etoks21

SHE pulled HIM in. Please...she threw herself at him at every opportunity, begging to be his girlfriend. So many commenters here blaming Souta entirely for this mess is so weird. The chubby-cheeks kid has had MULTIPLE opportunities to make things clear, and he muddies the waters and backs off every time. He had a chance at a kiss from the guy he's crushed on for years and he turns it down, demanding love and a marriage proposal before he'll allow such a thing. Honestly, Souta's confused reactions regarding that awful girl and the kid are entirely understandable.

hahaha. Great minds... :)
"Neurologically diverse," sorry. :D I guess we've moved on from retarded to intellectually-disabled to neurologically diverse. I forgot.

Anyway, it's funny that we both caught that but most people think YC is just "innocent." lol

Thing is, he WASN'T crying, just squinting. The actor couldn't' come up with any real tears. I know, I"m a big ol' bitch. Also, that is one of several moments in 5&6 during which YC seemed mentally disabled or Autistic. His stammering and seeming lack of comprehension goes overboard in some scenes.

lol Thank you! I've been commenting, mostly in jest, as to whether someone dropped YC on his head as a baby or he had a high fever and was brain damaged, thus accounting for the edge of retardation the actor brings to the character in some scenes. He seems confused, as though he can't read emotional cues, stuff like that but no one here wants to hear it. I don't think his retardation is a plot point, just poor direction and over-acting.

How do you know that? Also, lighten up. To me, the actor is at times over-playing the dumb, innocent farmer to the point that he seems dim-witted. If you disagree, that's fine.

Lighten up. My point is the actor is overplaying the innocent-country-boy thing in some scenes and Ye Chan comes off as not all there. Also, it makes no difference whatsoever what happens in the Manhwa. The adaptation does not have to follow the Manhwa word-for-word, scene-for-scene. Like any other adaptation this show is BASED on an original source; the makers are free to change whatever they want.

Ye Chan knew exactly what he was doing, rolling those shirtsleeves up to show off his arms and shoulders. Good God, he looked like a Greek statue up there picking apples. I would love to see that man in a tuxedo. Either that, or naked. Or both, alternately.

It would add some depth to the story if we were to learn what sort of incident it was that left Ye Chan intellectually disabled. Car crash? High fever as a baby? Dropped on his head?

Trope City and cliche, lame writing but the leads are so appealing, alone and together, that it doesn't really matter. These two were perfectly cast: One fine-featured and pretty but masculine, the other strong-featured, handsome and masculine. One ivory-skinned, the other sun-kissed. Their personalities/vibes make for remarkable chemistry and if a show has that, most of its work is done, at least in BL World.

How many dream sequences does that make in BL history, 5,273? Also, so happy to see a good old-fashioned boner joke in a BL! It felt like the old days of Make It Right's raunchy humor. :)

Thanks!

where did you find 5 & 6 subbed?

The actor's nose job is IN the series and therefore relevant. Who asked for your opinion anyway? If you're so far above noticing and discussing an actor's very noticeable nose job, why don't you go discuss his acting skills with someone who wants to talk about that, Poica?

Only semi-coherent screenplay Kim Ki-Duk ever wrote.

I'll go with my "intellectually disabled" perspective.
As I wrote, it's the WAY HE IS PLAYING "zero social skills" that makes him seem disabled at times. There are an endless number of approaches an actor could take to this role; Krist went with mentally challenged. You seem to like his approach. I don't. So?

Besides, I said he was "semi-amusing." What is your objection actually?

Also, his character clearly has a good number of functional social skills. He interacts with people quite well most of the time. It's only when he's under pressure or confused or frustrated that his brain misfires.

Potentially strong plot/story ruined by weak/lazy writing and plot holes. I hate when that happens as there is no excuse for it and it's completely avoidable. The number of movies wrecked by this sort of thing is legion. If a director doesn't care enough to present a coherent tale, or is more interested in symbolism/meanings/blah blah, then they shouldn't use a narrative structure to begin with.

There are too many holes and implausibles to list here so I won't. To viewers who either didn't notice or don't care, enjoy. But I can't. Bad writing pulls me out of the story every time.

Good acting, which is too bad, given it's in service of a weak script.

Murakami Nijiro may have the most beautiful eyelashes in all of Japan.

5/10

Your guess is spot-on. It could have been super-fascinating, but the big reveal came already just past the half-way mark so all the suspense was gone. I was caught by surprise, which I like, but then after that the remainder of the film is when the plot holes and stupidities started really piling up. Did you read my list of them under the spoiler tag above? I've thought of a couple more since writing that.

