Favourite Scene - E12 by guadi

by guadi

This is one of my favorite scenes  - 

From Episode 12

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This image has been resized to fit in the page. Click to enlarge.

This image has been resized to fit in the page. Click to enlarge.

Dialogue from viki's translation:

Eun-soo walking through the court yard looking fabulous in her semi inappropriate for the time period dress takes a deep breath and says: This is really nice.*She sits and looks around while listening to bird singing. 

Meanwhile, Choi Young standing in the hallway of some mysterious house waiting for the chilsas(?) to arrive. Immediately afterward, he hears three people approaching and he kills them all. He counts silently: three

Moving to the next place and we hear the sound of rain outside. Young says: Let's end here. You're killing to make money anyway. When you die, isn't it the end. *He draws his sword and looks at the shiny blade while breathing heavily and says*: There is someone I know. To that person, the most important thing in the world is living. But...you guys and I don't know that. To us...living is not dying. That's all. But...that person is different. That person is really living. And at that...with all her might. *He raises his sword and kills another person* 

While looking exhausted he says: That's why I'm saying...when I look at that person, I think...'wait, what am I doing right now?'

He then looks at the dead body and closes that person's eyes and silently counts "four"

While all this is happening, Eun-soo is waiting for Young at the Queen's court yard. She sits there and starts counting her pulse. She says: The feel of beads rolling. Feel of bamboo scratch? *looking a bit unsure* The pulse that sinks as you press, the pulse that gets stronger as you press? *she sighs and gazes at a distance waiting for Young*  

Choi Young (after killing the fourth guy) stands up and puts one of his bloody hands out to touch the pouring rain. The hand is now cleansed. He then kills another person; the fifth assassin. Meanwhile Eun-soo is practicing her knife skills outside the court yard as she waits for Young. 

Comments:

This scene speaks to me in a lot of ways. Visually, it is pretty to look at. The contrast between the clear sky at the royal court and the raining and dark clouds at that empty house. It's also one of the better edited scenes in Faith (though, they kind of mess up the count), I like that there is a sense of space in this scene (in a lot of scenes, the way the camera worked, I felt like all we could see onscreen was the people and nothing else). You can see the exterior beyond the focus on Eun-soo and Choi Young physical bodies. I also like the sound of birds singing and the crispiness of raindrops and blade drawing and sharpening. An eclectic mix of these noises somehow unified the entire scene for me. A bit of life, of sharpness that stimulate your emotional view and visual palette of that sequence. 

And then the symbols: If I recall correctly, this is the first time that Eun-soo actually takes time to look around and sees her surrounding. It's a mark of her accepting that this place has something beautiful laying beneath it. I like that she breathes in the air, and takes her pulse while waiting for him, as he is ending someone else's life. You know where I'm going with this, right? The juxtaposition between making a gesture of healing and of killing a person. What is so interesting about it, is a reverse contrast in these two scenes - In the scene of him killing those assassins, he talks about the meaning of truly living life to the fullest; he refers to her as a portrait of someone who is "living with all her might." And we can deduce that he is very tired of killing people mindlessly out of obligation and duty. While he talks about the meaning of life, Eun-soo on the other hand, presses her pulse and says this "The pulse that sinks as you press, the pulse that gets stronger as you press?" It's very poetic, isn't it? Life is not about breathing easily and comfortably. A hardship can add a bit of spice to one's existence. What doesn't break you, make you stronger, so to speak. In a way, she's slowly accepting her place in this time. And we see toward the end of that scene, she's accepting his way of living, by practicing sword fighting on her own, as if to say, in this world, this is how people live. Fight to protect your loved one. 

And lastly and also the reason I love this scene, the hand washing on his part. To use religious symbolism, he's baptizing himself. Washing away the dirt and blood of his old self. He's a renewed person. Though his process of transformation is not complete yet.