there are a lot of scenes in beyond evil that, upon watching the second time, give a whole different meaning than the first time and i’ve always been meaning to write about it. an example is the dinner scene in episode 2, where we see dong-sik palpably in distress yet we’re utterly in the dark as of why he’s that way. when the scene of him placing the fingers later then show up, we start thinking, what’s with the fingers? did he really kill her? was that why he seemed so distraught during the dinner? but after finishing the show, rewatching that scene would simply make you go, oh, he found the fingers. so that’s why he seemed that way.
that oh. that realisation of what the scene actually meant. how the layered dialogues and thick masks that the characters put on in that scene just simply stripped away when you watch it again and all you see is the rawness, the reality, the whys, all the dead ends now tied together into a pretty knot. whatever you had originally interpreted from the scene the first time is now debunked by the proper truth. the reason why i love these type of scenes is because it’s not exactly easy to perfect both writing and acting wise. i love them for the double meaning behind the dialogues, the way you think you’ve understood when, really, you haven’t.
but the scene example that i do want to bring up besides the ep2 dinner scene is the one where jinmook was on stage in ep5. when dongsik stormed in, you, as a first time viewer, would automatically justify his anger for him wanting to protect jinmook from being taken advantage of by do haewon and lee changjin for the redevelopment plans. you watch him fume, riled up, you watch him shout at jinmook to get off stage. but as a second time viewer, you realise his anger was not directed at the residents for taking advantage of jinmook, but rather his anger was directed at jinmook for taking advantage of the residents and their “pity” towards him. you realise he’s angry because jinmook is using his daughter, the very daughter that he himself murdered, to gain pity from the residents, and he’s so so angry that he asks him why. what are you doing.
at first we think; dongsik is baffled by jinmook’s oblivion to being taken advantage of. dongsik is basically asking “you’re asking me what’s wrong? you’re the one letting these people use you and minjeong and you’re asking me what’s wrong?”
but a 2nd watch you’d interpret this as; dongsik is baffled by jinmook’s audacity to ask him what’s wrong when he was the one who started everything - the murders, his sister, minjeong. dongsik is basically asking “how can you ask me what’s wrong? how dare you ask me what’s wrong when you know full well what you’ve done?”
and the rest of the dialogues in this part basically has the same gist; that doubled meaning. dongsik asking jinmook “what are you doing” and that rage in his eyes when jinmook said he caused a nuisance because of minjeong.
at first we think dongsik is angry at how jinmook is letting these people make him feel guilty over minjeong and using that rootless guilt for their own gains.
then we realise it’s really dongsik is angry at how jinmook is basically admitting to being the cause behind all this mess, and he’s angry because he can’t even do anything about it, he’s angry because jinmook has the nerve to even utter minjeong’s name after what he’d done to her.
i won’t ramble any further because analysing a scene is always fun when you’ve done it yourself and i don’t want to hand everything on a silver platter. but i just want to appreciate the efforts that have gone into writing the dialogues and acting it out, how they’ve completely fooled us the first time. the hidden meanings behind dongsik’s rage, his questions, how he aggressively pulled jinmook away and how we should’ve realised that that aggression seemed out of place because we understand that dongsik considered jinmook as family and he wouldn’t just... be rough with someone he cares about. so we should’ve noticed how something was terribly wrong with dongsik and jinmook. yet we simply didn’t until we finished the first half of the show.
another scene was also when jinmook visited dongsik during his arrest. that exchange of dialogues
“don’t you know why im here?”
“then why are you doing this [bringing him food]”
“i know you. it wasnt you. never.”
“how can you be so sure?”
“dongsik. it wasnt you. i know.”
where at first we think dongsik is just bewildered by jinmook’s visit when he might be the killer, but then we realise dongsik’s “how can you be so sure” is him going “so you’re saying you know i am not the killer because it’s you.”
won’t say alot anymore but big kudos to kim soojin’s writing and shin hakyun’s acting for pulling off such incredible scenes <3 i honestly could go on talking abt these kinds of scenes and how beyond evil served so much of it.
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