Then vs Now.......same energy
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You know, I really really wanted to get emotionally fucked up.
So, here we go, The Myth (2010), the sole drama where I cried so hard I threw up.
Xiao Chuan (Hu Ge) is a modern day freelance photographer who ends in in Qin Dynasty China. Not as a transmigrator or anything, no he is just plopped down in the middle of the execution in progress. From there on, for 50 episodes he proceeds to have his soul, heart and body taken apart. By the time the drama ended, in one of the most horrifyingly bleak endings from anywhere I've ever seen, I was just numb.
The first few eps (until the plague hits, it's this kind of drama), are actually rather funny and can lure the unwary into thinking this will be a fun romp. Or do they? Here we are at ep 1, long before the slide into grinding, inexorable destruction of everything Xiao Chuan holds to except his integrity and we get a giant sign of what this is going to be like if only we paid attention.
He's in the middle of an execution of some enemies, real or imaginary, of the Qin Dynasty, and the befuddled officials not only immediately jump to the conclusion he's there to interfere, a bad guy etc etc, but they breathe past the questions of how he got there and who he is (and even what he is), to "we should execute him, whoever he is, because we get paid more for each supposed traitor." I mean, think about it - they wonder if he's a god or demon and then decide it doesn't matter, they will just add him to the kill tally for prizes. This is an arbitrary, bloodthirsty theater of cruelty, controlled by nothing by power and greed - the good guys (insofar as there are any, they are few and far between) do not win. A lot of evil is not done out of a grand design or plans to rule the world but petty greed or just boredom or lack of care. The government is portrayed as made in the monstrous image of the monstrous Qin Emperor and inscrutable in anything but bloodthirstiness and self-interest.
The censors would never let any of this fly now - this drama really is a criticism of absolutism as much as anything else (corrupt officials do not get punished; they get rewarded) - but oh God, what a masterpiece it was.
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Wong Kar-Wai's Blossoms Shanghai trailer dropped today. Drama airs on the 27th on Tencent.
Hu Ge looking fiiine!
https://twitter.com/taesdawn26/status/1736405593198624807?t=gTWg1uEhiGSMopXl5Q-nZw&s=09
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