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This review may contain spoilers
A hymn to love
Do I recommend the series? Yes, I do. There are wonderful, iconic, unforgettable moments and with a bright and promising happy ending for the lieds, Nie Jiu Luo and Yan Tuo.
If you read my review, consider all the very positive aspects of LOTTL. Are there any drawbacks? Yes, like everything in life, but LOTTL will please you.
Although these observations lie between subjective and technical perspectives, the series is extremely captivating. There are countless scenes that I will keep with immense affection for their poetic beauty and because the story of NJL and Yt is a hymn to love!
Abbreviations for the names of characters mentioned in the review:
NJL - Nie Jiu Luo
YT- Yan Tuo
LXR -Li Xin Rou
XS - Xing Shen
LX - Lv Xian
XH - Xiong Hei
LL - Lin Ling
(Yu Rong, Que Cha and Lu Jie are also mentioned, but I didn't use abbreviations)
■The qualities of the series:
The leads
Dilraba's performance reached a level of maturity and magnetism rarely seen in actors, especially those of her generation. It's no wonder she's so persecuted, as people only throw stones at trees bearing fruit. It's challenging to define her performance in a few words, but even so, I dare to highlight her ability to convey a multitude of subtle microexpressions that carry a powerful emotional charge that kidnaps and mobilizes the viewer's emotions to the very limit. Dilraba's character is the most complex, the most challenging to interpret; she manages to reconcile wild firmness, femininity, sweetness, fury, compassion, love, pragmatism, childishness, maturity, vigor/strength/courage in opposition to her fragility as a human being susceptible to trauma, such as her phobia of water. This character, Nie Jiu Luo, is already consecrated as legend and a classic that shines in the pantheon of great heroines.
I make this very personal point, and I ask for permission from those who think differently: NJL is nothing like Lara Croft. Nie Jiu Luo is unique because she has immense human depth, she is like us, someone truly made of flesh and blood. Her spirit bears the deep traces of ancient Chinese roots. She herself is a sculpture with carvings that did not copy models, that were inspired only by the subtlety of the worldview so peculiar to China. The black outfit (which would be the only similarity...), despite being daring and exuding sensuality, is sober and extremely feminine in contrast to Lara Croft, who has a masculinized, eroticized profile, almost like a soldier, clearly violent with her excess of pistols.
Nie Jiu Luo is a warrior who, with a simple knife, terrifies powerful enemies without losing her dragonfly aura.
Chen Xing Xu
Besides being physically a Greek god, CXX also delivered a sensitive and mature performance, portraying and giving dimension to a wide spectrum of feelings, behaviors, and gestures. CXX masters facial and body expression, magnetizing with his gaze, in a performance that expresses, with depth, the universe of those who love, those who suffer, those who strategically dissimulate, whether in the context of the conflicting and affectionate relationship between YT and NJL, in the context of tension or sublime moments, or in the context of depression, loneliness, and silent despair. CXX manages to reconcile masculinity with gentleness and sweetness, the dream of any woman.
▪︎Positive points of the series:
1- It offered a high-quality spectacle, with a refined line of thought that skillfully and balancedly utilized artistic, poetic, and psychological/psychiatric concepts.
2- It presented an intriguing, intelligent, daring, and even surprising story, focusing on affective relationships, philosophically rich, intricately woven with psychic and behavioral explorations, and permeated with originality.
3- It presented solid, strong, iconic, well-defined, and coherent characters, tinged with lyrical touches.
4- It produced a well-written plot, with well-concatenated and connected facts, well-developed, and permeated with artistic beauty and poetry. The novel even includes quotes from poems by Li Bai and Du Fu, two of China's greatest poets, which explains the production's clear attention to aesthetic aspects, not only visually, but also in the lyrical message in which the story builds the characters NJL, YT, LL, LX, LJ (yes, even LJ, who captivated everyone. They publicized a scene of her as a fiend and, without any explanation to the public, there was no development), all profoundly human and overflowing with lyricism, very subtle in their feelings, gestures, and behaviors.
5- Very well-structured aesthetics and cinematographic aspects that act on the viewer's emotional universe, with meticulously explored environments, enhancing the viewer's immersion, in addition to atmospheres that range from luminosity to shadow, from dim light to darkness, but always strongly contrasting with the light (Example: scene of Guo Ya's execution, episode 11).
