The Bridal Mask

I...have so many feelings about this drama. Which is both a good and a bad thing--the absolute worst is a drama that leaves you lukewarm. Alternately, what I feel is strong, but not always positive. Below the cut for a longer than usual dissection of my latest watch.

Ok, ok, where to start?

This was such an interesting drama, in that the initial premise was mind-bending, the over-arcing plot line could be very powerful, and the ending was pitch perfect. 

I'm going to have to break my golden rule and toss around spoilers like they're going out of fashion, because I need to analyze all this for my own ability to sleep tonight..

Lee Kang To is our hero...but our initial reaction is dislike. Not because he's the icy cold stereotypical hero (which he can be), but because his life choices have led him into the Japanese police force of 1930s occupied Korea. He spends his time torturing freedom fighters, wearing snazzy suits, and being booed by his countrymen, who see him as a traitor. He's a conflicted character, who made his choices in an effort to take care of his family, which has in turn alienated them, and left him without guidance. He's clearly immature, self-absorbed, and with anger management issues. He's also lost, defensive, and lonely. He wants to leave his Korean identity and his family's tradition of freedom fighting behind, since  it killed his father, and left his brother an  mentally broken man. His greatest dream is to catch the Korean freedom fighter, the mysterious masked Gaksital, and it is that which drives him through the early part of the story. 

His best friend is Kimura Shunji, who is in direct contrast to Kang To. Japanese, Shunji is nevertheless fascinated with Korean culture, and dedicates his free time to preserving examples of Korean art and life. He teaches at a local elementary school, plays the organ, and is generally a gentle, sweet young man...despite being the son of the local chief of police, who has it out for Kang To. He's Kang To's mainstay, his place of safety and guaranteed understanding. They are, in many ways, two halves of a whole. The Japanese who appreciates Korea, the Korean who yearns to leave it behind. Their tangled friendship is the true driving force of this drama, and the most compelling, because their story loses its simplicity swiftly. Shunji is not all sweetness and light, because the family legacy weighs on him--the need for family honor, strength, and unity, which in the end, if he follows their creed, will leave him separated forever from the peace he has chosen. 

Oh Mok Dan is a local circus performer, daughter of a famed independence fighter, a spitfire of a young woman who never backs down, and dares to spit even in the fearsome Lee Kang To's face as she defends her pure ideals. She yearns to find her "Young Master", a young boy she knew years ago who was her first love and protector, and whom she waits for. She's rather one-dimensional, and her main role in the story is to be bait for Gaksital, to drive a wedge between Shunji and Kang To, etc. Still, she's likable nonetheless, even if she lacks the complexity of other characters in the story. In her defense, I tend to think maybe its her very simplicity, her fierce devotion to that which she deems right, that draws the more gray-hatted Kang To and Shunji to her. When you're feeling your way around the edges of morality, someone with shining certainty can be very attractive.

The first quarter of the story is Kang To's hunt for Gaksital, who (we know, but he doesn't), is actually his hyung Kang San, who merely fakes his mental handicap as a disguise. It's complex and moving, and drove me nearly to tears as Kang To hunts Gaksital through a desire to better Kang San's life. Why doesn't Kang San tell Kang To the truth? Because he doesn't trust his now morally compromised younger brother. It's a vicious loop, and it kept me fascinated. Meanwhile, Shunji seems well on his way to betraying Kang To by siding with the freedom fighters, as he discovers his connection to Oh Mok Dan as childhood friends. He shields her from the police, and they reconnect...Shunji on his way to falling in love, Mok Dan still seeing him as a friend. There's a lot of political maneuvering as well, and I'll give the story this, that was never really boring. I could see why it was necessary, and it moved the plot along. And the plot was so interesting, so unexpected. Kang To was supposed to be our hero, but I felt myself constantly shifting in how I felt about him. One minute he was torturing brave men in the police torture chamber, smiling coolly, the next sobbing into his brother's sleeping back as he begged for someone to show him how to live a better life. Having a hero so flawed, so dark, was such a risky move I couldn't help but love it. In between all this, we realize that Kang To is Mok Dan's Young Master, her brave young love, full of courage and self-sacrifice. It leaves a sad taste in your mouth, as you wonder how Kang To got from there to here. It's all about how people aren't necessarily what they seem, how they constantly change, how choices can take you so far from where you intend or expect. And that's foreshadowing if there ever was any, because Gaksital takes that idea and runs with it.

