I have come to appreciate the emotions good Korean actors can emit in a scene. This series is so very well done, I'm hoping it continues. I found it on Netflix {I'm not trying to sell Netflix), and was thinking it probably is an adolescent series. It isn't that simple. The subtitles are obviously done by an inexperienced translator, which sometimes is irritating, but also can be very interesting for a native English-speaker. The language the translator uses is very contemporary, using terms like "punk" etc., but I imagined from the get-go that there was a meeting of the staff to decide if using contemporary language would add or detract from the series. I believe they made the right decision in one sense because viewers (and most likely they are as adolescent viewers as me, it's true} can get caught up in the exchanges between actors, Min-ho Lee {Choi Young, the general, and Hee-seon Kim {Yoo Eun-Soo, the good doctor} as the love tension between them evolves, and there are some hilarious moments with these two as they struggle to hide their growing love from both themselves and one another. But I'm so curious about the archaic language that I might be missing because that language has always reflected the complex and brutal formality of the ancient cultures of the Asian societies. It's so very Shakespearean in his characters' consistent struggle to find one another in a feudal age where honor is everything to a male. But even with their use of contemporary Korean, I realize at this very instant, the power lies in a mixture of archaic expression with the contemporary "kids", "punks", etc., showing the exquisite complexity that one simple word can carry in the politics of the mind in a chess game or Go. As the first reviewer has said, it is very obvious the director tightens the series very sublimely as it progresses, moving nicely to much deeper themes than simply a love story or drama. I've been privileged to have seen some of the top actors of the series in other major films, and the impetus created by the story-lines and stylistic methodology compels the viewer to keep watching for the next episodes.
I'm amazed by the Korean theatre. It is very well established, and this series makes that obvious. The result makes for scholarly study of such a phenomenon as well as an enjoyable and even emotional/spiritual experience even if it is adolescent at its core. Perhaps I'm simply a 65 year old baby looking at my past remembering in my own melancholy some of the finer things in my life. As a former film maker though, I cannot help but want this show to continue to evolve. So does it matter that perhaps it is a little adolescent while covering a sublime set of universal themes? there's so much more I would like to say here, but I guess I will have to write an essay about it. No room here.
