East of Eden (Song Seung Hun, Lee Da Hae)

I LOVED the portion of the story that covered the coal mining community, and the very struggle between the union organizer Lee Gi Chul and President Shin Tae Hwan. (Worth noting that Jo Min Ki, who plays Shin Tae Hwan, also played Yong-ee's biological father in Iljimae.)

The writing took care to ground their conflict in the real bleak details of the mining life rather than pity histrionics, using the refrain of a coal miner's song, the plum blotched bruises on the shoulders of every single miner, birds in a cage to help signal when the air in the mine was poisonous, etc. More than that, the acting between Min Ki and Jong Won (Dong Chul's father Gi Chul), is nicely played and modulated. Jong Wong has a way of using a smile to convey different shades of amusement, embarassment, and warmth, which he does here too to give texture to his relationship with family. And then it sets up how this everyman Gi Chul then shifts into a quietly charismatic and truly strong man when he confronts the Shin Tae Hwan. And it's well directed, the scene allowed to evolve and play without music or too tight closeups to "lead" the viewer.

If I'm not mistaken, Go Doo Shim (More Beautiful than a Flower) plays Gi Chul's wife. She was the best written character; HER character felt absolutely authentic, like the gritty, unsentimental, rough but definitely "salt of the earth" values of her coal mining town was expressed through her. The acting performance was funny without being silly, and her scenes with Jong Won regarding infidelities, his "hobby" as an activist and other things plays like a real marraige.

I like Kim Jin Man more as an actor's director and less as a stylist. Which is to say, he's definitely a stylist, with the way he likes to mess around with color filtering and do scene-in-scene edits and splits to introduce characters and foreshadow plot points. On one hand, his style differs a lot from other K-drama TV directors in that he generally doesn't like to construct a scene for emotional impact.

Rather more like a good Korean film director, he forces you to piece together the narrative thread and to observe the actual acting in the characters, even if you're not necessarily understanding what the scene actually is. Sometimes this more naturalistic approach makes people's performance seem better than they would otherwise be, because you become extra-sensitive to the cadences and nuances of the actors. And also he doesn't waste time lingering on a shot to hone in on emotional impact. It's more demanding on the viewer, and at times it makes the weakness in the first episode's script more obvious. But, at the same time, it gives the coal mining town scenes the gritty vibe that it needs without turning it into a pity-party history lesson.

On the other hand, as a stylist, I just don't like his style very much (though there's an early use of fade to black with Song Seung Heung which works beautifully.) That includes Bittersweet Life/Le Dolce Vita and Ireland. At times, he approaches it as a powerpoint presentation, using visuals and such to clarify story. But at the same time, it almost makes the presentation kinda cheesy because he isn't using the special effects to create a poetic sequence or underline an emotion. Often, it's not even there to really convey mood.

That becomes more problematic for the other 50% of the episode. The opening action sequence is competently done, but it isn't as fun as it should be. The establishing shots of the coal mining shots look kinda fake. There's a bunch of pregnancies with a bunch of mothers that happened roughly at the same time; we have no clue who is who. Nor we do really care all that much. So, yeah, you have switched babies, aborted babies, weeping mothers, and a foreshadowing of the main character's father, but you're also kinda "ehhh, so what?" Part of it is the messy, all-the-over-map writing that dilutes the slice of 1961 in the coal mining community. But, really, part of it is these moments are only worth a damn when a director is willing to milk the emotional melodrama. Not here though. The piles of suffering just kinda happen in succession and you're trying to process who is who only because you know this show is 50 episodes and has a convoluted family tree. It's tedious work, kind of a character accounting.

So, even though there's lots of action bits, lots of melodrama bits, lots of bleaky, gritty bits, and lots of mano-a-mano details, the first episode really is kinda dull, distant, and at times kinda cheesy/shlocky for the matching budget. But there's still bits here and there, and the acting seems overall better quality to suggest the story has potential, if nothing else but to promise Song Seung Heon's best performance on TV or film.

I think Go Doo Shim is definitely the character playing Lee Dong Chul's mother. And anyway, this character absolutely owns this episode, with the realness of her performance as well as the quality of her dialogue. It was all very, very well done. Thought the funeral scene was very well done, from how Lee Dong Chul's mother .

And it has to be said -- Lee Dong Gul's dad gets around. When it's revealed that he bore children with both women, part of you goes "WTF?!?!?!? Are we supposed to grieve over this jerk?!?" And in any case, that means that through Episodes 1 and 2, there have been a total of four births (one presumably aborted), and at least one switched birth.

There's not much more to add here. I like the cinematography here in this episode more, and the director's choices in colour contrasts. I also really liked how the director depicted the culture of the mining town (and even the funeral procession was well done) and paid attention to how grim this life really is.

I haven't paid much attention to the family tree diagram, so I'm still waiting on who will be the Lee Dae Hae and Han Ji Hye characters.

Mad nurse trying to strangle newborn baby with lightnings and hard rain on the background... Then she decided to switch it with mohawk baby xD The babies were WAY too big to be newborn my guess is that they were about 1 year old. I know they cannot use newborn babies but what about even a bit smaller or something. Or how about instead of styling their hair just shave it off?