The comment of the year: "I watched the entire series on fast forward." and then " There were occasions I was confused couldn't understand what was going on." Facepalm.
Conversation piece is a very common cinematic genre. Specifically in those the heavy dialogue gets as much dramatic impact as the visual presentation. The dialogue in those is necessarily somewhat remote from reality and more cunning, downbeat or scintillating than how it would be in real life, but just because people don't talk like Joe down the pub in a drama does not make it pretentious. Directors like Robert Bresson, Eric Rohmer or Woody Allen made a life's work out of such productions. The dialogue-driven narrative is a perfectly legitimate - and as one could learn reading most of the comments, to most of us also a very effective - way of entertainment. If that is not your cup of tea, that is totally fine but making it seem like it was an objective drawback or shortcoming just because you have a personal hangup about this sort of thing is quite immature.
Also I wonder if those who say the dialogue is too much and the whole enterprise should have been cut to its half of its running time or whatever, what parts they exactly think should be binned? I am subbing this series for a foreign group, so I need to rewatch every episode several times and I could not find one instalment that would not have been on point and put there with purpose. Even the seemingly trivial interludes like Wang's all-in-noodles reveal a lot about his childhood past and the way how In understands that at once what it means to him and how Mol does not. Every little conversation whether it is about politics, honorifics, food, drink give more and more insight into these characters and elaborate who they are, who they were, what they are afraid of, what demons they fight with. All the metaphors and allusions they utter they do with purpose. They chew every word. Every sentence has hidden double meanings, repressed emotions, grudges, untold truth, and boiling passion. I cannot recall one convo that was not in a way another factor to let us know one more layer of them. Every single line glued me to the screen, but certain dramatic ones still haunt me, like In's remembrance to his childhood then college mate friendship with Siam up until the tragic revelation of their mutual feelings and its aftermath, Wang's bone-chilling story about his relationship with the bullied kid in the boarding school or Mol's nightmarish memory of the night when Siam drove away and never came back . I could not delete one sentence without doing serious harm to the cinematic narrative. There was one part - when In and Wang jumped over to the other side - when I felt Wang's inner monologues a bit over-abundant, but even those were meaningful and had a point. I have never felt a moment of idling. I cannot help but feel those saying "all talk and no action" are not interested in the main concept of how a tragic death of one person traumatized 3 lives and lead them to the path they are struggling now with guilt, unhappiness and disappointment, they just want to see In and Wang make out.
I am fully aware that the majority is not always right and sometimes on the contrary. But if an entertainment touches so deeply so many others (not just amuses), I would certainly wonder and consider whether it is me who probably has a problem, and not thinking everyone else is stupid and I am the helicopter. I hardly ever comment on MDL anymore, because I got so tired that almost every comment section here is angry, negative, nitpicking, ageist, gatekeeping and rating shows by how "healthy" and ideal the relationship it portrays in the progressive axis and not by quality. But I could not resist commenting here. This show has had such a lasting impression on me both visually and spiritually, that all I can say with due respect, if you have not experienced what I have detailed in my second paragraph, it is indeed your loss.
While I am pretty much certain that the ending leaves all 3 characters reasonably unhappy, I somehow doubt it is going to be tragic.
Simply because it would not resonate with the vibes, the general storytelling and the atmosphere of this narrative so far. That would turn the plot it into melodramatic and somewhat clichéd, and that is what this production has successfully avoided until now.
We have often compared this to a theatrical chamber piece, so I would say an Edward Albee-type or Chekhovian doom-ending is more in line and consistent with what we have seen so far.
Same. The pacing could have been much better if they worked with 12 episodes. Or, they could add flashbacks from…
For instance. Or Wang's face when he talks about his relationship with the boarding school kid. Or Mol's face when she talks about her last night with Siam before he drove to die.
Same. The pacing could have been much better if they worked with 12 episodes. Or, they could add flashbacks from…
It is much better and a lot more electrifyingly effective as they reminisce than showing flashbacks. The latter would kill the theatrical effectiveness for which we love this series so much.
I nearly flipped over myself when I read down there one saying In lived his peaceful, drama and problem-free life…
Ever since the very beginning he kept trying to hide his closed past from everyone, whenever they kept asking about his private life in the past he was dancing around their questions.
I thought of a fragment of a convo which has not yet been said from the trailer, and I re-watched it. It may well be the response to how In feels about Wang.
