Song Hye-kyo and Song Joong-ki, the top performers in the Korean entertainment industry, began their battle as actors in 2023 when fans lamented the ending of their love. Song Hye-kyo's new drama "The Glory" VS Song Joong-ki's new drama "Reborn Rich".
"The Glory" has received high ratings since its broadcast. After all, who doesn't love to watch the revenge story of a femme fatale? As Netflix's drama in the new year, the cast is strong, with director Anh Gil Ho, who is the director of Stranger, and screenwriter Kim Eun-sook, who is the writer of "Descendants Of The Sun", "Guardian: The Lonely and Great God" and other hit dramas. Such a combination, before the broadcast, my expectations are very high.
After the broadcast, it scored 8.1 on IMDb and was 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. I unilaterally announced that Song Hye-kyo won. After all, this time Netflix released all eight episodes at one time so that the first season of The Glory could not have a terrible ending.
This time, Song Hye-kyo has embarked on the road of the heroine, facing the problem of campus violence in Korean society. Although this is a common topic in Korean movies and dramas, The Glory has already crossed the era of filming bullying and causality and entered the stage of no longer asking why but focusing on what to do. For example, give all the pain suffered in the dark back.
"From now on, my dream is you."
In an empty stadium, a boy pins the heroine Moon Dong-eun to the edge of the stage, and a hot curling iron is pressed on her arm. Her cries and screams, as well as the laughter of the perpetrators, echo in the stadium.
Dong-eun will never forget the faces of the five perpetrators. Among them are leaders, viewers, and executors, who trample on her self-esteem and destroy her future. Her class teacher and her mother are also accomplices. Her mother even signs a mediation agreement for 1 million won. All this has become a nightmare of her life. But can the ordinary weak only wither and rot in this net of solidified structures?
"I like to fight as hard as I can in silence."
Without the courage to commit suicide, Dong-eun decides to live with scars all over her body but falls into the dark abyss. From that day on, her dream is Park Yeon-jin, and she will fight with all her strength in silence.
This goal seems to be very unreliable, but the most powerful point of "The Glory" is that someone can gamble her life for revenge, and the cruelest point of "The Glory" is that she not only kills people but also tortures their hearts, such as her use of her class teacher's son to kill him, this move is so great!
Although the relationship between the five is not as strong as expected, and they have many weaknesses, the difference in class status is the problem ahead. Dong-eun must win with one stroke, and anyone's counterattack may waste all her previous efforts.
I don't want to give away too many spoilers, except to say that the whole drama is like playing Go. For 16 years, Dong-eun has carefully laid out a revenge Go game and then attacks step by step.
"I don't need a prince, I need an executioner who can dance with me."
The emotional scenes of revenge dramas are the most easily criticized places, especially if the protagonist of revenge is a woman, the man always appears as a savior, and has emotional entanglements with the heroine. "The Glory" has a similar routine of course, but soon, the scriptwriter breaks it.
I have to admit that the interaction between Dong-eun and Joo Yeo-jeong is one of the few tender moments in The Glory, and the director's excellent camera operation makes up for the unreality of "love at first sight". The scriptwriter is very good at controlling this kind of emotion in the dark.
The process of Dong-eun getting close to the enemy's husband Ha Do-yeong step by step is a game and a bet, and the process of eating white pieces with black ones is not only her path to revenge but also the process of rebuilding herself. What should a heroine be like? Perhaps it is a line in the drama, "I will show no mercy, and I am doomed not to usher in glory".
How to put new wine in old bottles?
How to make the old story fresh? It is a problem faced by many Korean dramas. The superficial sensory stimulation has long been out of date, and the story reality is more important. The Glory focuses on class differences and completely different ways of thinking. The rich second generation does not need dreams, but the poor are realistic. What the upper class has within reach is out of reach for the lower class.
Another big attraction of the drama is that these people at the bottom are "fighting monsters and upgrading" all the way. Song Hye-kyo once said in an interview, "She is a victim, but I don't want to portray her as a poor woman, because I think it may be difficult for the audience to empathize with her".
There is no denying that Korean dramas over the past few years have been old-fashioned and could easily have terrible endings. Although this drama is also old-fashioned, you can see that the crew pays attention to the details, such as the image of Go throughout the drama, Yeon-jin's green high-heeled shoes VS Dong-eun's blue canvas shoes, the sun in the polar day VS the moon in the polar night, and the white pieces gradually ate by the black ones. The blue handbag is the foreshadowing of the second season. What is the purpose of the man who killed Joo Yeo-jeong's father in prison? It has become the biggest expectation of the second season.
I think where people feel empathy for revenge dramas is not revenge but the pain of every individual in that era. The "glory" in "The Glory" represents the courage to ask why. If more people ask, those hypocritical prejudices and malice will be exposed and may be changed, right?
Well, are you following the drama? Tell me your feelings in the comments!
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