I'll keep this nice and brief.
'The Moon That Embraces The Sun', starring Kim SooHyun, Han GaIn and Jun IlWoo, has potential to become drama of the year. I'm not even exaggerating. Look at its ratings and popularity!
Initially I was intimidated by the historical setting of the drama, the only other historical drama that I've ever watched was Sungkyunkwan Scandal solely because Park YooChun - one of my ultimate biases, was playing the lead male role in it. Also because it was somewhat a romcom. I enjoyed it, but I didn't fall in love with it.
The only historical dramas that I can handle are Hong Kong produced ones - they are often incredibly cheesey with a dash of modern aspects to it.
The posters of TMTETS were giving off a dark and serious tone to the drama, it put me off a great deal like YooChun's melodrama - 'Miss Ripley'. Matching dark and serious tones to a historical genre puts me off greatly. Actually this wasn't the only poster that ever put me off, Secret Garden's poster looked like it belonged to a melodrama too! In this case it could be said that one should never judge a book by its cover, a true saying, however no matter how much you believe it the environment/society that you were brought up in will always tell you to judge things and people based on appearance, sad but true.
What made me want to watch this was because of its popularity. I remember stumbling across this drama title when I was going through my Twitter feed, Allkpop had tweeted that they had posted up an article about it and its soaring ratings!
Wow, I thought, this must definitely be a killer.
Oh, it was, it sooooo was.
The very fact that Kim SooHyun, Han GaIn and Jung IlWoo were the other factors for different reasons.
Kim SooHyun because I needed something to shake off his SamDong character from Dream High.
Han GaIn because I realised that she was the wife of the fittie Yun JungHoon.
Jung IlWoo because I needed something to rid my bad impression of him from Flower Boy Ramyum Shop - decent drama but his character was way too OTT that the acting felt overdone.
One sectence to describe this drama: ONE ROLLERCOASTER OF EMOTIONS.
I'm the kind of viewer who likes to spoil themselves, so pretty much in between episodes/waiting for episodes to load I would go off to dramabeans to quickly skim through the next episode's recap. So I knew what was coming.
After I had finished episode 4 I wanted to stop watching the rest, purely because I knew what would happen after episode 4 - everything's gonna go downhill and make me sad.
Nevertheless, I persevered and forced myself to carry on with the episodes, this drama was too good to skip episodes, even the boring old-goonies-devising-evil-deeds-with-each-other-in-old-tongues parts.
I can confirm that I have no regrets.
The storyline is complex, detailed and unique - to an extent. It may have frustrated me a great deal, I ended up hating NokYoung, but this hatred and frustration was reasonable unlike Heartstrings - dear God don't even get me started on this poorly written (and possibly acted) drama...
The whole shaman and moon-sun aspects made the drama feel furthermore mystical and unique, you know that dash of magic like Secret Garden. Subtle, not overdone. Me gusta, mucho!
The filming was beautifully done. Vivid vibrant colours of satin cloth, the flawless camera work and editting, those close up shots of emotion...I can't.
I have yet to find anything that disappoints me within this drama. Yet I can't say that this drama is perfect either.
Though I can't say that it may become one of my favourite dramas of all time yet. I'll leave it till the airing of the last episode - next week *sobs*, until I decide.
Overall I definitely recommend this drama.
It's beautiful, heart-wrenching, makes you want to cry for poor old YangMyung and take a good stab at the Great Queen Dowager.
Oh and happy leap year everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment