Drama review: Saimdang, Memoir of Colours (SBS, 2017)
This fusion historical romance was Lee Young-ae’s comeback drama after starring in the blockbuster Jewel in the Palace (MBC) back in 2003. Doesn’t time fly! She plays Shin Saimdang (1504 –1551), the famous Joseon artist and symbol of good wife and mother.
As the icon of motherhood, Saimdang was chosen to appear on the 50.000 won banknote. (There’s a reference to this in the drama (ep15) when Prof Min bribes the bouncers at a club with 50,000 won notes). Her son I Yi became one of the most famous Confucian scholars of the Joseon period (he’s on the 5000 won note). And he appears in the drama as a precocious child hungry for knowledge and desperate to go to school.
There’s a statue of Saimdang in her hometown in Gangwon-do which is a tourist attraction and scenes from the drama were shot here including the house where she was born.
TIME TRAVEL
I’m a fan of dramas that play with time travel (loved Roof Top Prince and You From Another Star) where characters are taken from one time period and placed in another and then have to cope with their new surroundings. But this drama is more challenging to follow as it has two storylines – one set in modern-day Korea and the other in 16th century Joseon!
The actors play different characters in both storylines which intertwine but it makes things quite complicated to follow and the episodes don’t always flow.
storylines
So in the modern-day story, Lee Young-ae plays a PhD candidate of Art History who gets involved in a scandal about the authenticity of a famous Korean painting. She starts to investigate the painting and her university supervisor Professor Min turns out to be a baddie…
The historical storyline focuses on the fictitious romance between Saimdang and her old flame the dashing Lee Gyum played by hallru superstar Song Seung-heon. Saimdang ends up being forced to marry another man but the two are reunited years later when he is still single and she is a wife and mother.
But of course no matter how handsome our hero is (and he is handsome) and no matter how hopeless Saimdang’s husband is (and he is very hopeless indeed), we have to remember that Saimdang is the icon of perfect wife and mother and so must conquer any carnal desires or romantic feelings she still harbours for her old flame.
BOOO!
So if you are into the agonising love story of a union that can never be, then this drama is for you!
WHAT I LIKED
Scenery & wardrobe
The drama was pre-produced (like mega hit Descendants of the Sun KBS 2016) and it took a year to make. So there are beautiful scenes through each season – persimmons on bare branches in late autumn, snow, cherry blossom.
Visually the drama is very successful – although sometimes it feels like it’s trying a bit too hard and the outfits become too colourful – making life look more like one big festival rather than hard times in frugal-loving Joseon.
The colours of Lee Young-ae’s hanboks complement the seasons. A dramatic red and white hanbok is striking in the snow. She is often dressed in pastels. Perhaps to purposely contrast the bright greens and pinks she wore in Jewel in the Palace or perhaps just to emphasise her famously clear skin which admittedly looks incredible – great for promoting her own line of cosmetics!
WHAT I WASN’T KEEN ON
The drama creates a problem for itself by having Lee Young-ae play the same character in two different eras. Her demure and restrained behaviour suits the Joseon era. But it doesn’t work so well in the modern-day storyline where she comes across as too subservient and passive (in my Western opinion anyway). And it becomes a bit monotonous.
I partly wanted to watch this drama because I’m interested in Art. And Saimdang was a famous artist from a well-to-do family, but here she is presented as a working mother who struggles to run a paper-making business while her good-for-nothing husband does nothing to help! I assume she has been put into this position because the drama’s focus is on romance, and her circumstances provide opportunities for our hero to help the damsel in distress.
For the first half of the drama she barely lifts a paintbrush due to a childhood trauma. And then after 20 years she suddenly starts painting again and wows everyone with her GENIUS. I don’t like this message – that great artists don’t even need to practise. (And it seems that in real life she had a stable home environment to focus on her art and so probably practised consistently. That makes more sense).
Personally I would like to have seen more drama made of her life as an artist. Because she was not only a famous painter (Saimdang was her pen name) best known for her genre paintings, she was also a writer, calligrapher and poet. Unusual for women at that time.
Final thoughts
Visually the drama is stunning but there are some major issues with the plot. After all the hype, ratings for the drama were lower than expected and major editing took place to spruce up the pace. The drama felt choppy and I couldn’t get completely into it and towards the end (I watched it on Netflix) I started fast forwarding scenes just to get through it.
The drama has been criticised for being far-fetched and unoriginal. And I did have feelings of déjà vu here and there. Such as when (Ep 22) our heroine becomes the 1st female painter of the king’s portrait! Is this a nod to Jewel in the Palace where she became the 1st female royal doctor? It also reminded me of Painter of the Wind (SBS 2008) where there are similarly far-fetched romantic royal portrait painting scenes.
It feels like the drama got wrapped up in the beautiful scenery beautiful wardrobe and beautiful people. And the plot takes a hit. The last episode in particular seems to be just made up of flashbacks and lingering close ups of the good-looking stars – as though they have run out of things to say. I wonder if there was a huge group sigh of relief when this drama was finally over – for the editing team anyway.