Genre: Drama
Episodes: 20
Broadcast network: KBS2
Cast:
Joo Ji Hoon as Oh Seung Ha
Shin Min Ah as Seo Hae In
Uhm Tae Woong as Kang Oh Soo
Synopsis:
When Homicide Detective Kang Oh Soo hit a dead end in his investigation of two seemly unrelated murders, except for the Tarot cards left behind at both crime scenes, he sought help from Seo Hae In, a woman with psychometry ability. She revealed that the killers were different in each murder, but the victims were chosen for their connection to a death of a high school boy. Later, the cases proved to have one more thing in common: the suspects have the same defense attorney, Oh Seung Ha. Seung Ha's defense for his clients severely shaken Oh Soo?s conviction to catch the Tarot Card mastermind. Oh Soo was reminded that years ago he had killed a high school classmate in a fight. He was acquitted of all charges and began his life anew. Now, someone has came back to revenge the boy?s wrongful death by killing those who got him off.
My Opinion:
Mawang was my first true love. With Mawang (also known as The Devil or Lucifer, KBS 2007), my affections were seriously spoken for. The show grabbed me and made me contemplate committing for life. Merely for the chance of watching another gem like Mawang am I now willing to endure (and have in fact endured) hours of forgettable k-drama.
The Suspense.
When I watched Mawang for the first time, I felt a real sense of dread on behalf of the people in the story. For me, it was remarkable because I have the type of mind which tends to be objective and analytical. While watching a drama, even when moved to tears , one part of me will be standing at a distance analysing what is going on. But with Mawang, I was sucked into the story and into the lives of its characters and was on the edge of my seat as to how things were going to work out.
Partially, this is because Mawang was my first non-romance korean drama, so I didn’t know how deep and dark the conventions of k-drama would let this go (answer: quite far deep and dark). And partly due to the sheer brilliance of its water-tight plot-building and character development.
Mawang gives you the feeling; like you are about to watch train crash, but you have no idea how or when it will.Howeve, in Mawang, clues were liberally scattered along the way, there isn’t heaps of mystery, and right from the start everyone knows it will all end in tears, one way or another. I think it takes a particular type of brilliance to make a story and its people matter so much that your attention is held in a vice grip for episodes on end with no let-up in the tension.
One question that keeping popping into my mind when i watch Mawang was " What will the end tell us?". This show is for sure a revenge thriller. But more than that, it is a philosophical exploration. It looks deep into the concept of - When one has done wrong, should one be punished in proportion to blameworthiness, or in proportion to the suffering that resulted from the wrong". At the other end of the equation, when one has been wronged, to what extent is inflicting punishment justified, and where is the line drawn between justice and malicious vengeance? When evil has been irreparably done, is there hope for redemption? What is redemption anyway? Does forgiveness dilute justice? Can there be healing after terrible wrong? Does revenge bring healing or does it prevent healing? What price does vengeance exact on the soul of the avenger?
These are profound and weighty questions of life (and death). Who would have thought that a mere tv programme would be inviting us to ponder these questions more deeply.
The Role Ambiguity
When the show opens, Kang Oh Soo is set up as the hero of the piece. He is the righteous, loyal, straight-talking, scruffily down-to-earth police officer. Oh Seung Ha is the traditional lawyer villain; clever, painstaking and masterful, he is quietly frightening as he engineers ill events which are intricately conceived and killingly loaded with poetic justice and irony.
As the drama progresses, however, the assigned roles shift disconcertingly. Kang Oh Soo doth indeed protest too much, for he is not up to the righteous moral standards he champions. It seems he is a policeman because he needs to purge himself of guilt and is driven to embrace the light of justice in order to flee from the darkness within himself. At the same time, cracks start showing in Oh Seung Ha’s wall of ruthlessness and before long you are astonished to find yourself feeling sorry for the man in whom dwells a hurt and lonely little boy. As he eventually confesses, he just can’t step out of the tunnel.
So, who is the titular devil? Who is the hero and who is the villain? Who is more culpable? Or are they both victims?
To me, the whole point of the show is that there is no straight answer to the question “Who is the devil?”. If obliged to answer this question, I would say, “Neither man. And both men.” And I love this. For isn’t this life? Are there straight-forward wrongs or rights, heroes or victims, in this crazy, complex and amazing life of ours? Dig deep enough into any hero and you will find blemishes, and dig deep enough behind any failed human being and you will find betrayal or a hurt soul.
The Thoughtfulness
This is a thinking drama. But not in a tedious, turgid or overly self-conscious way. There is plenty of basic human drama (revenge, murder, intrigue) to keep you entertained and zip you along at a clipping pace. And it doesn’t lecture you. But if you care to pay attention, its thoughtfulness is breath-taking.