6- The series has an almost dizzying pace that balances action, emotion, tension, violence, humor, anxiety, love, delicacy, lightness, and density.
7- An intelligent, engaging plot, unpredictable (although it lost coherence and rationality from episode 22 onwards).
8- Impeccable costume design.(with the exception of hunters, I'll talk more specifically about that later in the review)
9- Solid characters with well-structured characteristics, well-articulated and believable emotional and psychological aspects (up to episode 22).
10- Perfect chemistry between the leads, the direction explores sensuality without trivialization, and develops the relationship between the leads with an engaging progression.
11- Impeccable acting from all the actors.
12- Impactful fight scenes that don't exploit excessive blood, but well-coordinated blows with good choreography (The final scenes of the long-awaited final battle in the cave were disappointing, bland, lacking significant movement/choreography.)
▪︎Negative Points/Plot Holes in the Series
The pillars of the series began to crumble in the final 10 episodes. These are the main flaws/holes in the series:
1- The disappearance of YT's sister, is a deep wound in his life (and in ours...). This fact is presented to us throughout the series, however, we are left without a clear answer and with the mere presumption that she was murdered as a child. This assumption is suggested in episode 31, during a dream of YT, who was recovering from injuries sustained in the final battle in the cave. In the dream, she appears for the first time in a luminescent aura, evoking another state of life, and says that she has always been there, that she is very happy, and runs to a very bright portal and disappears upon entering it. YT wakes up... He, and we, also wake up to a nightmare that persists.
2- NJL's rescue: how did YT get out of that place, sweeping NJL away? How did he manage to reach and exit through the high ceiling where the hole he fell through was located, separating the river from the dry cave where NJL lay in a dome? How did he manage to carry her without supplemental oxygen, to get NJL to the surface of the river? This couldn't have been left to our imagination.
3- YT burned his hands to break through the scalding dome where NJL lay, but he didn't have ANY scars. It's therefore implausible.
4- What happened to LXR's housekeeper? She was complicit in all the horrors committed by LXR, but she disappeared from the scene, as did the mansion and possessions that LXR stole from YT's family.
5- What happened to the children's asylum (in the middle of the forest, also implausible), an important part of the plot and where the series begins, it was part of YT's life.
6- Lu Jie, did they give up on explaining her identity? Or did they create two arcs and choose to keep her as the dedicated and maternal housetaker? Or was this scene created by AI? We'll never know...
7- And the Locust? They gave the simple solution of a team of biologists simply collecting it: end of its story, let's accept it. In other words, Locust had no function whatsoever.
■ Some personal impressions on the genre of the series
It is not a simple task to discuss the sources of Chinese cinematographic production, since even science fiction works resonate with the ancient roots of the country's culture, notably the influence of "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" (Chinese: 山海经, Shanhai-jing), a Chinese classic text and a compilation of mythic geography and beasts.
The series blends mystic, legends, history, science fiction, suspense, horror, romance, and adventure, in a cocktail that reminds me of the atmospheres of Alien, Blade Runner, The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, and The Name of the Rose.
These impressions make no comparison between these works and Chinese cinematographic narrative, structure, and aesthetics, whose creative process is supported by its own technical elements, is inspired by national sources that have consolidated their own standard, in a movement that starts from within the country and extends outward, with a life of its own, because it's free from Western formulas.
■Final very personal considerations
It's not about leaving doubts in the air for a possible season 2, because, technically speaking, that's done by leaving narratives open, but what we saw was a narrative that lost cohesion, it was split in half, each half became another story, separate from the whole, the viewer falls into a dark abyss, I felt stunned in the pasty and opaque atmosphere of the final 4 episodes.
