Twenty Five Twenty One
An emotional masterpieceDisclaimer: this review contains spoilers
K-dramas can do a lot of things. They can make you cry, make you laugh, make you swoon. Unlike American television, K-dramas usually don’t try to be a piece of art. They’re funny, charming, and consumable. But 25/21 manages to do something different. It manages to make you cry, laugh, swoon - but it also sticks around.
One of the hallmarks of a good K-drama, to me, is how you feel once it ends. A bad one leaves you feeling unsatisfied, as if there’s something missing. A good one leaves you feeling complete, a happy ending to a Cinderella story. The best ones leave you feeling empty, like something important has left a hole in your heart. That is what 25/21 achieves. Led by Kim Tae-ri and Nam Joo-hyuk, 25/21 makes you do more than swoon. It makes you fall in love with every character, as if their stories are your stories and their lives are yours.
And it does this masterfully, despite the difficulties it finds in romanticizing a relationship defined by an age gap. It strikes you as a Herculean task, at first, convincing the audience that this relationship could work - but by the penultimate episode, that’s all you want, all you root for. Perhaps it’s only fitting that the finale to this impossible romance is a final episode where, unconventionally, the leads don’t end up together. Instead, there’s a melancholy to the ending, a bittersweet recollection of youth that strikes a particularly melodic chord.
One thing many of these not-so-happy-ending dramas struggle with is making the ending not feel like a cop-out. It has been a very long time since a drama has managed to do that convincingly, but 25/21manages it, its separation of its two charismatic leads not implausible nor unsatisfying in the slightest. Instead, you’re reminded that everything is ephemeral, an early snow that will eventually melt away on the fringes of your memory.
25/21 is beautiful. It’s artistic in every scene, yet feels more like a collection of old memories than an incomprehensible short film. It’s funny and well-written, just emotional enough. It is unforgettable, and it is, truly, an emotional masterpiece.
Images from Netflix