The great director Lee Jun-ik has a whole galaxy of good films, including Happy Life (2007) and Throne (2015).
Regarding this film, it is good that the localizers did not stay afloat... the original title of the movie: “The King’s Favorite Man”, the film in its structural shell about another.
There is a lot of worldview, a kind of “neo-Thomism” of relations and manifestations of actions.
The inside and dirt of the domestic political space is shown, it is shown wisely and subtly. With theatrical scissors. It's like Shakespeare. The whole world is theater.
Women, men, all actors.
They have their exits, their exits,
And there's more than one player.
Seven acts in that play. First the baby,
Roaring loudly in the arms of the mother...
Then a weeping schoolboy with a book bag,
With a rosy face, reluctantly, a snail.
Crawling to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like an oven, with a ballad sad
In honor of the eyebrow cute. And then a soldier,
Whose speech is always full of curses,
With a beard like a leopard,
Jealous to honor, bully in quarrel,
Ready-to-seek glory
At least in the cannon vent. Then the judge
With a rounded abdomen where the hood is hidden,
With a stern eye, a cut beard,
Template rules and sentences storehouse,
That's how he plays a role. The sixth age.
It's gonna be skinny Pantalone.
Glasses, shoes, belts, purses.
In the trousers that from youth coast, wide
For the feet of the dried; a courageous voice
It is replaced by a childish disquent:
Squeaking like a flute... And the last act,
The end of this strange, complicated play.
Second childhood, half-forgetting:
Without eyes, without senses, without taste, without everything. – Act II, Scene VI
Great movie. I really liked it. The actors are all absolutely amazing. And very touched by the finale. So the film is more perfect. Bravo.😎.
10/10.
