In fact, what this show is about is to give the audience a detached perspective. It focuses on how it affects people when something like el cuco occurs, and how people accept and face it. How people trust or doubt each other, hurt and comfort each other, and how can those who survive continue to live.
And this drama's detached perspective is reflected in its narrative style a lot. It takes the audience out of the story as much as possible, and is forced to stand on an outsider's point of view. This type of narrative is unconventional, allowing actors to chat an entire episode just by mouth, or to have characters die in quick succession in a matter of minutes. It narrates the event as it unfolds, rather than using the event as the key to sparking conflict and advancing the plot. Like when the dead body appears at the beginning, you are already inside the narrator's story. You thought they were trying to reason about how people could be separated from each other, but as a result, tmd appeared supernatural, like a plot fraud.
Because you think this show is based on real reasoning, but it outlines a species like el cuco with nose and eyes. And when the main line of the plot, the struggle between people and el cuco, has been presented, it also uses a lot of space to present the conflict between policeman Rauf's values and other people, especially the supernatural detective, and outlines Rauf's inner corner in detail. , his loss of a child, his inner struggles, and even let him and the detective schmooze in the car for an entire episode. And the plot often pulls the hip or is simply dealt with when it feels that there is a turning point, but the real turning point happens without warning and is caught off guard.
Such a story gives a sense of randomness, but it is also based on a certain plausibility. Behind the randomness is the careful choreography that pushes the audience into an outsider's perspective.
In fact, the screenwriter is omniscient from the beginning, and does not "pretend" to be as ignorant as the audience. He wants to tell a story that isn't necessarily to your liking, but he has managed to "cheat" you into the role of the listener.
Because such a perspective will inevitably cause the audience to lose a lot of motivation to watch, so the first few episodes feel like the show has a clear main line, and the turning points can be attractive, giving people the impression of anti-routine and good-looking at the same time. There will also be an attraction point at the end, but these episodes stretched their hips when they developed to the middle and late stages. From a commercial point of view, this must be a natural arrangement. But the narrative rhythm of the show is consistent to the end.
Personally, I was drawn to the atmosphere of the show. And the success of shaping the atmosphere of this play is due to the narrative rhythm. The narrative pace of the show is tepid and slow. I think it's the rhythm of its narrative that lends the story an eloquent charm. The coherent narrative rhythm and the choreographed plot make this story self-contained, as if it were developing by itself, and you can't feel the law of its development. As a result, you will often fail to presume the plot, so you can stay in the position of the listener (or just quit the show).
At the same time, a large number of lenses have a sense of distance. It also puts the viewer in an outsider's perspective. My personal favorite is the teenage shooting of the baseball coach and the last episode of the lead group dying one by one. Although the performance is a violent act like murder, the camera still maintains a coldness. Especially the series of deaths of the protagonists can be described as meaningless. The truth is that the unforeseen situation, if it happened in reality, could be worse than the death on camera. And these cameras are responsible for recording, but they did not deliberately stir up the emotions of the audience, nor did they use blood as a gimmick.
In addition to the role of promoting the plot, the characters in this story also have complex emotions. In other words, quite a lot of characters' emotions or values are displayed, and the conflicts and intertwining between characters are actually "superfluous". They neither resonate 100% with the audience nor make the overall plot seem draggy. But they make the story seem real. Just like when someone shares a painful experience with you, they will inevitably mention their emotions and reactions at that time. It is these subtle things that make people feel real.
Camus wrote a novel of the same name, in which the protagonist seems to have always looked at his life and what happened to him like an outsider. I felt desolate reading it. Books have the meaning of exposing the hypocrisy of civilization and morality. On the other hand, if you want to express that meaning, it is more appropriate to choose the perspective of the protagonist in the book. In this play, the creature el cuco is also a symbol, that is, the inexplicable thing of human beings. In order to interpret this motif of how humans view the unexplainable, I think it is also necessary to stand in a "non-human point of view". So the audience is the outsider of the plot, and the protagonist group is the outsider of the supernatural event
But unlike Camus' Outsider, the show isn't indifferent. The director put a lot of the show's foothold on the plight of the characters. For example, the husband who was wronged died, and the wife and daughter were reprimanded. Many of the contents showed in detail the character predicament of the wife. Rauf's inner struggles with the unexplained, and being trapped in the loss of his own child, is also a character dilemma. Both the baseball coach's wife and Lauf eventually reconciled with themselves to some extent. These are all manifestations of humanistic concern. In fact, the content of the baseball coach's wife can be seen as a mental journey of how to bear and how to return to life.
There are also many expressions of death in the series, not just straightforward displays. Lauf talks to the detective about his mother's death (as a joke); Lauf's loss of a child; the impact on the family of the murdered husband's death; the victim's family, and more. The outsider's perspective given to the audience by the series also interprets the heavy motif of death to a certain extent. In the last paragraph, Rauf and his wife talk about Rauf's hallucinations about his son at the grave of his dead son. Rauf's counselor wife said that maybe in a few years, we can go to him in person. Rauf's expression was shocked, but he nodded slightly at the same time. I think the meaning I want to convey here is very appropriate to use the sentence in "I and the Temple of Earth". Namely, death is an eventual holiday.
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