Our Youth, Absolute Perfection.
I am gone in PhD land, but Our Youth was such perfection that I decided to return in brief to express even a fraction of the wonder I felt watching this show.
From the outset I was thinking we might be getting a Twenty-Five Twenty-One style, start in the sad future, look back at the once joyful past type show (which for the record, I did not watch because I avoid sad endings), but I was hopeful! And as we progressed towards the future I became more hopeful that we’d spend some time in the future, and that that future might not be dark.
And I was fully rewarded in every way.
I don’t think I have ever felt so perfectly made whole by the ending of a show. We fully unpacked the causes of the separation, Haruki’s choice was only meant to last till he successfully got into University. Jin held him close the moment he knew he was allowed.
But we didn't make light of the abandonment, or it's cause.
Even separated, they clung to the memory of each other
I was worried a bit, in ep 10, that we might be going full role reversal and having Jin’s life collapse when Haruki left (with the smoking as the first indicator) but the show didn’t do that to us. He was still a good student, a good friend, he continued on as he always had. Emptier, lonelier, but not broken.
The atmosphere of this show knew it’s platform and so much of that separation was show don’t tell.
There were big and small things too, we were shown Haruki’s growth and desire for more so clearly in his smile, and his certain stride and his confident voice, but did anyone else almost hear Jin say “I miss the taste of his kisses” everytime he picked up a cigarette? Or was that just me?
As they were drawn closer and closer back together in ep 10 I was on the edge of my seat, now? Now? NOW? And then yes! NOW
I could talk about nearly every scene in episode 10, and literally every scene in ep 11 because every single one was full of emotion so loud it took my breath away. Happy, sad, loving, lonely, so melancholic and yet so hopeful.
This show played with the future and the past on a few different occasions, teasing forward and then pulling back to flesh out the how and the when. To me it was meant to be hopeful, we will get there the show kept saying we can make it.
Ep11 really reinforced this so well it brought me to tears.
We aren’t there yet, but trust, and one day we will be.
That felt like the message of the show to me more than anything else
No matter how dark our reality
This show wasn’t about the future that is still to come, the future that will coming, the future that is here already in a lot of ways in Thailand
About holding on and walking forward
And, one day, into the light.
10/10 Everyone should watch this.
stormborns
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