marycrawford (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marycrawford) wrote2021-08-08 08:37 pm
marycrawford) wrote2021-08-08 08:37 pm
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Rewatching is its own special pleasure
I'm rewatching Nirvana in Fire very slowly, with copious pauses to try and draw people's faces. (Quote from a newspaper series on portrait art: "If you can draw shadow shapes, you can draw anything". It turns out that drawing shadow shapes and even seeing them in the first place is really hard, ha.) And I'm stuck on episode 7, which has such good scenes--
I don't think I realized at ALL, on first watching this scene, that Nihuang isn't just accidentally leading MCS in the direction of his father's mansion, now left to rot and uninhabited. That her innocent 'I used to play here, do you want to go in?' question is really asking, 'Do you remember me? Do you trust me with your story?'
I now feel that she has strong suspicions and intuitions about MCS, and she's trying to make room for him to talk about his history, in a very kind but insistent way that reminds me a lot of ZYL trying to get SW to talk. But he obviously wants to maintain his cover, and he shuts her down in a way that must feel cold to her, but has to hurt himself a lot more -- actually calling his father a criminal and telling her to stay away from the Lin Xie house for political reasons, oof. And Nihuang's speech about 'some things--feelings--people will be remembered, even if a house is abandoned"--has a lot of weight to it, and feels like it hits MCS like a hammerblow. He turns away rather than continue to talk to her, because he can't.
We see him look just stricken as he walks away, and the last shot of the scene is his retreating back, framed by wintery tree branches with cobwebs on them...because the abandoned, empty house is MCS himself, the wreck of Lin Shu. SNIFF.
I love how forthright, badass and clever Xia Dong is, and she should obviously be given the leadership of the Bureau immediately. Her friendship with Nihuang is so great, I love that she comes to basically give MCS the shovel talk and also probe his character. And when she asks MCS if his feelings for Nihuang are really platonic, it would be so easy for him to say yes and deflect, but instead, surprisingly and movingly, he is 100% honest as he tells her that of course he admires her, that Nihuang is "a phoenix soaring above the wind" who deserves a man of "great strength and ambition", and that he doesn't expect to live long and is stricken by illness and obviously is no match for her at all.
It only gets more knifey on rewatch, now that I know that he believes he used to be that man of strength and ambition, someone who deserved Nihuang, or at least was on the same level as her, and now that's gone. THE KNIVES.
dorinda said "MCS is not sad, you're sad" - that feels like a motto for this entire show. He's FINE! He has things to do, people to see, health to sacrifice, he's busy! He doesn't have time for us to have feelings about it! ;_;
I don't think I realized at ALL, on first watching this scene, that Nihuang isn't just accidentally leading MCS in the direction of his father's mansion, now left to rot and uninhabited. That her innocent 'I used to play here, do you want to go in?' question is really asking, 'Do you remember me? Do you trust me with your story?'
I now feel that she has strong suspicions and intuitions about MCS, and she's trying to make room for him to talk about his history, in a very kind but insistent way that reminds me a lot of ZYL trying to get SW to talk. But he obviously wants to maintain his cover, and he shuts her down in a way that must feel cold to her, but has to hurt himself a lot more -- actually calling his father a criminal and telling her to stay away from the Lin Xie house for political reasons, oof. And Nihuang's speech about 'some things--feelings--people will be remembered, even if a house is abandoned"--has a lot of weight to it, and feels like it hits MCS like a hammerblow. He turns away rather than continue to talk to her, because he can't.
We see him look just stricken as he walks away, and the last shot of the scene is his retreating back, framed by wintery tree branches with cobwebs on them...because the abandoned, empty house is MCS himself, the wreck of Lin Shu. SNIFF.
I love how forthright, badass and clever Xia Dong is, and she should obviously be given the leadership of the Bureau immediately. Her friendship with Nihuang is so great, I love that she comes to basically give MCS the shovel talk and also probe his character. And when she asks MCS if his feelings for Nihuang are really platonic, it would be so easy for him to say yes and deflect, but instead, surprisingly and movingly, he is 100% honest as he tells her that of course he admires her, that Nihuang is "a phoenix soaring above the wind" who deserves a man of "great strength and ambition", and that he doesn't expect to live long and is stricken by illness and obviously is no match for her at all.