I'm honestly a little surprised by how many people seem to not understand why In ran away from Siam and his feelings?…
I nearly flipped over myself when I read down there one saying In lived his peaceful, drama and problem-free life which these two just came to destroy. Holy shit, how superficially should people watch this drama to say such things after 7 episodes? Christ on a fucking bike, he has been living in a prison he built for himself - both mentally and physically. That house in the middle of nowhere is his prison where he isolates himself from everything and everyone, because he has been living in constant pain and guilty conscience over that he inadvertently contributed to the death of the man he loved the most. In is a seriously damaged person who has been living in permanent agony for decades, his life has been anything but peaceful and drama-free.
Reading some of the comments here it is clear that this hard-hitting and downbeat drama is really more than what the average romance-hungry BL viewer can chew, who could only digest fluff with rainbows and sunshine happy ends. Thankfully they are seemingly a minority only.
yeah, it really doesn't make sense to me. it's a little frustrating, because I feel like they don't properly talk…
It is not a problem for the 16 years old and not a problem for the 22 years old either, it is only a problem for weird fuyoishis in the BL universe, but it is not their concern. The age consent in Japan is 13 with parental guidance, and even in the strictest prefectures it rarely rises above 16, so there is nothing wrong with what they do, either legally or morally.
It never ceases to amaze me that those who dislike it keep complaining about what the entire point was.
No one fully understood it until the end, but that bag of mystery was the point of the main enterprise, and it is hilarious people are moaning for the whole point. They did not understand the concept at all. It is ok not to like this sort of thing, but criticizing it for being what exactly is..? The works of Antonioni, Bergman or Resnais for instance often have such deliberately confusing narrative which the spectator needs to track down, but these folks would probably call their works pretentious nonsense as well.
this isn’t that relevant to this series or important, but I just realised that Off Jumpol is only 2 years younger…
There are things like that when some actors look younger or older than their years. Angela Lansbury played the mother of Carroll Baker (6 years younger than her) and the mother of Laurence Harvey (2 years younger than her) while Mickey Rooney still played teens in his late 20s.
"I watched the entire series on fast forward." and then " There were occasions I was confused couldn't understand what was going on."
Facepalm.
Also I wonder if those who say the dialogue is too much and the whole enterprise should have been cut to its half of its running time or whatever, what parts they exactly think should be binned? I am subbing this series for a foreign group, so I need to rewatch every episode several times and I could not find one instalment that would not have been on point and put there with purpose. Even the seemingly trivial interludes like Wang's all-in-noodles reveal a lot about his childhood past and the way how In understands that at once what it means to him and how Mol does not. Every little conversation whether it is about politics, honorifics, food, drink give more and more insight into these characters and elaborate who they are, who they were, what they are afraid of, what demons they fight with. All the metaphors and allusions they utter they do with purpose. They chew every word. Every sentence has hidden double meanings, repressed emotions, grudges, untold truth, and boiling passion. I cannot recall one convo that was not in a way another factor to let us know one more layer of them. Every single line glued me to the screen, but certain dramatic ones still haunt me, like In's remembrance to his childhood then college mate friendship with Siam up until the tragic revelation of their mutual feelings and its aftermath, Wang's bone-chilling story about his relationship with the bullied kid in the boarding school or Mol's nightmarish memory of the night when Siam drove away and never came back . I could not delete one sentence without doing serious harm to the cinematic narrative. There was one part - when In and Wang jumped over to the other side - when I felt Wang's inner monologues a bit over-abundant, but even those were meaningful and had a point. I have never felt a moment of idling. I cannot help but feel those saying "all talk and no action" are not interested in the main concept of how a tragic death of one person traumatized 3 lives and lead them to the path they are struggling now with guilt, unhappiness and disappointment, they just want to see In and Wang make out.
I am fully aware that the majority is not always right and sometimes on the contrary. But if an entertainment touches so deeply so many others (not just amuses), I would certainly wonder and consider whether it is me who probably has a problem, and not thinking everyone else is stupid and I am the helicopter. I hardly ever comment on MDL anymore, because I got so tired that almost every comment section here is angry, negative, nitpicking, ageist, gatekeeping and rating shows by how "healthy" and ideal the relationship it portrays in the progressive axis and not by quality. But I could not resist commenting here. This show has had such a lasting impression on me both visually and spiritually, that all I can say with due respect, if you have not experienced what I have detailed in my second paragraph, it is indeed your loss.
Simply because it would not resonate with the vibes, the general storytelling and the atmosphere of this narrative so far. That would turn the plot it into melodramatic and somewhat clichéd, and that is what this production has successfully avoided until now.
We have often compared this to a theatrical chamber piece, so I would say an Edward Albee-type or Chekhovian doom-ending is more in line and consistent with what we have seen so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyi8IVY9lmM