JT the movie-reviewer again.

The Usher eyeballed me a few times before he decided that I was over 16 and I was off to watch King and the Clown.

The movie. It felt so tragic.

After squirming in my seat and shaking my head at the serious sexual innuendo and obvious sexual jokes (which whacked you in the face 15 minutes into the show), I got amazed at how pretty boy Gong-gil was really so pretty. Sharp features, gentle smile, slender build and lady-like composure. Then you make your slow plunge into the darkness of the perverse human nature. You see a teary Gong-gil victimized by the ability of the vile, rich and authorative to manipulate the poor and powerless into unwilling sacrifice of their flesh and bodies. Tragic. Lust is a scary thing. And male lust for younger males. Disturbing.

At the same time, you get a small inlet into the lives and misery of every character that stirs complex and mixed emotions... like sympathy, outrage and fear all at the same time. I despise the King for being tyranic and psychotic. Yet, he somehow wrenched sympathy from me because of his sad childhood and upbringing amidst domestic upheaval and murder. But that's no excuse for being a cold-blooded and violent murderer who ridiculed and frustrated his most loyal subjects.

I ache at the helplessness of the loyal subjects, who served 3 Kings through the rise and falls of their empires, and resigned to suicide as the expression of their hopelessness in working for a stubborn tyrant. Stubborn is an understatement.

And then you see the somewhat ambiguous friendship between the two protagonists, Jang-Seng and Gong-gil... One trying so hard to protect the other. Brotherhood or something more? I insist on thinking it as brotherhood.

Plenty of drama on power play, nepotism, political schemes and murder.

And on a more artistic note, there's a certain depth that I haven't fathomed. Something Jang-Seng mentioned... now that he was truly blind (physically) to the world, the world was truly his stage. It was something about being past caring about authorities and influences, something about perceiving life as a play, something about darkness and light, about pain and numbness, about something that tugs away at the strings of my heart.

And yes, tears welled up in my eyes. And the show set me thinking. I don't know if I'd say it's a show worth watching coz there's too much perverseness in it that made me really sad.

King and the Clown.

The clowns put up a show,

so satirical, so cynical, so bold.

The King laughed at the show,

so cutting, so revealing, so cold.

I watched a show,

so dark, so disturbing, as it's told.