It only gets more knifey on rewatch, now that I know that he believes he used to be that man of strength and ambition, someone who deserved Nihuang, or at least was on the same level as her, and now that's gone. THE KNIVES.
dorinda said "MCS is not sad, you're sad" - that feels like a motto for this entire show. He's FINE! He has things to do, people to see, health to sacrifice, he's busy! He doesn't have time for us to have feelings about it! ;_;
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Yes, this! And shades of meaning that I'm not even sure about - like, just now Meng Zhi made a suggestion that the Emperor took on board (about letting Prince Jing investigate) and I have no idea if MZ meant that to happen or not. I think I may have underestimated his ability to navigate the tensions at court.
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+1 on loving Xia Dong, and her dynamic with Nihuang. It's so interesting that they introduce a pretty painful embedded conflict between them right when we first see them interact (Xia Dong believing Lin Shu really did betray her husband, whereas Nihuang doesn't), and yet they're still so close.
He's FINE! He has things to do, people to see, health to sacrifice, he's busy!
:D :D :D
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Yeah, that scene feels fraught with a lot of things! And also rather on the nose in that "as you know, I can't trust you because XYZ" dialogue, but I will assume that the subs are making it clear for the viewer and the original Chinese is more subtle than that.
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>>'Do you remember me? Do you trust me with your story?'
Yes yes yes
>>now that I know that he believes he used to be that man of strength and ambition, someone who deserved Nihuang, or at least was on the same level as her, and now that's gone. THE KNIVES.
YES I cannot imagine the pain of finding out how much less physically capable he was during the recovery, and later how much more it hurt when he had to compromise his old ideals when he started planning his getting-justice-for-Chiyan.
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That's a really good point - I think it's addressed in a sideways manner when MCS has that lovely painful speech about all the dark acts he's willing to perform, ouch (and let Jingyan's hands stay clean...)
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I'm really impressed by the way Nihuang figures out Mei Changsu's identity. She SAYS it must be feminine intuition, but it isn't, or at least not without a large dose of good old-fashioned sleuthing. She's wondered about the head of the Jiangzuo alliance ever since Wei Zheng showed up to rescue her from her chain-of-boats dilemma, and part of that wondering ("Why would the head of the Jiangzuo Alliance care enough about me to do that?") must surely have been the hope that he was somehow, miraculously, Lin Shu. So she's already very curious before she meets him, but when she does, he looks nothing like Lin Shu. Except then he holds her hand right in front of great-grandmother, and he sends Prince Jing to rescue her from Sima Lei, and he knows she never takes a maid with her, and he comes up with a plan to save her from marrying Baili Qi... And during the fight when the kids defeat Baili Qi, he and Nihuang slip into the kind of partnership she must have had with Lin Shu, backing each other up, reading each other's minds (look how neatly they persuade the Emperor to hand the kids over to Prince Jing, and how much fun they have doing it). She has all sorts of reasons for suspecting he's Lin Shu, but unlike Jingyan, she sets about testing her hypothesis empirically. She sends people out to ask awkward questions about Mei Changsu, she inveigles him into coming to see his old family home (the first time he's seen it since he left for Meiling, when it was full of bustling life - no wonder the poor man can't cope), she wangles a sample of his handwriting so she can check it against Lin Shu's letters... Unlike Consort Jing, she doesn't have an explanation for why he looks so different, but she assembles so much evidence that it doesn't matter. I love Nihuang so much and the intelligent way she goes about figuring out what's up with MCS is a big part of it.
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Absolutely, I was hoping to hear from NiF fans! I love your litany of all the clever things Nihuang does, and I must admit I don't remember all of them from my single viewing of the show. The chain-of-boats doesn't ring a bell at all, or that she tried to match his handwriting. So I'm presuming these are details that I will rediscover on rewatch (or possibly they're from the novel? But this show is a LOT, so I daresay I just missed them.) Yeah, the way they slip into a kind of familiar shorthand during the tourney is fun to watch, and they do it soooo seamlessly.
Unlike Consort Jing, she doesn't have an explanation for why he looks so different, but she assembles so much evidence that it doesn't matter.
Yes, that was so startling and amazing, when she tries to discover the moles on his arm, doesn't find them, and still concludes he must be her Lin Shu-gege. So I'm looking forward to seeing more indications of her detective work!
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The handwriting is from the show, and I think it'll be the next couple of episodes. Nihuang's desperately upset when she realises it doesn't match the writing on Lin Shu's old letters, which I thought was because she thought MCS couldn't be Lin Shu after all... but now I think it might be because she is still convinced he is Lin Shu, and that something is desperately wrong.
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Haha, I must admit to having watched it a lot more than that! There is an unbelievable amount of stuff you pick up on on subsequent viewings. I always say it reminds me of Emma - the second time you readit, you see things so differently, it's almost like a different book, and the same is true of NiF. And subsequent re-reads/watches reveal more and more things you've missed.
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