Review ::
Shristi
I consume media to get an escape from life. The moment I am inside something which keeps me hooked, I forget the world. It’s me and the characters. One such series which left me immersed is When Life Gives You Tangerines. It’s a Korean series. I watch Korean movies and series, and the thing that I love about it is that nature, seasons, food, and the culture play a great part in every aspect of their lives. They present sensibilities of life through these mediums. The series is an ode to every emotion that a human is able to feel, and ultimately, it’s an ode to life.
It begins near a sea which has the power to create and destroy lives. People are afraid of it but they have to dive inside it, just to make ends meet. It’s about two lovers who started to caress each other’s presence right from their childhood. It’s about Ae Sun and Hwan Sik, who cross every hurdle to be with each other. Sounds familiar and like a regular story, right? Well, the presentation of the story makes it so believable and unique at the same time. Their lives never turn into a fairy tale. They love and lose, and the journey continues for fifty long years. They lose people one by one and find each other after surviving every difficult path. When the sea takes away Ae Sun’s mother from her, it’s her innocence which makes us look at the water with a sense of loss, which is a difficult place to be. It brings the greatest storms of life, and when that sea takes away her son from her, we understand that nature’s harshness just doesn’t see age or time. It turns into a scar which never goes away. Perhaps parents never get used to the idea of a lost child. Their world just shatters, and there is nothing which can fill the void. Their story moves ahead with so many people.
We can’t walk alone, and sometimes the little kindness that is there outside doesn’t let us walk alone. In every situation, they find themselves surrounded by people who come forward to soothe their wounds. They let the parents grieve and take care of the other two children left behind. They feed them when food is something hard for everyone around to procure. Ae Sun and Hwan Sik continue their lives with kindness and love intact inside them. They once again start to look at the sea with hope that it would look after their future. Hwan Sik turns into a fisherman to provide for his family. He somehow manages to be the best father for their children. He does everything for them and buys the old house for his wife.
Every little thing in the series symbolizes one or the other thing: the objects, the home, the relations, the trees, the seasons, and the ageing people. There is no rush among people. They are together and not alone, and that’s all that matters to them. Running towards a distant future is never the goal. Ae Sun’s daughter is good in studies, but her father always tells her to take a step back whenever going ahead seems difficult. She calls her father “sea,” which is always there to hold her up, and that helps her to move ahead in life. Sometimes, despite loving too much, parents somehow make their children believe that one sibling is more loved than the other, and it becomes a scar. In order to make up for them, we try to run fast and ahead, and ultimately, we suffer and fall.
The journey of life is a losing end, and never do we turn into someone who has understood every aspect of life. Every step is a beginning.
As Eliot had written,
“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
Everyone has to face death, and yet we take each other for granted as if they have to stay here forever. The regret of not being able to apologise for our mistakes and not giving them their due lingers in the heart. Before Ae Sun’s child dies, he asks for a hug which she is not able to give, and that hug stings inside her heart forever. Ae Sun’s daughter and son both regret that their father could have been treated well.
The bond of people with each other is a treat to behold. They know where they have gone wrong, and they feel happy in each other’s success. They believe in uplifting each other. Baudrillard’s ideas regarding individualism were that we can never be too individual because we are part of a society, so we have to learn ways to be with each other. They often ask each other when they will grow, and everyone finds it hard to answer because we never grow up. We are not even growing but somehow trying to dive inside deep waters so as to reach the surface, and we call it moving ahead. While the truth is, life comes full circle. Every incident repeats itself in one way or another. Every grief returns in many forms. Every lost person remains in our hearts and is felt in minute moments of life.
When Life Gives You Tangerines has four generations of people, and everyone relates to everyone else. This is one of the series which I didn’t binge-watch, and it didn’t even let me rush through it. I devoured it slowly, just like life. There is just no rush in knowing what’s happening in the next episode, but at the same time, you do wish to watch the next episode.
“I thought once you grew up, your hands and heart would naturally become calloused.
But everything’s still too hot for me. I get burned every day, but it hurts every time. Am I the only fool in the world? Is there anyone else adulting just fine?”
These lines from the series fit everyone around. We all think we have it all figured out, but eventually, we fall every time and get hurt at each step. We just don’t seem to get used to anything. The feelings get jumbled, and we feel lost in them all the more. The series can be seen as life itself—life as it happens. If we call life a farce, then in the words of Baudrillard, “Farce that repeats itself turns to history.”
This series, for me, was a ride I had no idea I was going to take. But when I did, it left me lost in the world around me, and I found that every emotion is as objective as it is subjective. Einstein said, “Time is relative.” Well, time is happening to all of us.
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Shristi is a poet who writes in both English and Hindi. She takes an active interest in popular culture events and writes about diverse topics ranging from food to old songs. She is pursuing her PhD from Lucknow University. She can be contacted at shristithakur94@gmail.com .