I think Celine's character is to show that love alone isn't enough. Celine loves Rumi; she's her daughter. But even so, she was consciously responsible for creating an oppressive environment for Rumi; she taught Rumi that she was "wrong," "broken," that they "needed to fix Rumi." Celine, even loving Rumi, was responsible for causing her enormous psychological problems.
Something similar happened with Jinu; she loved, he loves his family, he did everything for them. But still, he abandoned them, he condemned them. Jinu loves Rumi, and yet he betrayed her. Zoey and Mira love Rumi, and yet they chose to threaten Rumi instead of listening to her at the Idol Awards, yet they didn't try to find Rumi when she ran away, after all, they love Rumi, but Honmoon comes first.
And I think that's why Celine and Jinu generate so much debate. It's impossible to deny the love they have for their loved ones, but it's difficult to accept that, even loving someone so much, we can be capable of hurting them, consciously or unconsciously.
Do you think that makes sense? 🥀
I do think that makes sense, yes. I've talked before about the concept of "Celine loves Rumi and it's not enough," actually, and I love how you've expanded on that to mention how this theme is present with the other characters as well.
I think a lot of people are uncomfortable discussing the idea that you can have the best of intentions, genuinely trying to do the right thing based out of a sense of love and care, and still hurt people. It's uncomfortable for them because then they have to confront their own capability for harm. I think for a lot of people--not everyone, but a lot of people--they want to operate out of the mindset that "good people are incapable of hurting people, and I am good because [xyz reason], so I will never hurt people." It's comforting, and a stable way of looking at yourself, but it's not really true.
Basically every major character in the movie ends up hurting someone they love at some point due to a mixture of trauma, the pressure of high stakes, and the fact that they simply don't know another way of navigating the situation they're in. They're going off of what they've been taught, how they've been raised, how they've learned to navigate the world, and although we have the privilege of looking at their situation from the outside, it can be much harder to take a step back when you're actually in it. We can say "Celine should have done this, this, and this--" but realistically, how would she have known what we know? She was genuinely doing her best to try and help Rumi... she was just misguided on what Rumi needed from her.
Beyond that, with Jinu, it's easy to look at it from afar and say "well, he abandoned his family." But (and this is setting aside all debates about whether he knew ahead of time that his family wouldn't be allowed in and whether he could've chosen to leave after initially accepting Gwi-Ma/the king's offer) genuinely, if you are starving, homeless, and have little hope of escaping your situation, I think the question of "how far would you go to ensure your own survival" takes on a different weight. It's easy for us to judge, but Jinu's choice (again, assuming it was much of a choice at all) was one between dying with his family or surviving with the guilt of leaving his family to die.
That's a really, really hard choice. More than I think people give it credit for.
And, I mean, in terms of him hurting Rumi, and all the pain he's causing in the present... again, he's operating the only way he knows how. It's been drilled into his head as such an intensely strong habit, after 400 years, that it's incredibly hard for him to conceptualize disobeying or going against Gwi-Ma. In his mind, it would just be a way to get tortured and then put back in line again with nothing to show for it, because Gwi-Ma is more powerful than him and He Cannot Escape. So he hurts Rumi, in a genuinely terrible way. Even though he hates doing it, he still does it, because he doesn't believe he can act any other way.
As for Zoey and Mira--yeah. In the face of a disaster, they fall back on their hunter training. They don't know how else to navigate the situation, because they aren't primed to actually healthily handle conflict in their friendship with Rumi. The "your faults and fears must never be seen" mindset that Celine taught them has made it so that they are not able to hold space when each others' faults and fears get put on full display--and so even though they love Rumi, they really do hurt her and treat her badly here.
Each character has reasons for acting the way they do. Each character genuinely loves and cares about the people they're hurting. But the hurt is still real. The love and care doesn't negate the fact that the hurt and suffering they caused was real.
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
prguitarman
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
yousharknotpass