The leads, LXR, and other characters lost the impact of their significance and were excluded from the much-anticipated climax, namely, the elimination of LXR, which was given as a gift to NJL's mother, a secondary character who is merely a detail in the story. LXR, a strong, solid, and memorable character, didn't progress in the final four episodes, and the expected final battle never happened. LXR faded and perished without any real fight. Besides having a, let's say, painless death, given the speed with which she was decapitated, it offered no impact, not even visually, and didn't calm our hearts, because we all expected an epic showdown between her and Mad Blade that would live up to her reputation. We didn't see LXR being chopped to pieces, cleansing the soul of Justice. So, was decapitation enough to kill her? And if only NJL's mother's sword could kill LXR, it would have been so symbolic if she threw the sword to NJL and she fulfilled her last mission. The same I say about SH, ZERO emotion, no confrontation, merely pushed into the abyss. The self-sacrifice o XS didn't move me.
Another solid and captivating character, Yu Rong, with her rebellious personality and casual/grunge look, was completely deconstructed and transformed into a well-behaved lady, just like Que Cha, both running a teahouse (at the end of the series).
The climax of the plot, and of several subplots, was aborted, and in its place the director and writer planted these and other quick fixes, like instant noodles, dismantling the plot, the key characters, killing almost all the hunters and turning heroes into fools waiting to be caught by a single hook, in a simple, laughable, childish way. On the other hand, YT's acting in the battle was kind of pathetic, and that tranquilizer dart gun in the context of such a battle was beyond ridiculous.
Well...and at the end...Where did that character from the NJL exhibition come from, whose father buys all NJL's work? No connection to anything, he parachuted into the story. In the final scene, where a museum TV appears (I didn't understand this choice), his father, whom we don't see in the scene, only hear, is talking to him on the phone. From the dialogue, it seems to be a humanized fiend that's still left. If the goal was just to give the series an open ending, after so many deaths, both of civilians turned into blood bags and of hunters, it's regrettable because it undermines the moral of the story. If the goal is to suggest a second season, I feel totally encouraged to embark on this journey with Dilraba and Chen Xing Xu, explosive chemistry, impeccable acting.
Finally, that delightfully natural relationship between NJL and YT is lost in the final scenes, they've lost their warmth, they become artificial in impersonal, sumptuous scenes, as if they were about to parade on the red carpet. It wasn't the fact that they were dressed in a sophisticated way that made them seem artificial in their relationship, but rather that they seemed very formal with each other, considering the level of intimacy between them. It would have been more welcoming and in keeping with the story if the two had been camping on that iconic mountain, watching the sunrise as a clear symbol of a new life.
If you read my review, consider all the very positive aspects of LOTTL. Are there any drawbacks? Yes, like everything in life, but LOTTL will please you.
Although these observations lie between subjective and technical perspectives, the series is extremely captivating. There are countless scenes that I will keep with immense affection for their poetic beauty and because the story of NJL and Yt is a hymn to love!
Abbreviations for the names of characters mentioned in the review:
NJL - Nie Jiu Luo
YT- Yan Tuo
LXR -Li Xin Rou
XS - Xing Shen
LX - Lv Xian
XH - Xiong Hei
LL - Lin Ling
(Yu Rong, Que Cha and Lu Jie are also mentioned, but I didn't use abbreviations)
■The qualities of the series:
The leads
Dilraba's performance reached a level of maturity and magnetism rarely seen in actors, especially those of her generation. It's no wonder she's so persecuted, as people only throw stones at trees bearing fruit. It's challenging to define her performance in a few words, but even so, I dare to highlight her ability to convey a multitude of subtle microexpressions that carry a powerful emotional charge that kidnaps and mobilizes the viewer's emotions to the very limit. Dilraba's character is the most complex, the most challenging to interpret; she manages to reconcile wild firmness, femininity, sweetness, fury, compassion, love, pragmatism, childishness, maturity, vigor/strength/courage in opposition to her fragility as a human being susceptible to trauma, such as her phobia of water. This character, Nie Jiu Luo, is already consecrated as legend and a classic that shines in the pantheon of great heroines.
I make this very personal point, and I ask for permission from those who think differently: NJL is nothing like Lara Croft. Nie Jiu Luo is unique because she has immense human depth, she is like us, someone truly made of flesh and blood. Her spirit bears the deep traces of ancient Chinese roots. She herself is a sculpture with carvings that did not copy models, that were inspired only by the subtlety of the worldview so peculiar to China. The black outfit (which would be the only similarity...), despite being daring and exuding sensuality, is sober and extremely feminine in contrast to Lara Croft, who has a masculinized, eroticized profile, almost like a soldier, clearly violent with her excess of pistols.