Same to you. Enjoyed the chat. Thank you for the condolences. My mom was quite elderly but without Covid would probably have lasted a few more years. I got Covid myself last December. For three weeks I could barely move. The most notable symptom to me was how it drained me of all energy. It was exhausting to lay in bed and watch television, let alone get up to use the restroom. Sometimes I crawled. I took two months for me to feel back up to 100%.

lol I'm going to politely propose that during those times you think you've turned off your brain to enjoy one of this guy's films, your brain is actually working at full capacity to ignore and rationalize all the lazy writing and plot holes.

Yes, I do think he should "fix everything" when he's writing the screenplay. You don't start filming until the script is solid. But maybe KKD's schtick is to film while he's still writing and do it all on the fly, I don't know. It certainly feels like that could be the case.

I've never looked over his entire list of writing credits. Below are the films of KKD's I've seen:

Writer/Director:
The Net (this is on my top 30 best feature films list)
Address Unknown (Meh...)
The Coast Guard (a few plot holes but I liked it)
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (pretentious mess)
Breath (lots of good stuff, especially ML, but lots of stupid stuff too)
Moebius (pretentious garbage)
One On One (on my plan-to-watch list)
Human, Space, Time and human (omg...lol)

Writer:
Red Family (another one, like "Pieta, that started strong and became a mess)
Rough Play (artsy-fartsy dumpster fire)
Rough Cut (on my plan-to-watch list)

Actually, now I'm curious to give a few more of his films a watch. I can always stop watching if I see another train wreck coming. But I consider "The Net" one of my favorite movies. I've watched twice and liked it more the second time. I'll have to give it a third watch sometime and see if there are plot holes I ignored. lol

It remains hilarious to me that Pieta won so many awards. Maybe KKD had a fantastic marketing/PR team behind it. Many awards-giving organizations are HIGHLY political and subject to marketing pressure. The last flick to win a Best Picture Oscar was Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was another pretentious mess.

Anyway, sorry to see KKD passed from Covid in 2020. Too young. I lost my mom to that shit too.

I am not able to "shut my brain," as I guess, you are able to do. I have zero interest in watching films or any other forms of entertainment that do not make some kind of sense. The most annoying is when all it would take is more time in the writing room to fix the freaking plot holes. This director thinks his shit doesn't stink so he's become lazy.

Also, there are hundreds of movies of all kinds without plot holes. This movie has TONS of them. I guess that's part of this director's excellence, am I right? :D

How did the dead son's mom find out who crippled him?
How did she find out where the collector lived?
How did she find out all the details of his background, right to his childhood?
Did she hire a private eye?
How does crippling people so they can't work help get your money back?
Where did she take acting lessons so she could so effectively fool the collector?
How did she get her real son's dead body from the refrigerator in a slum in the middle of Seoul to a secluded riverbank?
How did she dig six feet down to bury her real son's body in the sweater?
Why was the soil around the tree undisturbed?
Why did she jerk off the collector? She certainly didn't need to do that. Was she turned on by him? Didn't seem to be.
Why did the collector fall asleep in the dead son's wheelchair? If she drugged him, I missed it.
How did she know exactly when he would return to her dead son's place?
Why did the chicken the collector had killed and plucked look so pristine, as if it came right out of the refrigerated poultry section of a supermarket?
How was there so much blood and guts in the collector's body that he left a miles-long blood streak from the popcorn-seller's little greenhouse hovel all the way downtown?
Why did the mom die from a two-story fall in which her head hit only grass and soil?
Why didn't the collector go upstairs where the mom fell and kill or maim the people who he thought pushed her? He didn't even look up.
How did the sweater the mom knitted and put on the son she buried go from filthy dirty in the ground to nice and clean when the collector showed up in it at the armless couple's little hut?
I could go on and on...

THIS obscenity, Brainiac: "Present a solution. If you can’t, F**K OFF." Do you throw that sort of thing around so often you don't even know you're doing it? Was the spittle flying so fast during your tantrum that you lost consciousness and wrote while in a black out?

Like I said, one more and you're reported along with a copy of your comment.

Wow, I don't get the praise for this movie here, elsewhere, nor why it won so many awards. Great acting across the board but in service of a lame story absolutely riddled with plot holes. I guess people at Cannes, Berlin, and Venice don't care about their stories making sense. And I find directors who are so into themselves they think their story shouldn't have to make sense in the first place annoying. We're supposed to overlook all the holes and improbabilities because the core meaning is so fantastically powerful and moving, I suppose. Not me. If you present a plot that takes place in the real world as we know it, then you're obligated to follow the rules of existence as it is in that world.

I was into this at first but the plot twist/reveal came WAY to early, at which point all the tension drained out of the film and it became a very basic thriller whose ending we knew in advance.

I'll list all the things Kim Ki Duk f**ked up on behind the spoiler button below: