Better Days 少年的你 (2019) Dir. Derek Tsang

“Eun-hee… When you’re tired or sad, try looking at your fingers. Then, one by one, move them around. It’ll feel very mysterious. You feel like you can’t do anything, but you can move your fingers.”

House of Hummingbird (2018), written and directed by Kim Bora

Barbie (2023) dir. Greta Gerwig

be kind to that adult who never speaks at work, who’s strangely quiet at parties and dos.

be kind to the people who never smile, who seem stuck-up, emotionless or cold.

be kind to the person who only speaks when spoken to. who speaks in a very soft or quiet vocie. who speaks awkwardly and painfully.

tell them it’s okay if they can’t speak. tell them you care about them anyway. show them you see their talents.

support people with situational mutism. 🌹🌹

The Shining (1980) Hannibal (2013-2015)

LITTLE FOREST (2018), dir Yim Soon-rye

Baby Reindeer is a masterpiece. Anyone who can handle the content should watch it. These stories need to be told.

Downton Abbey S3E5 demonstrates how a well-written death can affect the audience beyond the screen;

Sybil was a side character for most of the show, but she had her moments to shine, especially during the war when she was working at the hospital, which is pointed out by Thomas when they hear of her death. Thomas's reaction in particular is one that stands out in terms of how well-written the scene is - it would have been easy to have him be cold about the matter, considering his insistence that he doesn't care much about their employers in earlier seasons, or to have a mild reaction of vague sadness at most, but no, Thomas, who was until now always cold and cynical, sobs. He tries to keep up his facade when Anna checks on him, tries to insist that Sybil wouldn't have cared if he had died, only to sob even more when admitting - more to himself than Anna, really - that she would have cared.

It's an especially heartbreaking scene to watch when remembering that the only other times he had previously shown this kind of desperate vulnerability were when he decided to get out of the trenches, after he figured out the scam, and - and! - after the death of Edward Courtenay, an experience he shared with Sybil. The first two can be argued to be selfish, in the roughest terms, as they are about Thomas, but the latter two and the pure grief he displays for both someone he was romantically interested in and someone he pretended not to care about speaks volumes in terms of who Sybil was, and that even after she is dead already. It's fascinating to see the scene in this light, how 'even' someone like Thomas, someone with little regard for the upper class, was touched by Sybil's life and death to such a degree that he will openly show this amount of pain and general emotion over her loss.

Alongside Thomas's, there are other particularly touching moments in this episode as well, of course, with especially the reaction of Daisy - who had been in a bad mood for the entire episode - standing out as one that shows how the news break her away from her jealousy; Mrs. Hughes referring to Sybil as "the kindest being in this house" with this barely contained sadness and, a bit later, hugging Daisy for comfort as well pushes this further, even if Mrs. Hughes has been established as having a bit of a softer side.

All of these small details just in the reactions of the servants show how well this episode and the show as a whole are written in terms of how they handle difficult emotions and especially grief. The reactions of the people around the deceased are always so much more powerful in touching the audience than the actual death itself. Wonderful writing, here the same as with the deaths of Edward, Lavinia and and William.

house of hummingbird (2018)

house of hummingbird is a coming-of-age tale of how an ordinary 14 year-old girl finds herself amidst the relationships she develops with the people around her. in doing so, the film draws on themes big and small, which effectively paints a scarred national psyche and depicts the struggles of normal people as they try to keep apace.

the film can be described as a quiet feminist criticism of gender inequality in a “modern” society. eun-hee and her good friend, ji-soo, are victims of domestic abuse by their older brothers, who have been conditioned by patriarchal notions that empower them to assault their sisters as a means of “reprimanding” them and keeping them in order. when eun-hee and ji-soo are caught for shop theft, ji-soo trembles at the fear of being hit by her brother back at home. when eun-hee bravely tells her parents over dinner, in the first third of the film, that her brother had hit her, her older sister gives her a glance. initially i thought the glance was a glance of surprise and reproach, as if to tell eun-hee to remain silent. but i later realise the glance meant that she herself was a victim of her brother’s abuse, and the glance was a pleasant surprise at her courage. the uncomfortable coexistence of domestic assault and women’s education empowerment (the daughters are enrolled for after-school tuition), points to how society’s claims of modernisation will always ring hollow if women cannot even have basic human rights.

