Monday, 24 September 2018

on quartet - the irreplaceable imperfection whole of doughnut

I've recently watched an interesting Japanese drama called "Quartet".
It was about the fateful intentional encounter of 4 adults, unknown music players from various background to form a small classical band "quartet doughnut hole".
The drama seems mysterious and scary at first, which gave me the impression it's one of those trendy detective dramas lately. It explains why I had not watched it earlier.(I'm bored of detective dramas lately as they sometimes are so cold, shallow and increasingly meaningless to me.. i mean what is the point of portraying a cool smart detector and all the crimes?)
Surely it is not. Staying true to its introduction, it is a bittersweet story about the awkwardness of 4 clumsy adults, coming from different paths of life, struggling to seal their defect in a society full of prejudice towards deviance to live a normal life as their definition.
Each character has a different childhood trauma caused by social norms and discrimination towards the deviant family they were born to. Even when it is so clear that one never has an option to pick the parents or family they come from. Yet, one has to burden the heavy sentence left behind by their parents, facing the severity and coldness they by no means deserve to..
At first, each of them kind of set up their encounter to cheat and live their lies running away from the cruel reality society thrust on them... slowly, however, through their co-living, they started to uncover the warmth and gentleness each has, and started to see each other for their own characteristics, without prejudice or judgement... Just when they thought they could finally find someone who see themselves for their own personalities, they are challenged again by the joke of fate. Each lies they made about their life and about the whole "accidental encounter"; was discovered.
... so what if lies could really bring unfortunate souls together and heal them for good? what if through lies, one finally finds their soulmate?... surely truth should still prevail but in this drama, lies bring forth the chance for the deviate to be recognized and to reach for happiness.
... crime and deceit should never be sympathized, yet there is always perspective for a situation. 
as there is always something more in a seemingly defect being.
imperfect as we are all, yet we tend to seek and criticize others' imperfection, without even meaning to help them better or improve their defect...
and sometimes we find ourselves feeling pleased the unfortunate ones are not us...
right, just as Fitzgerald ever said.. I was enchanted and repelled at the same time by the variety of life...human are such selfish creatures, yet that made us human, that made us the aloof yet flexible, the forgettable yet forgivable creature we are, and that is probably why we create the word "humanity" from the stem human.

to close off, it was touching for me, seeing how each "defect human" finds their place, the people who accepts them for their imperfection...
Fitzgerald is right again.."we are drunk on the idea that love and only love could heal our brokenness"...