Nie Jiu Luo is a warrior who, with a simple knife, terrifies powerful enemies without losing her dragonfly aura.
Chen Xing Xu
Besides being physically a Greek god, CXX also delivered a sensitive and mature performance, portraying and giving dimension to a wide spectrum of feelings, behaviors, and gestures. CXX masters facial and body expression, magnetizing with his gaze, in a performance that expresses, with depth, the universe of those who love, those who suffer, those who strategically dissimulate, whether in the context of the conflicting and affectionate relationship between YT and NJL, in the context of tension or sublime moments, or in the context of depression, loneliness, and silent despair. CXX manages to reconcile masculinity with gentleness and sweetness, the dream of any woman.
▪︎Positive points of the series:
1- It offered a high-quality spectacle, with a refined line of thought that skillfully and balancedly utilized artistic, poetic, and psychological/psychiatric concepts.
2- It presented an intriguing, intelligent, daring, and even surprising story, focusing on affective relationships, philosophically rich, intricately woven with psychic and behavioral explorations, and permeated with originality.
3- It presented solid, strong, iconic, well-defined, and coherent characters, tinged with lyrical touches.
4- It produced a well-written plot, with well-concatenated and connected facts, well-developed, and permeated with artistic beauty and poetry. The novel even includes quotes from poems by Li Bai and Du Fu, two of China's greatest poets, which explains the production's clear attention to aesthetic aspects, not only visually, but also in the lyrical message in which the story builds the characters NJL, YT, LL, LX, LJ (yes, even LJ, who captivated everyone. They publicized a scene of her as a fiend and, without any explanation to the public, there was no development), all profoundly human and overflowing with lyricism, very subtle in their feelings, gestures, and behaviors.
5- Very well-structured aesthetics and cinematographic aspects that act on the viewer's emotional universe, with meticulously explored environments, enhancing the viewer's immersion, in addition to atmospheres that range from luminosity to shadow, from dim light to darkness, but always strongly contrasting with the light (Example: scene of Guo Ya's execution, episode 11).
6- The series has an almost dizzying pace that balances action, emotion, tension, violence, humor, anxiety, love, delicacy, lightness, and density.
7- An intelligent, engaging plot, unpredictable (although it lost coherence and rationality from episode 22 onwards).
8- Impeccable costume design.(with the exception of hunters, I'll talk more specifically about that later in the review)
9- Solid characters with well-structured characteristics, well-articulated and believable emotional and psychological aspects (up to episode 22).
10- Perfect chemistry between the leads, the direction explores sensuality without trivialization, and develops the relationship between the leads with an engaging progression.
11- Impeccable acting from all the actors.
12- Impactful fight scenes that don't exploit excessive blood, but well-coordinated blows with good choreography (The final scenes of the long-awaited final battle in the cave were disappointing, bland, lacking significant movement/choreography.)
▪︎Negative Points/Plot Holes in the Series
The pillars of the series began to crumble in the final 10 episodes. These are the main flaws/holes in the series:
1- The disappearance of YT's sister, is a deep wound in his life (and in ours...). This fact is presented to us throughout the series, however, we are left without a clear answer and with the mere presumption that she was murdered as a child. This assumption is suggested in episode 31, during a dream of YT, who was recovering from injuries sustained in the final battle in the cave. In the dream, she appears for the first time in a luminescent aura, evoking another state of life, and says that she has always been there, that she is very happy, and runs to a very bright portal and disappears upon entering it. YT wakes up... He, and we, also wake up to a nightmare that persists.
2- NJL's rescue: how did YT get out of that place, sweeping NJL away? How did he manage to reach and exit through the high ceiling where the hole he fell through was located, separating the river from the dry cave where NJL lay in a dome? How did he manage to carry her without supplemental oxygen, to get NJL to the surface of the river? This couldn't have been left to our imagination.
3- YT burned his hands to break through the scalding dome where NJL lay, but he didn't have ANY scars. It's therefore implausible.
4- What happened to LXR's housekeeper? She was complicit in all the horrors committed by LXR, but she disappeared from the scene, as did the mansion and possessions that LXR stole from YT's family.
