The Eighth Sense and its visual storytelling, the artfulness and the sheer effect with which they make the stories visible, highlighted, in colors, in light and dark, in acting, in movement. Like, of course they use sound, too, they appeal to all the senses that film medium can, visual, auditory, even associations of scent and smell and touch just by the heightening of the audio-visual experience, through filters, distortions, manipulations, framing, score, lyrics, leading the eye and the expierence. Artful and so well-made that it stands out in its emotional impact.
The editing, the extreme close ups, the alteration between movement and stillness, hand camera, aerial drone views, reverse, above water under water upside down mirror views too close too make up what you’re looking at for a moment… it all makes you almost dizzy at times, as even your vestibular sense is appealed to by these very physical visual techniques and effects, too, right next to all the themes and metaphors about balance throughout the text.
I do love the theories about the series title I’ve seen around, about the seventh sense being proprioceptive (movement and how you place, orient yourself) and the eighth one being interoceptive (internal, your physical needs, maybe in extension emotional needs, as it is a story about listening to those and healing/growing/moving).
I dare say this series comments on and appeals to all of them, through the technical use of medium, its metaphors and its art and messages about the human experience, and life being the use of all those senses, exitsting through and inside them, life being all of those experiences and the changes inbetween, the stillness, the stagnation, the getting moving again, the waves, the being tossed by waves, the watching of a tamed ocean inside a fish tank, the just dipping your toes in water. The salt-water tears you cry.
I came here to say. Just having watched the last two eps, and there’s just so much there, so many things, layers, so many artful things, but boy did I feel a visceral reaction when Jaewon started moving again, walking with that skip in his step to school, down the stairs.
Because what does depression do to you, it makes you stuck and stagnant, holding yourself still, frozen, preserving energy, paralyzing you. It reads all over your body, its immobility and rigidness. The acting on this is impeccable and had a visceral effect on me.
And then? When that animation comes back to you, to Jaewon, in that skip in his step, the animation of his face, elasticity and livelyness, the sheer movement of it all, that means feeling alive? How yes, there’s work and growth and healing that brought him there but sometimes it just happens, suddenly, just so? To make that point visible through these short scenes of walking, and the relief I felt, the energy?
Even the flow of meandering through the city feels like progress made visible, but when he walks again, with purpose, the acting out of that walk towards Jihyun, arms swinging, hands engaged, whole body motion walking with purpose?
That scene hit hard, will stay with me, because everything about those last two eps made that story visible, the getting back into movement, movement as what makes this life, the rush of it after stillness, that leaves you reeling. They took me along on that journey with those last eps, reminded me.
The evocativeness of this series and how it’s made, of taking you along on that ride, put you through it, all senses engaged, remind you of life… a very cathartic one, this one. No I’m not crying. I am actually so elated.
I do love those shows the best, that put you through the story’s experience as a viewer, by the means of the medium and publishing, too. Shows that guide and engage your emotional journey in a way that adds deeper layers of meaning to the messages, and is a very potent message in itself, I feel. Especially if you end on a positive hopeful note, much needed in these times.
Catharsis, yes. Connection through art, too.
ellievsbear
snowghoul
amandla
vaporwave
andulkaphoto