One of my favourite moments first appears in Episode Four. Rodin’s sculpture The Gates of Hell (which includes the famous “thinker”) has already turned up as a motif. Oh Seung Ha stands silent before a reproduction of the Gates of Hell in a train station, doubtless contemplating justice and punishment. It is an effective if unsubtle moment, and it reappears in subsequent episodes. But then it dawned on me: Each time this scene is played out, the camera carefully pans to include shots of people moving up and down escalators… Oh my word! It’s the levels of hell! And suddenly, Dante explodes into modern life.
This show is just so smart. And technically (directing, editing, camera work, …) it kicks all kinds of ass.
The Cast
A psychological thriller is very dependent on its cast being able to plumb the debts of the soul. And here I feel the show really shines.
Uhm Tae Woong is such a pro, he appears to assert no effort being Kang Oh Soo. He swaggers with confidence, then he is tortured by self-doubt. He is defensive, then he is vulnerable. He is adorably inapt in love and heart-breakingly transparent in pain. He makes you know him and care about his character; you fall for his charm, then you are disappointed with him, and then you fear for him and you weep with him.
I was smitten by Shin Min Ah here. Even though I recognized that her character was a cipher – a moral, forgiving, strong-hearted paragon – I nonetheless fell for it. (It doesn’t hurt that she is radiant here.) I readily bought into the whole construct of a beautiful woman with a pure soul who lives simply and virtuously, and in true saintly fashion always has the perfectly wise thing to say on every occasion. I didn’t see her as the plot device she undoubtedly was. I’m usually allergic to two-dimensionally angelic women in the saved-by-the-love-of-a-good-woman set-up. But I felt that Shin Min Ah brought enough earnestness and depth to her role to avoid preciousness.
I’ve never seen her in another role I like as much – A Love to Kill was unbearable and in My Girlfriend is a Gumiho I thought she was cute but I couldn’t connect with her – so Seo Hae In remains my favourite Shin Min Ah incarnation.
Joo Ji Hoon was a revelation here. Purge your memory of him clumsily eeking out constipated expression from his poser Prince Shin in Goong. In Mawang he takes on a conflicted character and turns in a performance that would make a veteran proud. In the early episodes he makes controlled use of his screen presence to convincingly convey sinister menace. And just as you think he is merely a revenge machine, he starts to waver and we glimpse the damaged soul and the beating heart inside the implacable avenger. It’s quite a trick. Watch Beautiful Bot Boy flip, on a dime, between Diabolical Mastermind and Little Boy Lost!
The rest of the cast was likewise excellent, realizing a range of characters from righteous to reprehensible and every ambiguous shade in between. Aided by a thoughtful script and careful character construction, they brought to life a complex web of lives which could otherwise easily have been little more than impersonal pieces on a chess-board.
The Supernatural (alas)
Mawang may in some quarters be advertised as a show about a woman with supernatural powers. But this is misleading, because while this slots into the plot, it is neither the focus nor a determining factor in the playing out of events. Our heroine Seo Hae In does indeed have powers of psychometry, which means that she can supernaturally “see” things connected to objects she touches. But her powers are limited – she only sees very selectively and she can’t control how much she sees.
The Ending
SPOILER WARNING!!!
I felt quite satisfied with the ending. What, you say? Am I mad? Our heroes die deaths which could have been avoided. And die simultaneously and tragically. And our heroine is left standing alone, devastated. And I was satisfied?
Well, not satisfied emotionally, of course. I cried, of course, and my heart broke a little. But satisfied intellectually and philosophically. By a certain point in the show, you know that things can’t end well. So much ill has happened, and there has been so much wrong done and so much wronged against, it was impossible for everyone to just chill and have a nice cup of tea, calm down, forget about everything, and settle into normal life. A happy ending would have lacked integrity.
The way I read the ending, both men had come to forgive the other and, to some extent and more importantly, to forgive themselves. And that was the best outcome anyone could have hoped for. At least they didn’t perish in bitter hate. The outcome wasn’t all that bleak considering that things had gotten to the point where even Oh Seung Ha wasn’t in control anymore and had become practically a helpless passenger on a train of events and moral consequences he had set in motion and could not stop. Or had he in fact deliberately created a whirlwind which he knew would sweep him up along with all the other protagonists and destroy them all in an almighty conflagration? In any event, it seems to me that death, for them both, was a blessed release.
AMAZING..and I want more from Uhm Tae Woong. He is such an amazing talent!!
