A Profound Story With The Biggest Heart
In this million miles an hour consumer-driven world we live in, how important it is to take a moment and remember what truly matters in life is not what we accumulate or what we achieve but rather the people in our lives and how we've lived and loved.
When Life Gives You Tangerines is an achingly beautiful ride that reminds us of just that...that life's moments of extraordinary happiness or profound love or heartbreaking sadness...it's moments of quiet contentment, or explosive intensity, moments in life, that can feel like eternities or moments that are so fleeting as to have never been...ultimately those moments are the riches in our lives, those are what truly matter, those are what we'll carry with us to the end.
If ever there was a part absolutely written for actor Park Bo Gum, this is it...his beautiful face that so heartbreakingly bears witness without words to Gwan Sik's quiet strength and unwavering lifelong love for Ae Sun is so poignantly beautiful. As a viewer, I was so invested in their life together I spent each episode either weeping tears of joy or tears of heartbreak. These magical 16 episodes exquisitely remind us of what a roller coaster ride life really is.
Kudos to the casting director for their perfect eye in casting Park Bo Gum and IU, as the younger adult pair and Park Hae Joon and Moon Soo Ri as the older pair. The seamless aging of Gwan Sik and Ae Sun couldn't have happened without the tremendous talent of these 4 actors. And truly, in When Life Gives You Tangerines there was no cast member who didn't give an amazing and memorable performance creating this masterpiece.
The Korean title, 폭싹 속았수다, has a specific cultural context. It is a common phrase in the Jeju dialect of the Korean language and translates to “you have worked hard” or “thank you for your hard work.” Life is hard work, often we might feel with little return, but like the cast of When Life Gives You Tangerines, in the end, the bittersweet realization of life itself is that it "never promised us a rose garden"...but through it all teaches us that "when life gives you tangerines, make tangerine tea".
When Life Gives You Tangerines is an achingly beautiful ride that reminds us of just that...that life's moments of extraordinary happiness or profound love or heartbreaking sadness...it's moments of quiet contentment, or explosive intensity, moments in life, that can feel like eternities or moments that are so fleeting as to have never been...ultimately those moments are the riches in our lives, those are what truly matter, those are what we'll carry with us to the end.
If ever there was a part absolutely written for actor Park Bo Gum, this is it...his beautiful face that so heartbreakingly bears witness without words to Gwan Sik's quiet strength and unwavering lifelong love for Ae Sun is so poignantly beautiful. As a viewer, I was so invested in their life together I spent each episode either weeping tears of joy or tears of heartbreak. These magical 16 episodes exquisitely remind us of what a roller coaster ride life really is.
Kudos to the casting director for their perfect eye in casting Park Bo Gum and IU, as the younger adult pair and Park Hae Joon and Moon Soo Ri as the older pair. The seamless aging of Gwan Sik and Ae Sun couldn't have happened without the tremendous talent of these 4 actors. And truly, in When Life Gives You Tangerines there was no cast member who didn't give an amazing and memorable performance creating this masterpiece.
The Korean title, 폭싹 속았수다, has a specific cultural context. It is a common phrase in the Jeju dialect of the Korean language and translates to “you have worked hard” or “thank you for your hard work.” Life is hard work, often we might feel with little return, but like the cast of When Life Gives You Tangerines, in the end, the bittersweet realization of life itself is that it "never promised us a rose garden"...but through it all teaches us that "when life gives you tangerines, make tangerine tea".
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