izzyl

Pursuit of Jade is a beautiful drama.
Sometimes genuinely, breathtakingly beautiful.
The cinematography is gorgeous, the costumes are luxurious, the locations and sets are carefully composed, and there are scenes that look as though every fold of every robe was personally negotiated with the wind before filming began.
And there is a lot here that I genuinely enjoyed.
Tian Xiwei as Fan Changyu does an enormous amount of the dramatic heavy lifting. She gives her character energy, warmth, determination and emotional range. She reacts, thinks, gets angry, gets frightened, makes decisions and — rather inconveniently for some of the men around her — repeatedly gets things done.
The supporting cast is also one of the drama's greatest strengths.
Deng Kai's Qi Min/Sui Yuanhuai deserves a special mention. With his silver hair, unpredictable energy and wonderfully unsettling presence, he became one of the most interesting characters in the entire story. He could be amusing, dangerous, vulnerable and slightly unhinged, sometimes within the same sequence. Whenever he appeared, I wanted to watch him because I wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do next.
And then we have Xie Zheng. Our male lead. Who is beautiful. Very, very beautiful.
So beautiful, in fact, that after forty episodes I am no longer entirely convinced that Pursuit of Jade was created as a drama.
I suspect it may have been an exceptionally expensive luxury fashion campaign that accidentally developed a plot.
Because whether Xie Zheng is standing on a battlefield, suffering from terrible wounds, confronting his enemies, protecting the woman he loves or contemplating his tragic destiny, he invariably looks as though he has just walked out of a Gucci salon and somebody has whispered:
“Wonderful. Now suffer — but premium.”
Hair: immaculate.
Robes: immaculate.
Jawline: immaculate.
Blood: aesthetically positioned.
Cape: wind machine ready.
Lighting: apparently negotiated directly with the moon.
Expression?
His emotional range can occasionally be summarized in three highly reliable settings:
BEHOLD, I EXIST
For authority, dignity, political intrigue and simply entering a room.
IM ANGRY/FUCK OFF.
For enemies, irritation, danger and situations requiring approximately 12% more jaw tension.
BUUU. 🥺
For love, pain, heartbreak, confusion, physical injury and virtually everything else.
And to be fair:
all three look magnificent on a poster.
The problem is that the drama repeatedly tells us much more about Xie Zheng than I can actually see in the performance.
Other characters tell us how dangerous he is. The script tells us how intelligent he is. Enemies tell us how frightening he is.
The music tells us something important is happening inside him. The camera tells us to LOOK AT THIS MAN.
At times I expected a passing horse to stop, look directly into the camera and explain:
“Please understand that the Marquis is currently experiencing an extremely complicated internal conflict.”
Thank you, horse.
Because I wasn't entirely getting it from the Marquis.
And this becomes particularly obvious when he shares the screen with characters whose thoughts seem to move naturally across their faces.
Tian Xiwei doesn't merely show me Fan Changyu's final emotion. I can often see how she gets there.
Qi Min can change the atmosphere of a scene simply by reacting.
With Xie Zheng, too often I see the finished photograph rather than the emotional process.
And acting, for me, happens largely between the photographs.
It happens between hearing something and understanding it. Between understanding it and deciding what to do. In that tiny transition where a thought crosses the face before becoming an action.
Xie Zheng, meanwhile, can be three arrows away from death and still look ready for the cover of:
Ancient China: The Suffering Collection — Autumn/Winter.
And speaking of arrows…
At some point, Pursuit of Jade also asks the audience to develop a rather relaxed relationship with the laws of physics, geography, medicine and occasionally time itself.
This is fine. We adapt. We do not ask how characters suddenly appear, seemingly within seconds, in exactly the place where they are needed to rescue someone.
We do not ask when our heroes developed immunity to fire, or how they can emerge from extremely dangerous situations with their premium robes apparently covered by an ancient Chinese comprehensive insurance policy.
