Spoiler alert..........
You are my Sunshine is a film of two halves. It wasnt an impressive build-up in the first half, as all build-ups to tragedies are, especially when you're in the knowledge that the plot is trying to reach a high point so as to fall irrevocably from it. What differentiates such melodramas, hence, is not the creation of a relationship but the destruction of it, and in this film the destruction is intolerably despairing.
At the same time, it seems apparent that, mandatory and banal as build-ups are, the value of particular instances in the first half increases to a level of overwhelming poignancy after disaster strikes. In particular, after Eun-Ha got herself into jail. Separately, and yet collectively, they both remember the time spent walking through the blossom trail one (or many) night, when Seok-Joong told her he would love her even after death. And, though the show did not feature it as a flashback, the past act of Seok-Joong periodically dropping off unsterilized milk--a representation of pure affection, perhaps?-- at his counterpart's door transforms itself as an act of romantic pursuit to a resurrected memory of plain, simple love when the couple are physically seperated from each other. The relation between past and present is at its greatest at such points, when the viewer is able to transcend the linearity of the plot and see the whole picture at its mellow best, and it is precisely this liberation that gives the quasi-climatic encounter between the two partners in prison, and indeed, many of the strikes of tragedies that came upon them, their poignant quality.
(On a side note, I find it quite sad that everything we do now, in the present, can only find its holistic value, and hence our full appreciation, when viewed as a past)
The last few moments of the show are worth recollecting. The scene where Seok-Joong tore open the fan compartment to hold hands with his beloved through the prison glass is beautiful, that very act a representation of his desire to be with her, and the act of them holding on to each other despite the prison guards attempting to pull them away a representation of their desire to stay together. Snow was featured when Eun-Ha is finally released from prison, and we now understand why Seok-Joong was seen tumbling blissfully into snow at the show's start.
The decision to give the couple a happy ending might serve as a consolation to many a teared-eye viewer in the end, but to me it serves as an optimistic perspective. Eun-Ha has AIDS, she's going to die, and meanwhile they would be shunned by society, as the film showed in various instances before. The ending ignores any such speculations, and in so doing creates the ultimate case for romance: that it is simple and free, and should remain as that.
At the same time, it seems apparent that, mandatory and banal as build-ups are, the value of particular instances in the first half increases to a level of overwhelming poignancy after disaster strikes. In particular, after Eun-Ha got herself into jail. Separately, and yet collectively, they both remember the time spent walking through the blossom trail one (or many) night, when Seok-Joong told her he would love her even after death. And, though the show did not feature it as a flashback, the past act of Seok-Joong periodically dropping off unsterilized milk--a representation of pure affection, perhaps?-- at his counterpart's door transforms itself as an act of romantic pursuit to a resurrected memory of plain, simple love when the couple are physically seperated from each other. The relation between past and present is at its greatest at such points, when the viewer is able to transcend the linearity of the plot and see the whole picture at its mellow best, and it is precisely this liberation that gives the quasi-climatic encounter between the two partners in prison, and indeed, many of the strikes of tragedies that came upon them, their poignant quality.
(On a side note, I find it quite sad that everything we do now, in the present, can only find its holistic value, and hence our full appreciation, when viewed as a past)
The last few moments of the show are worth recollecting. The scene where Seok-Joong tore open the fan compartment to hold hands with his beloved through the prison glass is beautiful, that very act a representation of his desire to be with her, and the act of them holding on to each other despite the prison guards attempting to pull them away a representation of their desire to stay together. Snow was featured when Eun-Ha is finally released from prison, and we now understand why Seok-Joong was seen tumbling blissfully into snow at the show's start.
The decision to give the couple a happy ending might serve as a consolation to many a teared-eye viewer in the end, but to me it serves as an optimistic perspective. Eun-Ha has AIDS, she's going to die, and meanwhile they would be shunned by society, as the film showed in various instances before. The ending ignores any such speculations, and in so doing creates the ultimate case for romance: that it is simple and free, and should remain as that.
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