Kenji, Shunji's older brother in the police force, kills Kang To's mother in an attempt to prove Kang San is Gaksital. Which just sends Kang San after him for vengeance. Which means an oblivious Kang To happily shoots the masked Gaksital to kill. It's one of the great moments of the show when Kang To discovers exactly what he's done--killed his beloved brother to defend the man who killed their mother. It shatters him, sends him searching for vengeance. He kills Kenji masked as Gaksital, but right in front of a shocked Shunji. And that's another great moment, when Kang To looks up through his mask and his eyes widen in horror, fear, and realization as he takes in his best friend. You can see the reality snapping in on him, what he's done, the train of events he's put in motion. How his best friend is now also his worst enemy. It's the best way to explore the inherent duality of having a secret identity, and the show loves that. By the end of the seventh episode, we have Kang To assuming the Gaksital mask as both a penance and a way to wreak revenge on his father's murderers, and Shunji the new captain of the Chongro Police force having chosen to temporarily forsake his peaceful life of teaching to hunt down his brother's murderer.

All this was great, amazing, edge of your seat stuff. Kang To and Shunji had so many levels of character complexity, so many layers to their relationship. Initial roles had just been swapped, characters were promising to develop in the most unexpected of ways, the villain was about to become the hero and vice versa. Just getting to this point had been such a ride. It was natural I'd be somewhat disappointed by what came next. I mean, it was still a good story, there was still excellent character development, but the plot seemed obvious, the subterfuge not subterfuge-y enough, Kang To's transformation not closely enough analyzed. It had some amazing moments (Tamao's struggle with guilt and cowardice, Ueno Rie's self-discovery and reconciliation with her own dual identity, Shunji's descent into the ever-deepening dark, the increasingly no-return nature of Shunji and Kang To's relationship). I still enjoyed it. But I wasn't as passionately in love with it. It didn't help that one of the main themes of the story was all about the importance of patriotism/nationalism, which is something that leaves me cold. I'm a historian. Nations are political constructs that come and go, in the name of which many good and innocent people die. I've never gotten the appeal. Fighting oppression? I'm down with that. Destroying injustice? I'm your girl. Spouting rhetoric and sacrificing lives around the idea of a nation? That creeps me out a little. But maybe that's just me. 

Regardless! By the last episode, I thought I had it all figured out. Typical underdog story, etc, etc.

Then came the beginning of the last episode. And as I watched it, I realized, in a dazed fashion, that I'd gotten this story all wrong. This was not the story of a triumphant underdog overcoming all difficulties to take down the big bad.

This was the story of a defeat

That for me snapped the whole story into perspective and it made so much bigger, grander, more moving. Because heroes don't always win, and that's the point. They can only fight. That's all anyone can do. Battles, both internal and external, are lost. But the war goes on.

I had two absolute favorite scenes in the last episode. The first was after Kang To buries Mok Dan. Lying weakly on her grave, trying to convince himself to fight on, Baek Gun (the Alfred to his Batman) arrives and gives him the rest of the bad news.

Baek Gun: Young Master. Even if only for the sake of Boon Yi, who died to save you, please get up now. The bastards have wiped out the Dong Jin Gyeolsadae and the student soldiers. They killed everyone

Kang To: Ahjussi. What did you say?

 Baek Gun: They're all...dead.

 Kang To: What do you mean they're all dead? The students I rescued from the draft to save them from death...Are you saying they're dead?

Baek Gun: The valley is entirely...awash with the blood of young men.  

This moment was so perfect. Kang To learns that you can save people, but that they won't necessarily stay saved. You can fight and fight, lose everything, and still end up back at square one, having accomplished nothing. It was a crushing realization. And he still struggled back to his feet. That was the moment for me he actually became Gaksital, a genuine hero.

The second scene I loved was the final confrontation between Shunji and Kang To. It worked on so many levels, and harked back to the very first episode, when they were two very different men., tying the whole show into a cohesive whole.

Kang To and Shunji sat across from each other, drinking sake, tense, fully aware that this was it, that they were approaching the end of their long road.

This was moving for so many reasons--in the first episode, their first interaction was a friendly sparring match which was intense but cathartic. In the last, there is no catharsis, there is only internalized emotion. In their first scene together, Shunji wore white, Kang To wore black. Here, Shunji wears black and Kang To white. The reasons for reversal is obvious, but there is a deeper subtext. Shunji wears his black in mourning for his dead father. Kang To's costume is also, coincidentally, in the Korean color of mourning. Together they grieve, for all the things they've lost--the people, the friendships, the country. But even so, united in this, they are nevertheless separated by the nationalistic lines they've drawn--Shunji mourns by his country's code, Kang To by his. They are irreversibly divided, for so many reasons.

And that's how I fell in love with the story all over again.

So in conclusion, yes, this drama was flawed. But its grand scope was so meaningful, its final message so intense, I can't deny it a place among the kdrama greats. I'd have to be as ice-cold as Shunji to do that.

(screencaps courtesy of Dramabeans!)