Review of "Pachinko," the new Apple TV+ hit about several generations of one family
An adaptation of the American-Korean bestseller that is already claiming to be one of this year's top TV events.
Early 20th century, Japan annexes Korea. Surviving with her mother, Sunja almost becomes a victim of rape - she is saved by the new market inspector Ko Hansu. An affair begins between them, the heroine quickly becomes pregnant, but terminates the relationship when she learns that the man is actually married and generally planned to treat Sunja as a mistress. Seventy years later, the heroine's grandson, young Solomon, arrives in Tokyo from the United States and is assigned an important deal at his new job at the bank, on which his promotion depends: he has to convince a Korean migrant to sell her house. He takes his grandmother to the important meeting - whoever, but Sunja, who once left Korea for Japan, is sure to understand the feelings of a stubborn old woman, clinging to a piece of land.
The American TV series industry continues to feed us with adaptations of recent bestsellers - this time, not another mystery detective about the secret life of the middle class ("Fires Are Smoldering Everywhere," "Big Little Lies," "Playing Back"), but a somewhat old-fashioned historical romance. "Min Jin Lee's Patinko, published in Russia as The Road of a Thousand Li, is a kind of American-Korean answer to Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks - also epic in scope, but very intimate in tone, a portrait of several generations of one family against the background of key events in the era's history. Simply put, the novel's characters live their own lives (like everyone else, marrying, dying, falling in love, quarreling, and making peace) while suffering the consequences of Japan's annexation of Korea and the subsequent discrimination against the population, World War II, and the difficulties of economic recovery.
The sourcebook is linear and divided into three parts: in the first Sunja lives in Korea, in the second she migrates to Japan, and the third is about the lives of her offspring and grandchildren - those, among other things, get involved in the patinko business. These are popular slot machines in Asia, the mechanics of which are built not on the skill of the player, but on blind luck - hence the title of the book, which emphasizes that randomness is important in life. The series lacks this chronological sequence - instead, the viewer in the first episode reveals that the main character survives all the way to the late 1980s and, apparently, someone will give birth, since she has a grandson. The intrigue changes dramatically - if the reader was waiting to see how Sunji's odyssey would end after all, the viewer wonders what horrors she experienced between the beginning and the final points of the story. In addition, by alternating between Sunji's life and that of her kin, the creators bring other characters to the fore, and also look for parallels and notable differences between them. For example, she, as a Korean in Japan, and her grandson, an Asian in the United States, are similar in that they both try to understand their place in a rapidly changing world and accept a migrant identity, but at the same time in this comparison the difference between the minor difficulties of the younger generation and the vital problems of the older one becomes apparent.
"The Road of a Thousand Leagues is one of the most ambitious and beautiful historical series of our time, but it is not difficult to assume that it will meet the fate of its twin films like My Brilliant Friend and The Underground Railroad. These are also adaptations of recent bestsellers, which, however, could not make their way to a wider audience, remaining barely visible and adored only in a narrow circle of hits. In general, the Apple TV+ project seems to be a strange symbiosis of both series: from the first there is melodramaticism, from the second - visionary scope. However, the explanation is very simple - half of the episodes were shot by the director Kogonada, who gravitates toward shots that emphasize the characters' surroundings and architecture (his debut looks just like a love letter to the quaint buildings of Columbus). The rest of the episodes went to Justin Chung, who revels in the somewhat primitive close-ups of the characters and the expressive acting of the actors. A similar contrast in skill can be seen in the recent Tokyo Police: in the pilot episode, Michael Mann emphasizes negative space and uses complex long takes, while in other episodes even the dialogues are shot in regular eights. The lack of visual integrity hurts both shows.
Considering the somewhat blurred finale, in which viewers are shown interviews with Korean women, each of whom could have been a real Sunja, there is no way I would call The Road of a Thousand Leagues a masterpiece. It is certainly a technically outstanding and even important project, which is primarily valuable because it tells viewers about the discrimination of the Korean population and clearly shows them how rapid the twentieth century was and how this progress has changed the human being. In fact, you can skip the show and just watch its seemingly out-of-place splash screen, where the characters dance in a hall with patinko machines to the song Let's Live for Today by the Grass Roots. There are no repetitive movements like in the recent "Peacemaker," quite the contrary - no choreography, just improvisational swaying to the life-affirming lines "live for today and don't worry about tomorrow," which serve as the leitmotif of the story. And really, why worry about anything when you can just enjoy the moment waiting for that very chance, the chance that can change your life?
This article was sponsored by Brody Isner
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