This show gave me an unprecedented immersive viewing experience.
It was the first time to watch a drama in one breath. After turning off the screen in the middle of the night, it was like a huge nightmare. Everything disappeared without a sound, tears were all over my face, and my heart was dull, as if I had just experienced something An inner collapse of pain.
The next day, I opened my eyes before I slept for 6 hours. The faces of the two protagonists were shaking in front of me. The inexplicable sadness still suppressed me.
The feeling can be said to be torn, emotionally drained, like the lingering shudder after watching a horror movie for the first time.
The story is very simple, two young introverts - Marianne and Connell - love entanglement from high school to college graduation. They are both very smart people, but Marianne is sharper, rejects everyone, sees school as authoritarian fantasy, and refuses discipline and restraint; Connell is a gentle and sunny boy who manages his social life carefully. The two separated in high school due to Connell's fear of being isolated by others. They reunited in college at Trinity College, and they started going around again, separating and reuniting.
One of the reasons this short teenage drama feels so special to me is the complexity it presents. The complex characters of the two protagonists and the complex changes in their mentality during their growth are all revealed through delicate lenses and narratives.
Just like a painting that can still be seen with clear details when magnified 100 times, the complexity of the people presented in each episode 20 minutes and every change in the actor's expression can be extended to infinity. People who lack similar experiences or who are not sensitive enough in character will only think that this is a very boring drama, and understand it as a hypocritical romance in adolescence.
So I hate the comments on Connell such as "scumbag" floating in the barrage. If you can understand the delicateness of this boy, you will never try to summarize him with such a single and absolute word.
This feeling is even worse after reading the original novel. The already delicate shots in the play conceal the more complex and profound inner feelings of the characters. The large-scale psychological description of the original book is difficult to present in the language of the lens.
How Connell's resistance and love for Marianne in high school were intertwined, how he faced the class difference with Marianne, how alienated Marianne was from the world, and how dependent she was on Connell, all of which can be found in the book. more detailed description.
For example, in one of the most touching moments in episode 3, after Marianne talks about her domestic violence experience, Connell says, 'I love you. I'm not just saying that, I really do'. But the play did not further see how Marianne felt when she faced this confession. Here, the book says
She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.
It was Connell's love that opened her life to a new stage, and it was Connell's understanding and understanding that enabled her to complete her growth.
This kind of bridging of the growth of the two makes this drama not just a love drama. The relationship between the two protagonists is far beyond the relationship between lovers and even soulmates. It is a connection deeply embedded in each other's lives.
Because the two are so similar and embedded in each other, how you face each other is how you face your own life. So every small change in the relationship between the two means a huge change.
The moment Connell stretched out his hand by the pool to embrace Marianne in front of everyone, it actually represented a reconciliation with his own inferiority complex.
I think that's why I got sucked in so deeply by the plot. It shows the most idealized intimacy in my mind—you are in me and I am in you, complete with each other, merged with each other.
Whenever the two meet, the others are faded into the background. No matter what stage their relationship is in, they exude a fatal attraction to each other from their hearts, as if there are only two people left in the world.
The part that best shows this intimacy is the part where they get along peacefully. Connell is experiencing depression caused by the passing of an old friend. After they have experienced failed or uninteresting relationships with others, they know that in the end they can only rely on each other.
There is no need for sweet and hypocritical oaths, and the silent look at each other confirms that only the other can save us - we share the same way of seeing the world.
Naturally, there were suspicions and misunderstandings between the two, all stemming from a similar sense of inferiority—Marianne was afraid that Connell would not love her so much because of the humiliation of her brother in the broken family, and that he hated her masochism; Connell Confined by the gap between the two classes, he cannot open himself up, and because of his submissive personality, he is afraid that the intimate relationship with Marianne will destroy his original social interaction.
Behind everything they fail to say is their respect for each other. They know that each other is as sensitive as they are, so they are afraid to say anything that hurts each other. And behind the inevitable injury, what is experienced is mutual improvement, self-awareness, and love for each other.
In the final scene, Connell decides to leave the duo's hometown to study writing in New York, while Marianne chooses to stay where she is. The reason why this scene is so moving, I think is because when they looked at each other and wept, they all knew that they had completely accepted the fragility of the other party and themselves, and had completed their common growth-even if they let go and no longer be together, they would no longer be entangled. With the pain of the past, you can face your desires and welcome all the new and beautiful things in your life.
When a person's life is accompanied and shaped by another person at every important point in his life, he knows that nothing can separate each other.
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