Mine

This is a family shackled by the proverbial golden handcuffs. If we scrape off the gilded trappings, it reveals that this family's hearts are what's shackled.

Is this not for everyone? Sure.

Is it well done? Absolutely. Ⓜ was skillfully crafted. If one can watch until the end, the message is powerful.

While, Ⓜ's not exactly subtle, it appears to be designed that way. The truth is in front of everyone. It's not running away - It's escaping them, because they refuse to see it. It's not subtle. It bludgeons the audience. Ⓜ is a slow burn style show with a weighty feel to it along w/ a sense of impending doom. Everything in Ⓜ is deliberate: It's a methodical work. The pace augments the slow burn effect. The soundtrack portends doom. The dialogue and acting sustain extreme tension.

The quest for more and more elusive power may leave one's soul powerLESS. Trapped. Snared. Hooked. Captured. That's the feel. Love, or the lack of it, is the true power in Ⓜ. We see the power of love is snuffed out by pride, and nearly every person in Ⓜ is damaged over the want of love. Jin-ho and Jin-hee were marred by a dearth of affection & (emotional) support because their parents are thoroughly self-centered. However, even /they/ were provided with more (emotionally) than Ji-yoon.

Metaphors, both visual and verbal, are utilized to add layers of depth. One character has a literal and metaphoric wake up. This person, though late to do so, makes an effort to encourage those around h/h to alter their destructive courses & improve themselves. Han Soo-hyuk's heart sweater represents his character. Kang's visual signals and wardrobe change as she adapts to the situation. Mother is always eating meat, always consuming.

Cadenza and Rubato are metaphors. Neither is a beautiful mansion. Cadenza is institutional, like an asylum. There is imagery of bars and cells everywhere. The beautiful painting at the top of the stairs features black, sturdy looking columns that aren't as strong as they first appear, vaporizing into the persistent wind. There are narrow hallways with ceilings that look like they reach the sky. Cheerless, they look like big inescapable boxes. Another hallway even has painted bars on the walls. Many of Rubato and Cadenza's rooms and hallways look like segments or cells lined up. That, again, brings to mind prisons and mental words. Could this represent compartmentalization? One character reveals h/h desire to "escape". The focus constantly drifts back to the stairs in the foyer. Kim Yu-yeon is always polishing that stair railing. The attention the stairway gets must mean something: What's extraordinarily impressive is how the staircase is an open mouth. Looking straight on, the viewer is in the INSIDE of the mouth looking out, and the stairs are the teeth. We've been consumed. They think they are consumers, but they are being consumed.

The director/writer consistently uses repetition to hammer a point and build tension. "MINE" "MINE" "MINE" Is ubiquitous in the series. One of the characters says: "I've never had a thing that was truly mine. Now, everything is mine," exposing replete self-deception. As Mother Emma will point out, we are all deluded about what we consider to be "mine." "KILL," "murder," "dead," - There's constant mention of those words. "I feel sorry for them" is said more than once in the series, Jin-ho being the first to voice that sentiment. He adds: "Everyone in the family is lonely." "Plunge," "fall," & "descent" are all concepts explored in the show, both verbally and visually. They've abandoned contentment for an illusion. They are blind to their own "stuff," shredding their hearts as they plunge to meet their own hard truths. Yet, they still try to enforce their way of life on Soo-hyuk.

Foreshadowing is prevalent. There's a heavy, weighty feel to Ⓜ w/ a sense of impending doom. "Lie," "spy," "die," is how they fly. Everyone has secrets. They spy to get fuel for their designs. They blackmail and threaten as easily as they breathe.

Arrogance infects all interactions. Ji-yoon is "chairdad's" illegitimate child, who was brought home to be raised along with his half-siblings. Ji-yoon tells his son, Ha-joon, that 'God always takes something from special people like us." His declaration that he's special may be coming from a place of pain. He was not made to feel special or loved, growing up, so he's grasping at anything that will feed his starving self-image.

The humor - it's funny at times. Nobody's funnier than clueless mother and her kids. She says stuff like: "Nobody's more stressed out than I am." Tsk tsk. Mother Emma is held up as a comparison to the family. She's the one that's truly living a fulfilling life.

Ⓜ echoes the excellent movie, Gosford Park. A predecessor to Downtown Abbey, there is not one scene where the servants are not present. They play their whole torrid lives out in front of the servants without hardly noticing anyone is there. Another character starts to channel an inner Rev Dimmesdale from The Scarlet Letter. This person becomes consumed with anxiety and guilt over the situation. These last few episodes are downright Hitchcockian, with Hi-soo as a Grace Kelly type (if Grace Kelly could flip a switch and dress a person down with Oscar-worthy verve). It's not perfect. Toward the end, they made one of the 'baddies' too easy to kill. The person was being too honest about their intentions, which wasn't realistic. No doubt some viewers will think it's too heavy handed. I'm of the opinion that it all works together well.

The narrator says in the intro that "she" caused the caste system at Cadenza to collapse. Wouldn't you like to know who that is? Is it, perhaps, a generic "she?" Ep16 is entitled: "Glorious WOMEN." We see some satisfying "girl power" moments in the last episode. I hope that some of this will help to underscore what is going on beneath the surface. I wasn't dying to watch it, but I think I'll probably drop in for another visit sometime.

Quote🗣:

"Think about what's truly yours. {She lists a bunch of possessions and points out that everything they own will be passed on to someone else, so things aren't truly yours.} The things you've said, the things you've done, and the values that you strived to keep throughout your life, or what you'll bring with you when you die. Let's drive to find what's truly ours during our time in this world. ~Mother Emma~

I also did a spoiler review.

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