SBS, Netflix / 2020 / 16 episodes
Genres: fantasy, romantic drama
Written by Kim Eun-sook
Directed by Baek Sang-hoon, Jung Ji-hyun
More information: Wikipedia / HanCinema
A King Without a Kingdom:
Kitsch and Clichés
in The King: Eternal Monarch
I could describe the story of this time-traveling drama. What the difference is between the Kingdom of Corea and the Republic of Korea seen within it. What its conflict is. What kind of characters travel between the two worlds and why. What it is like when two people belonging to different worlds fall in love. But I will not do so, because it is completely unnecessary.
Even if they are not sophisticated, the professional experts of the Korean entertainment industry can wrap watchable, mediocre stories around anything. Now, however, it does not matter what they did, because the dominant characteristics of the end result completely buried everything for which a drama is worth wasting time on. Yet, from the basic idea of The King: Eternal Monarch, a spectacular, interesting, and humorous drama could have been made; it’s a pity.
Instead, they managed to bring to the screen a Cinderella story that simply trips the wire of good taste. In reality, they aimed for nothing else than to parade the fairy-tale king (instead of a prince), who struts in marvelous costumes on his snow-white steed while riding into Seoul on one of the multi-lane highways. And he stays that way, only occasionally getting mixed up in kitschy backdrops. It seems entirely as if the character had been written for Lee Min-ho from the start, who fully delivers this "posur" figure.
It would be cool if we received signs that this is a joke, because then something could be done with it. But the creators present the royal stranger—trading in golden statues—with deadly seriousness throughout, just as they do the fact that the loud-mouthed and phlegmatic police girl soon capitulates before the Peerless Man of Women's Dreams, and thereafter staggers after him dazed in both empires, with the tears of longing in her eyes. Seriously, I have never seen a male character whose sole prescribed characteristic was to be "gallant," come what may. We have, however, seen several similar unfortunate female characters, but perhaps never one so childishly like a girl's romance novel.
Although one should also protest against the fooling of youth with such outdated patterns, the thought still arises: perhaps they targeted 8-10-year-old little girls with this drama? But surely not, because quite a few evil uncles also appear in the story who do not shrink from killing either.
I cannot distance myself from the thought that the cash register was constantly ringing in the ears of the series' makers when they were thinking about how much revenue could be brought by stuffing the story with elements found to be well-proven by previous opinion polls, whether they fit together or not. Thus, around the already out-of-place king, we get an empire in whose future world the royal household operates according to the clichés of historical dramas, while the wicked witch of a Prime Minister schemes while tottering in haute couture dresses and high heels, and our king—promoted to a military leader—leads the naval battle against the Japanese with his chest bared (naturally evoking some current-political island disputes as well).
At this point, humor was nevertheless brought to me by Netflix’s subtitling, according to which (in both English and Hungarian) this command is issued while we see destroyers charging toward the naval enemy: "Motorboat fleet 203, block them from the front."
Otherwise, health to everyone who likes this sort of thing. For me, it goes into the bin, even if the bamboo forest was beautiful and there were characters in it worthy of a better fate.
No comments:
Post a Comment