the exhortations of gender inequality are constantly woven in the film. eun-hee’s mother knows that her father is having an extramarital affair, but never explicitly addresses it. nonchalantly asking eun-hee “what was your father wearing when he went out today?” and then checking his closet to see whether he wore his best suit out on a date, eun-hee’s mother is the film’s closest representation of the virtuous traditional asian wife. eun-hee almost walks in her mother’s footsteps - even after seeing her boyfriend flirt with her schoolmate, she takes him back immediately with little questioning. it is only with young-ji’s advice that she needs to not live her life passively that eun-hee starts to assert herself and retaliate. when eun-hee is caught for shoplifting, her father tells him he would rather the shopkeeper send eun-hee to the police station than send some rice cakes over as a “favour”. this is in contrast with her father’s treatment of her brother, offering him money to buy burgers to bribe his schoolmates to vote him as school president.

eun-hee’s relationship with yoo-ri, her junior at school, is less significant as an exploration of sexuality but rather an example of how eun-hee is desperately trying to find true companionship in the people around her. contrasting her friendship with ji-soo (they had a falling out but later reconciled) and her relationship with yoo-ri (yoo-ri fell out of affection and ended the relationship coldly), eun-hee learns that lasting relationships need to be built and are hard to come by. this is why her relationship with young-ji, a teacher at her chinese hakwon (after-school tuition), is extra special. 

it is easy to see why teacher young-ji is a figure of admiration for the impressionable eun-hee. young-ji lives a quasi-ascetic and independent lifestyle - she dresses in baggy linen, brews oolong tea in a set of china, and in their first meeting teaches eunhee “out of all the people you’ve met in your life, how many of them really know you?” in hanja. she quits her job at the hakwon out of the blue, because she felt like it; she is on a long break from her undergraduate studies at Seoul University, because she felt like it. of course, this independence is afforded by young-ji’s privilege (her family is well-off). but her non-traditional behaviour teaches eun-hee that there are ways to live without conforming to society. she never talks to eun-hee with condescension, but treats her as a mature equal and genuinely cares for her in ways that eun-hee has never received.

in terms of style, i very much appreciated the sensitive directing of kim bora, which drew the viewer very close to the protagonist. there were very clever tricks deployed. there is a moment when eun-hee is caught shoplifting and the shopkeeper asks for her father’s number, to which she whispers “555-2589″. when eun-hee frightfully presses this number into the public phone after she sees the bridge collapse, kim borrows this memory, as the viewer knows who she is calling before she even says a word.

but the best moments were always personal. as a 24 year-old asian female, even the slightest scenes were poignant. when eun-hee ended off her never-delivered letter to young-ji with “when will my life start to shine?” i just started crying, because i wanted to tell eun-hee that her beloved teacher probably doesn’t know. i don’t know too. when the film ended with eun-hee having found an internal peace, through young-ji’s words of advice, that would help her navigate life’s tribulations - big or small - i started to cry again. we have all struggled to find ourselves, amongst the many expectations placed on us in the different roles we play in society. even though not all of us have a figure like young-ji when they were growing up, the answer to finding life tolerable is always the same.

i love this film - i really, really do. i am eun-hee when i was 12, i am young-ji now. i love this film with a camaraderie that is shared between all asian women who have struggled and are struggling to find their places in society. –10/10

you are not unloveable you are just sad and a little bit angry. let’s go have some soup

Omfg I love this scene so much. I did not expect Eun-yu to headbutt him at all. I really liked her character during seasons 2 and 3.

"What are you doing? I don't know. What should we do? What do you want to do? You crazy bastard!"

Sweet Home Season 3 스위트홈 시즌3 (2024) // Episode 1