Par Hk

While I am not at all a fan of Chinese Costume dramas specially fairly , I found myself was captured by this drama for many reasons beyond my expatiation: 1- concept behind this drama. I usually can see and feel struggle of the story, story telling and how to deliver the character in others same category’s dramas ( even most famous ones ) but this drama never experienced this struggle from beginning and successfully obtained all its up and down smoothly without exaggeration or fooling audiences. There was nothing in story and it’s process of delivering story to distract attention , no irrelevant side story, they are all connected.All actors had opportunity to shine and deliver their character fully no matter how small or big it was and of course mastery acting of two main actor and actresses to deliver two noble and “progressive” character is out of question. While other dramas struggling to move me ( as an audiences and specially an international audience) with delivery of emotion, this dram brought huge surprise with rich true emotion. Revolutionary way of story telling in drama, using light humour to relax tension and break “forth wall”( the wall that keep audiences out of reach of character and actors) , like what Bertolt Brecht did in play. The cleaver and innovative way to involve audiences to not waiting anxiously to see how their emotions will be played and directed. In short, Brecht believed that “empathy will destroy the audience's critical capacity. He attacked empathy in theater by creating distance between the audience and the character, and between the actor and the person portrayed”. 2- More progressive approach to beauty, While Chinese costume and fairy dramas usually look like a shallow beauty show ( which is why it wasn’t able to stand in international film and television stage) , they bring beauty from outside to screen not creating beauty on the screen. I am talking about Art of acting and film making. The Legend of Shen Li is one of so few dramas that creat beauty on the screen no matter what actors looks like ( although they are all beautiful but we can’t distracted by the actors beautiful faces but attracted to beautiful acting), it is magic of art of acting. On the other hand this kind of dramas seems belong to certain age of actors and audiences but The Legend of Shen Li was able to broke this stereotype delicately. 3- Breaking stereotype of love and Hero and bring the new progressive definition to light by destroying attraction of masculinity and feminine as definition to fall in love. Shen Li found herself attracted to that weak man not because of masculine power but because he was her hero, her very own hero( in desperate situation which Shen Li was in mortal world) . Her love destroyed expatiation of “falling in love for young , good looking and healthy masculine man. In this drama, we not only have more profound definition of Love and Hero but also have a reason to love unlike other costumes drama that are based on Masculine or feminine and woman vulnerability. 4- Humanizing the god and immortality by its unique light humouring style and acting, and being the only drama to explain why gods can’t be in love or have emotion. 5- last and not less: “god is dead” as Friedrich Nietzsche once pronounced to emphasize “that traditional forms of meaning had lost their authority”. We killed god to reach our full potential as human, to be live, to be love, to be die. So I loved this drama because in simple words: fresh like a well written poem