protection are principal recipes. Unaffected feelings, pure, portrayed in a such delicate way, told through looks and words so deep to touch the soul.
I will let you to discover which is the contact point, the connection, between the two distant worlds. It is made by barely describable nuances of feelings, barely perceivable too.
But if you love Jane Austen, you will recognize her print instantly.
Elisa
Fanvid made by @asocxperiment https://asocialexperimentblog.wordpress.com/
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