We certainly do not ask how many arrows a human body can reasonably accommodate before somebody should perhaps consider lying down. We do not ask how people survive arrows, falls from cliffs and other inconveniences that would normally cause a doctor to become involved.
This is drama. We understand.
And when the final confrontation arrives, we understand even harder.
We do not ask where exactly the bow and two arrows suddenly came from. We do not ask how an arrow can solve a hostage situation faster than the knife already pressed against the Prime Minister's wife's throat.
We do not ask exactly what strategic purpose is served by the magnificent duel between the Marquis and the Prime Minister.
Because LOOK AT IT.
The scenery!
The composition!
The capes!
The wind!
Those capes did not spend three hours in wardrobe and another two negotiating their relationship with the wind machine just so we could ruin everything by asking questions about tactical necessity.
Respect the capes!
We also do not ask how the Prime Minister's son apparently grows directly out of the ground at precisely the correct moment to take an arrow intended for our ML.
Nor do we ask where he disappears to immediately afterwards. Continuity is temporary.
A beautiful shot is forever. And naturally, the archer politely refrains from immediately firing another arrow, allowing our Marquis sufficient time to stand over his uncle and activate:
I AM ANGRY — PREMIUM EDITION.
This is basic battlefield etiquette. We move on.
Nor do we ask how Qi Min manages to survive long enough after being shot several times and falling from approximately the fifth floor. Because Qi Min has unfinished business.
Specifically: he still has a beautiful emotional death scene to perform in the arms of the woman he loves.
And you know what? I forgive this one.
If you're going to violate medicine, physics and structural engineering, at least give Deng Kai enough time to act the hell out of his death scene. He earned it.
What is slightly harder to ignore is that our supposedly terrifying and extraordinarily capable Marquis repeatedly needs Fan Changyu to do an astonishing amount of the actual saving.
She fights adversity. She saves him. She protects other people. She pushes the story forward.
And somewhere along the way she seems to acquire responsibility for saving approximately the entire known world.
At some point I stopped asking whether Fan Changyu needed Xie Zheng and began wondering whether Xie Zheng should perhaps put her on the payroll.
Still, I can forgive a lot of this.
Historical and fantasy dramas don't need to operate like documentaries. I don't require a medical report after every arrow wound. I don't need Google Maps to verify travelling times. I am perfectly willing to accept a miraculous rescue, an implausible survival or even an archer patiently waiting while the ML finishes looking magnificent.
Sometimes dramaturgy wins over logic.
That's fine.
My bigger problem is that after all those episodes, beautiful locations, gorgeous costumes, battles, political intrigue, romance, suffering, blood, revenge and enough wind machines to alter the local climate…
I was left with the strange feeling that the entire drama had become an elaborate advertising environment for its male lead.
And what an advertisement it is.
He looks spectacular.
He wears historical costumes spectacularly.
He stands spectacularly.
He suffers spectacularly.
He bleeds spectacularly.
He has possibly one of the most photogenic BUUU 🥺 faces available on the Chinese drama market.
But I finished Pursuit of Jade with a question I genuinely cannot answer:
Does this actor really have only three facial expressions — or did this drama simply never ask him for a fourth?
Because those are two very different things. Maybe there is more there.
Maybe another director, another character or a production less determined to preserve his face as a national luxury asset will eventually show it to me. I'd actually like to find out.
Because Pursuit of Jade gave me a wonderful FL, a memorable silver-haired Crown Prince, excellent supporting performances, beautiful cinematography, gorgeous costumes and several scenes I genuinely enjoyed.
And it gave its male lead something too:
a forty-episode luxury photoshoot.
BEHOLD, I EXIST. 😐
I AM ANGRY/FUCK OFF. 😠
BUUU. 🥺
Three expressions. One spectacular profile. Several indestructible premium robes.
And an entire fictional world working overtime to explain what the beautiful man standing in the middle of it is supposed to be feeling. The photos are excellent. I'm still waiting for the fourth expression. 😂