5- What happened to the children's asylum (in the middle of the forest, also implausible), an important part of the plot and where the series begins, it was part of YT's life.
6- Lu Jie, did they give up on explaining her identity? Or did they create two arcs and choose to keep her as the dedicated and maternal housetaker? Or was this scene created by AI? We'll never know...
7- And the Locust? They gave the simple solution of a team of biologists simply collecting it: end of its story, let's accept it. In other words, Locust had no function whatsoever.
■ Some personal impressions on the genre of the series
It is not a simple task to discuss the sources of Chinese cinematographic production, since even science fiction works resonate with the ancient roots of the country's culture, notably the influence of "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" (Chinese: 山海经, Shanhai-jing), a Chinese classic text and a compilation of mythic geography and beasts.
The series blends mystic, legends, history, science fiction, suspense, horror, romance, and adventure, in a cocktail that reminds me of the atmospheres of Alien, Blade Runner, The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, and The Name of the Rose.
These impressions make no comparison between these works and Chinese cinematographic narrative, structure, and aesthetics, whose creative process is supported by its own technical elements, is inspired by national sources that have consolidated their own standard, in a movement that starts from within the country and extends outward, with a life of its own, because it's free from Western formulas.
■Final very personal considerations
It's not about leaving doubts in the air for a possible season 2, because, technically speaking, that's done by leaving narratives open, but what we saw was a narrative that lost cohesion, it was split in half, each half became another story, separate from the whole, the viewer falls into a dark abyss, I felt stunned in the pasty and opaque atmosphere of the final 4 episodes.
The leads, LXR, and other characters lost the impact of their significance and were excluded from the much-anticipated climax, namely, the elimination of LXR, which was given as a gift to NJL's mother, a secondary character who is merely a detail in the story. LXR, a strong, solid, and memorable character, didn't progress in the final four episodes, and the expected final battle never happened. LXR faded and perished without any real fight. Besides having a, let's say, painless death, given the speed with which she was decapitated, it offered no impact, not even visually, and didn't calm our hearts, because we all expected an epic showdown between her and Mad Blade that would live up to her reputation. We didn't see LXR being chopped to pieces, cleansing the soul of Justice. So, was decapitation enough to kill her? And if only NJL's mother's sword could kill LXR, it would have been so symbolic if she threw the sword to NJL and she fulfilled her last mission. The same I say about SH, ZERO emotion, no confrontation, merely pushed into the abyss. The self-sacrifice o XS didn't move me.
Another solid and captivating character, Yu Rong, with her rebellious personality and casual/grunge look, was completely deconstructed and transformed into a well-behaved lady, just like Que Cha, both running a teahouse (at the end of the series).
The climax of the plot, and of several subplots, was aborted, and in its place the director and writer planted these and other quick fixes, like instant noodles, dismantling the plot, the key characters, killing almost all the hunters and turning heroes into fools waiting to be caught by a single hook, in a simple, laughable, childish way. On the other hand, YT's acting in the battle was kind of pathetic, and that tranquilizer dart gun in the context of such a battle was beyond ridiculous.
Well...and at the end...Where did that character from the NJL exhibition come from, whose father buys all NJL's work? No connection to anything, he parachuted into the story. In the final scene, where a museum TV appears (I didn't understand this choice), his father, whom we don't see in the scene, only hear, is talking to him on the phone. From the dialogue, it seems to be a humanized fiend that's still left. If the goal was just to give the series an open ending, after so many deaths, both of civilians turned into blood bags and of hunters, it's regrettable because it undermines the moral of the story. If the goal is to suggest a second season, I feel totally encouraged to embark on this journey with Dilraba and Chen Xing Xu, explosive chemistry, impeccable acting.
Finally, that delightfully natural relationship between NJL and YT is lost in the final scenes, they've lost their warmth, they become artificial in impersonal, sumptuous scenes, as if they were about to parade on the red carpet. It wasn't the fact that they were dressed in a sophisticated way that made them seem artificial in their relationship, but rather that they seemed very formal with each other, considering the level of intimacy between them. It would have been more welcoming and in keeping with the story if the two had been camping on that iconic mountain, watching the sunrise as a clear symbol of a new life.
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